European Memories of the Second World War

After having received his PhD and Habilitation from the Free University Berlin, Helmut Peitsch moved to Britain, where he held a number of academic positions. Since 1994, he has been Professor of European Studies at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

• PrefaceIntroduction: Studying European Literary MemoriesHelmut PeitschPART I: THE GERMAN SOLDIER'S MEMORYChapter 1. Private and Public Filters: Memories of War in Heinrich Böll’s Fiction and NonfictionJ.H. ReidPART II: THE RESISTANCE MEMORYThe Female ResisterChapter 2. Ordinary Heroines: Resistance and Romance in the War Fiction of Elsa TrioletDiana HolmesChapter 3. ‘This Book Does Not Want to Be a Work of Art. This Book Is Truth.’ The Diaries of Ruth Andreas-FriedrichIrmela von der LüheChapter 4. A Woman’s Perspective: Autobiography and History in Giovanna Zangrandi’s Resistance NarrativesPenny MorrisThe Male ResisterChapter 5. Vercors – Writing the Unspeakable: From Le Silence de la mer (1942) to La Puissance du jour (1951)William KiddChapter 6. ‘A History Full of Holes’? France and the French Resistance in the Work of Stephan HermlinDennis TateChapter 7. War, Civil War and the Problem of Violence in Calvino and PaveseSarah MorganChapter 8. Imagining Losers in Bufalino’s Diceria dell’untorePeter HainsworthPART III: THE FASCIST'S MEMORYChapter 9. Memory and Chronicle: Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the D’un château l’autre TrilogyNicholas HewittChapter 10. Portrait of the Poet as a Dead Man. Ernst Jünger’s Writing in the Second World War: StrahlungenJustus FetscherChapter 11. Changing Identities Through Memory: Malaparte’s Self-figurations in KaputtCharles BurdettPART IV: THE VICTIM'S MEMORYChapter 12. Reviewing Memory: Wiesel, Testimony and Self-readingColin DavisChapter 13. Primo Levi. The Duty of MemoryRobert GordonChapter 14. La Douleur: Duras, Amnesia and DesireEmma WilsonChapter 15. Myth, Memory, Testimony, Jewishness in Grete Weil’s Meine Schwester AntigoneMoray McGowanPART V: THE MEDIA OF MEMORY: MAY 1968 AND CINEMA Chapter 16. L’Armée des ombres and Le Chagrin et la pitié: Reconfigurations of Law, Legalities and the State in Post-1968 FranceMargaret Atack Chapter 17. Alexander Kluge: Germany – An Experience of Words and ImagesKlaus R. ScherpeChapter 18. Fascism and Anti-fascism Reviewed: Generations, History and Film in Italy after 1968David ForgacsPART VI: WOMEN'S WRITING AND THE QUEST FOR THE FATHERChapter 19. Remembering the Collaborating Father in Marie Chaix’s Les Lauriers du lac de Constance and Evelyne Le Garrec’s La Rive allemande de ma mémoireClaire GorraraChapter 20. Seeing the Father: Memory and Identity Construction in Elisabeth Plessen’s Mitteilung an den AdelAnne MossChapter 21. Intimations of Patriarchy: Memories of Wartime Japan in Dacia Maraini’s BagheriaJudith BrycePART VII: A CHILD'S MEMORYChapter 22. A Child in Time: Patrick Modiano and the Memory of the OccupationAlan MorrisChapter 23. Childhood Memory and Moral Responsibility: Christa Wolf’s KindheitsmusterChris WeedonChapter 24. Strategies for Remembering: Auschwitz, Mother and Writing in Edith BruckAdalgisa GiorgioPART VII: AFTER THE COLD WAR: EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORYChapter 25. Trauma and AbsenceOmer BartovChapter 26. Nonrational Discourse in a Work of Reason: Peter Weiss’s Anti-fascist Novel Die Ästhetik des WiderstandsRobert CohenChapter 27. Fifty Years On: German Children of the War RememberJost HermandChapter 28. Memories of Resistance, Resistances of MemoryLuisa PasseriniNotes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex

"There is no question that this is a timely volume ... [that] provide[s] a basis for a genuinely interdisciplinary, transnational comparative discussion ... [and] could represent an important point of reference for all discussions of how to conceptualize historical memory."  ·  Robert Moeller, University of California, Irvine"... a well focused collection of articles, all of which are of a good scholarly standard and some of which are strikingly original or illuminating."  ·  Michael Kelly, University of Southampton