Dora Osborne Livres

Both W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) and the Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr (1954-) were born too late to know directly the violence of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but these traumatic events are a persistent presence in their work. In a series of close readings of key prose texts, Dora Osborne examines the different ways in which the traces of a traumatic past mark their narratives. By focusing on the authors' use of visual and topographical tropes, she shows how blind spots and inhospitable places configure signs of past violence, but, ultimately, resist our understanding. Whilst links between the two authors are well-documented, this book offers the first full-length study of Sebald and Ransmayr and their complicated relation to the traumatic traces of National Socialism.Dora Osborne is Lecturer in German at the University of Nottingham.

The book explores the evolution of memory culture in contemporary Germany, particularly in the context of Holocaust remembrance. It highlights the significance of archives shaped by the Nazi regime's bureaucratic excesses and the erasure of its victims. By examining various media, including memorials, documentary films, and prose narratives, it discusses how the archival turn influences political, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of memory. Drawing on theorists like Freud and Derrida, it emphasizes the ongoing challenges and responsibilities of engaging with the Nazi past through "archive work."

Explores the changing relationship between memory and the archive in German-language literature and culture since 1945.