Wounds and Words Childhood and Family Trauma in Romantic and Postmodern Fiction

• Main Author: Schönfelder, Christa (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Bielefeld, Germany transcript Verlag 2013
• Series: Lettre
• Subjects: Literary studies: general; Literature; Trauma; Childhood; Novel; Romanticism; Postmodernism; Psychoanalysis; British Studies; General Literature Studies; Cultural Studies; Literary Studies; Incest; Mary Wollstonecraft; Mental disorder; Novella; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Posttraumatic stress disorder; William Godwin
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Trauma has become a hotly contested topic in literary studies. But interest in trauma is not new; its roots extend to the Romantic period, when novelists and the first psychiatrists influenced each others' investigations of the 'wounded mind'. This book looks back to these early attempts to understand trauma, reading a selection of Romantic novels in dialogue with Romantic and contemporary psychiatry. It then carries that dialogue forward to postmodern fiction, examining further how empirical approaches can deepen our theorizations of trauma. Within an interdisciplinary framework, this study reveals fresh insights into the poetics, politics, and ethics of trauma fiction.