Event Title
Session 1
Location
Centre de formation et de séminaires (CEFOS) in Remich/Luxembourg
Start Date
9-3-2013 10:00 AM
Description
Professor Lisa Kasmer: “Trauma and Cultural Memory in Romanticism”
Respondent Professor Emma Clery
ABSTRACT
Echoing the title of Percy Shelley’s political sonnet in the name of his own study, James Chandler’s England in 1819 treats the ideologically impelled penning of history in literary texts, with the literature of Romanticism standing as the exemplum of such historicizing. Similar to the Romantic age, Chandler argues, English writing from 1819 is concerned with a national “self-making.” Many literary scholars view Shelly’s composing politically confrontational works in reaction to the political events of 1819 as self-consciously delineating the culture of the time. Instead, I would argue that rather than enacting a “national self-making,” through his work Shelley signifies a national unmaking in unveiling the ambivalent status of the nation. Similarly, against scholarly responses that invest the national ideology within Jane Austen’s domestic novels with a certain transparency, highlighting the narrative of her work reveals the historical trauma problematizing her seemingly coherent national ideology, much like the nationalism in Shelley.
Exploring the literary works of Romantic writers like Percy Shelley and Jane Austen in conjunction with the postcolonial theory of Homi Bhabha and the trauma theory of Cathy Caruth, I tease out the intersections between nationalist discourse and trauma narratives to suggest that nationhood is depicted as articulating its image through the construction of its national subjects, and, as such, like trauma, is incomprehensible to the subjects themselves. In effect, the model of the nation in these works contrasts sharply with the national ideal upheld in Regency Britain, spurred by successes in the Napoleonic War, which established a stable national culture.
Session 1
Centre de formation et de séminaires (CEFOS) in Remich/Luxembourg
Professor Lisa Kasmer: “Trauma and Cultural Memory in Romanticism”
Respondent Professor Emma Clery
ABSTRACT
Echoing the title of Percy Shelley’s political sonnet in the name of his own study, James Chandler’s England in 1819 treats the ideologically impelled penning of history in literary texts, with the literature of Romanticism standing as the exemplum of such historicizing. Similar to the Romantic age, Chandler argues, English writing from 1819 is concerned with a national “self-making.” Many literary scholars view Shelly’s composing politically confrontational works in reaction to the political events of 1819 as self-consciously delineating the culture of the time. Instead, I would argue that rather than enacting a “national self-making,” through his work Shelley signifies a national unmaking in unveiling the ambivalent status of the nation. Similarly, against scholarly responses that invest the national ideology within Jane Austen’s domestic novels with a certain transparency, highlighting the narrative of her work reveals the historical trauma problematizing her seemingly coherent national ideology, much like the nationalism in Shelley.
Exploring the literary works of Romantic writers like Percy Shelley and Jane Austen in conjunction with the postcolonial theory of Homi Bhabha and the trauma theory of Cathy Caruth, I tease out the intersections between nationalist discourse and trauma narratives to suggest that nationhood is depicted as articulating its image through the construction of its national subjects, and, as such, like trauma, is incomprehensible to the subjects themselves. In effect, the model of the nation in these works contrasts sharply with the national ideal upheld in Regency Britain, spurred by successes in the Napoleonic War, which established a stable national culture.