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„I Have Known Rivers”: Traumatic Memory and the Postcolonial Kunstlerroman: A Reading of Paule Marshall’s Triangular Road

100%

Fondo B.

Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich

2013

vol. 56/111 z. 1

25-38

The kunstlerroman or „artist novel” unlike the related bildungsroman (novel of growth and development) has not received wide critical attention. Yet it may be interesting in the study of the novel to engage with sub-genres such as the kunstlerroman, especially since it traces the development of the artist, his/her arts and perspective. This paper is interested in exploring the kunstlerroman from a postcolonial viewpoint. Specifically, this paper focuses on how a memory of traumatic events and experiences contribute in the development of Paule Marshall’s artistic skill as expressed in her novel Triangular Road. It therefore engages with issues such as the place of individual and collective traumatic memory, the question of apprenticeship and how it is played out in the postcolonial variant of the kunsttlerroman. It is also focused on how different the postcolonial kunstlerroman is different from the European version and what explains this difference. The main argument is that Marshall’s Triangular Road is a postcolonial kunstlerroman which traces her growth and development to artistic maturity, guided by her apprenticeship and against a backdrop of intrusive memories of the traumas and pains of her people. Therefore it insists that the postcolonial artist unlike those of the colonizing countries is largely influenced and formed by a series of traumatic events whose memories are triggered by „trauma buttons” and which push them in the present to pick up their pens. It underlines the fact that there is a close relationship between trauma, memory and the artistic development of Paule Marshall as expressed in Triangular Road which this paper considers as the postcolonial kunstlerroman par excellence.

Muslimská literatura ve Spojených státech

63%

Helman K.

Svět literatury – Časopis pro novodobé literatury (World of Literature – Journal for Modern Literatures)

2018

vol. 57

87-102

In its introductory part, the present article traces the development of a distinct genre of Muslim American literature (MAL) both within and outside of the overlapping categories of Arab-American and African-American literature. Having introduced two MAL representatives of Syrian and Pakistani origin, Mohja Kahf and Ayad Akhtar, the article focuses on the comparison of their acclaimed debut novels — exemplary Muslim American bildungsromans — The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf and American Dervish. These coming-of-age tales are set in the Midwest in the 1970s and 80s, where both writers grew up. They draw sharp, earthy portraits of Muslim characters, young heroes struggling to reconcile the faith with their secular adoptive country, religious expatriate community and parents. The two characters seek to strike a delicate balance between the integration into a pluralistic society and the awareness of their ancestral traditions, thus developing from devout teenagers to more composed young adults. Addressing the general issue of minorities within mainstream cultures, both MAL authors show outsiders what it means to be a Muslim in a secular society, expanding their novels’ universal reference scope to overcome the clichés of the after-9/11 national trauma literature.

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1 Svět literatury – Časopis pro novodobé literatury (World of Literature – Journal for Modern Literatures)

1 Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich

1 Fondo B.

1 Helman K.

1 2018

1 2013

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„I Have Known Rivers”: Traumatic Memory and the Postcolonial Kunstlerroman: A Reading of Paule Marshall’s Triangular Road

Muslimská literatura ve Spojených státech