Fact, Fiction, Fascism: Testimony and Mimesis in Holocaust Narratives

Foley, Barbara

doi:10.2307/1771153

Cited by 42 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…The author's 20 years of involvement with the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), as both a leading activist and an intellectual figure, have not generally been considered relevant to his literary aesthetics. Indeed, some of the most notorious commentators of his work explicitly rejected any direct connection between Semprun's political activity and his literary writing: Barbara Foley, in 1982, characterized Le grand voyage as an "irrealistic Holocaust novel," in direct opposition to "the realistic social novel" (348), and Ofelia Ferrán, in 2001, has made the case that "Le grand voyage is not a social realist novel at all" ("'Cuanto más escribo '" 290). Yet it is Semprun himself who alerts us to the relationship of his first novel with a communist ideology, in Quel beau dimanche!…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Companion to Jorge SemprÃºn

FerrÃ¡n¹,

Herrmann²

2014

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Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the very meaning of Europe has been opened up and is in the process of being redefined. European states and societies are wrestling with the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union and with new streams of immigration, while a renewed and reinvigorated cultural engagement has emerged between East and West. But the fast-paced transformations of the last 15 years also have deeper historical roots. The reconfiguring of contemporary Europe is entwined with the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, two world wars and the Holocaust, and with the processes of modernity that, since the eighteenth century, have shaped Europe and its engagement with the rest of the world.Studies in European Culture and History is dedicated to publishing books that explore major issues in Europe's past and present from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives. The works in the series are interdisciplinary; they focus on culture and society and deal with significant developments in Western and Eastern Europe from the eighteenth century to the present within a social historical context. With its broad span of topics, geography, and chronology, the series aims to publish the most interesting and innovative work on modern Europe.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Companion to Jorge SemprÃºn

FerrÃ¡n¹,

Herrmann²

2014

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“…Dan Bar-On and Noga Gilad (1994) have observed that researchers, "through their too-strong conceptual framework, may overshadow the fragile language structures that survivors developed to describe those events" (p. 87). If such frameworks are developed from what Barbara Foley (1982) calls "the normative ethics inherited from nineteenth-century liberalism" (p. 348), Vol. 3, No.…”

Section: History As Taxidermymentioning

confidence: 99%

Students, Teachers, and the Aftermath of the Horrors: Reflections on Teaching Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

Haswell¹

2013

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Despite the controversies surrounding Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil, I argue that Holocaust fiction in general, and this novel in particular, can be a fertile catalyst for dialogue in ways that historical treatments and survivor testimonies cannot be. My analysis of the novel comes from assigning it in an interdisciplinary, team-taught course on 20 th century genocide. Martel's risky venture challenges many fundamental tenets: 1) that the Holocaust is unique to the point that it cannot be compared to any other event, 2) that truth is found primarily (or exclusively) in survivor testimonies and not in fiction, and 3) that language is an untrustworthy key to unlocking the Event. Using major elements of the novel-the flip book, the comparison of history with taxidermy, and the conversations between the two Henrys and two animals-I examine how Martel both represents the agony of "the Horrors" and engages his readers in an ongoing dialogue. What I offer, therefore, is a literary analysis as well as pedagogical reflections based on questions and interpretations raised by students and from conversations with my teaching team. Beatrice and Virgil is written by and written for those who "come after," and has an important function in the ever-evolving fields of Holocaust studies and Holocaust education.

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“…He insists that all the people that he includes in his account were with him during his time in Auschwitz and Buchenwald (Cargas, 1976, p. 3). However, critical discussion of this story has suggested that Wiesel dramatized events in Auschwitz beyond sheer factuality in order both for the reader to gain a full picture of the horrors of Auschwitz and also for Wiesel to tell a story about fathers and sons enmeshed in the life and death struggle of an extermination camp (Foley, 1982;Hilberg, 2001;Loesberg, 1981;Schwarz, 1999;Weissman, 2004).…”

Section: Resolving Loss and Mourning In Elie Weisel's Account Of Fathmentioning

confidence: 99%