The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age Narratives
Evie Wyld’s novel All the Birds, Singing (2013) draws attention to the interrelation of personal history, trauma narratives, and coming-of-age stories. Herein, Wyld’s novel will be analysed with reference to two bodies of theory: Bergson’s model of the “indivisibility of change” (p. 263), which re-c...
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doaj-21b1fd6a262e407f853e20c6b8984b562020-11-24T22:12:39Zeng The International Academic ForumIAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities2187-06162187-06162018-06-01512334doi.org/10.22492/ijah.5.1.02The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age NarrativesNicole Frey Buechel0University of Zurich, SwitzerlandEvie Wyld’s novel All the Birds, Singing (2013) draws attention to the interrelation of personal history, trauma narratives, and coming-of-age stories. Herein, Wyld’s novel will be analysed with reference to two bodies of theory: Bergson’s model of the “indivisibility of change” (p. 263), which re-conceptualizes the past as part of a “perpetual present” (p. 262), and Pederson’s revised literary theory of trauma, which deviates from crucial tenets of traditional literary trauma studies. Due to the novel’s unconventional structure of a backward-moving narrative strand interlocked with a forward-moving one, the crisis the narrator experienced in adolescence moves centre stage, which shows that, in the case of trauma, coming-of-age requires a continual negotiating of this experience. The novel challenges “strategically grim” coming-of-age narratives that represent trauma merely “as part of a narrative of the young protagonist’s redemption or maturation,” so that “resolution occurs as a matter of narrative convention […]” (Gilmore and Marshall, p. 23). All the Birds, Singing demonstrates that the painstaking processing of a painful personal history in narrative, achieved by establishing a dialogue of voices (and thus of selves), is an essential prerequisite for maturation. Accordingly, the genre of coming-of-age narratives, besides including novels that present a crisis merely as a necessary step on the way to adult life, also needs to incorporate texts documenting the persistence of trauma in a protagonist’s life.https://iafor.org/journal/iafor-journal-of-arts-and-humanities/volume-5-issue-1/article-2/coming-of-age narrativegenretraumaliterary trauma theory |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Nicole Frey Buechel |
spellingShingle |
Nicole Frey Buechel The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age Narratives IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities coming-of-age narrative genre trauma literary trauma theory |
author_facet |
Nicole Frey Buechel |
author_sort |
Nicole Frey Buechel |
title |
The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age Narratives |
title_short |
The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age Narratives |
title_full |
The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age Narratives |
title_fullStr |
The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age Narratives |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Indivisibility of Change: The Challenge of Trauma to the Genre of Coming-of-Age Narratives |
title_sort |
indivisibility of change: the challenge of trauma to the genre of coming-of-age narratives |
publisher |
The International Academic Forum |
series |
IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities |
issn |
2187-0616 2187-0616 |
publishDate |
2018-06-01 |
description |
Evie Wyld’s novel All the Birds, Singing (2013) draws attention to the interrelation of personal history, trauma narratives, and coming-of-age stories. Herein, Wyld’s novel will be analysed with reference to two bodies of theory: Bergson’s model of the “indivisibility of change” (p. 263), which re-conceptualizes the past as part of a “perpetual present” (p. 262), and Pederson’s revised literary theory of trauma, which deviates from crucial tenets of traditional literary trauma studies. Due to the novel’s unconventional structure of a backward-moving narrative strand interlocked with a forward-moving one, the crisis the narrator experienced in adolescence moves centre stage, which shows that, in the case of trauma, coming-of-age requires a continual negotiating of this experience. The novel challenges “strategically grim” coming-of-age narratives that represent trauma merely “as part of a narrative of the young protagonist’s redemption or maturation,” so that “resolution occurs as a matter of narrative convention […]” (Gilmore and Marshall, p. 23). All the Birds, Singing demonstrates that the painstaking processing of a painful personal history in narrative, achieved by establishing a dialogue of voices (and thus of selves), is an essential prerequisite for maturation. Accordingly, the genre of coming-of-age narratives, besides including novels that present a crisis merely as a necessary step on the way to adult life, also needs to incorporate texts documenting the persistence of trauma in a protagonist’s life. |
topic |
coming-of-age narrative genre trauma literary trauma theory |
url |
https://iafor.org/journal/iafor-journal-of-arts-and-humanities/volume-5-issue-1/article-2/ |
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