European Memories of the Second World War

During the fifty years since the end of hostilities, European literary memories of the war have undergone considerable change, influenced by the personal experiences of writers as well as changing political, social, and cultural factors. This volume examines changing ways of remembering the war in the literatures of France, Germany, and Italy; changes in the subject of memory, and in the relations between fiction, autobiography, and documentary, with the focus being on the extent to which shared European memories of the war have been constructed.

During the fifty years since the end of hostilities, European literary memories of the war have undergone considerable change, influenced by the personal experiences of writers as well as changing political, social, and cultural factors. This volume examines changing ways of remembering the war in the literatures of France, Germany, and Italy; changes in the subject of memory, and in the relations between fiction, autobiography, and documentary, with the focus being on the extent to which shared European memories of the war have been constructed.

Preface

Introduction: Studying European Literary Memories
Helmut Peitsch

PART I: THE GERMAN SOLDIER'S MEMORY

Chapter 1. Private and Public Filters: Memories of War in Heinrich Böll’s Fiction and Nonfiction
J.H. Reid

PART II: THE RESISTANCE MEMORY

The Female Resister
Chapter 2. Ordinary Heroines: Resistance and Romance in the War Fiction of Elsa Triolet
Diana Holmes

Chapter 3. ‘This Book Does Not Want to Be a Work of Art. This Book Is Truth.’ The Diaries of Ruth Andreas-Friedrich
Irmela von der Lühe

Chapter 4. A Woman’s Perspective: Autobiography and History in Giovanna Zangrandi’s Resistance Narratives
Penny Morris

The Male Resister
Chapter 5. Vercors – Writing the Unspeakable: From Le Silence de la mer (1942) to La Puissance du jour (1951)
William Kidd

Chapter 6. ‘A History Full of Holes’? France and the French Resistance in the Work of Stephan Hermlin
Dennis Tate

Chapter 7. War, Civil War and the Problem of Violence in Calvino and Pavese
Sarah Morgan

Chapter 8. Imagining Losers in Bufalino’s Diceria dell’untore
Peter Hainsworth

PART III: THE FASCIST'S MEMORY

Chapter 9. Memory and Chronicle: Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the D’un château l’autre Trilogy
Nicholas Hewitt

Chapter 10. Portrait of the Poet as a Dead Man. Ernst Jünger’s Writing in the Second World War: Strahlungen
Justus Fetscher

Chapter 11. Changing Identities Through Memory: Malaparte’s Self-figurations in Kaputt
Charles Burdett

PART IV: THE VICTIM'S MEMORY

Chapter 12. Reviewing Memory: Wiesel, Testimony and Self-reading
Colin Davis

Chapter 13. Primo Levi. The Duty of Memory
Robert Gordon

Chapter 14. La Douleur: Duras, Amnesia and Desire
Emma Wilson

Chapter 15. Myth, Memory, Testimony, Jewishness in Grete Weil’s Meine Schwester Antigone
Moray McGowan

PART V: THE MEDIA OF MEMORY: MAY 1968 AND CINEMA

Chapter 16. L’Armée des ombres and Le Chagrin et la pitié: Reconfigurations of Law, Legalities and the State in Post-1968 France
Margaret Atack

Chapter 17. Alexander Kluge: Germany – An Experience of Words and Images
Klaus R. Scherpe

Chapter 18. Fascism and Anti-fascism Reviewed: Generations, History and Film in Italy after 1968
David Forgacs

PART VI: WOMEN'S WRITING AND THE QUEST FOR THE FATHER

Chapter 19. Remembering the Collaborating Father in Marie Chaix’s Les Lauriers du lac de Constance and Evelyne Le Garrec’s La Rive allemande de ma mémoire
Claire Gorrara

Chapter 20. Seeing the Father: Memory and Identity Construction in Elisabeth Plessen’s Mitteilung an den Adel
Anne Moss

Chapter 21. Intimations of Patriarchy: Memories of Wartime Japan in Dacia Maraini’s Bagheria
Judith Bryce

PART VII: A CHILD'S MEMORY

Chapter 22. A Child in Time: Patrick Modiano and the Memory of the Occupation
Alan Morris

Chapter 23. Childhood Memory and Moral Responsibility: Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster
Chris Weedon

Chapter 24. Strategies for Remembering: Auschwitz, Mother and Writing in Edith Bruck
Adalgisa Giorgio

PART VII: AFTER THE COLD WAR: EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY

Chapter 25. Trauma and Absence
Omer Bartov

Chapter 26. Nonrational Discourse in a Work of Reason: Peter Weiss’s Anti-fascist Novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands
Robert Cohen

Chapter 27. Fifty Years On: German Children of the War Remember
Jost Hermand

Chapter 28. Memories of Resistance, Resistances of Memory
Luisa Passerini

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index