W.G. Sebald: Narratives of Trauma, Trauma of Narrative
$265
In this seminar, you will acquaint yourselves with major writings of W. G. Sebald (1944-2001). Beginning with the author’s first novel, The Rings of Saturn (1998; Die Ringe des Saturn. Eine englische Wallfahrt, 1995), we will encounter themes that the author relentlessly followed throughout his oeuvre, such as, memory, trauma, displacement, and identity. The Rings of Saturn, a hybrid narrative of fiction, travel book, biography, and memoir, stands as a prime example of Sebald’s experimental narrative techniques.
We will continue to explore these themes and techniques in The Emigrants (1996; Die Ausgewanderten, 1992), focusing primarily on trauma and representation. In the aftermath of WW II, the author reenacts the catastrophic events of German Jewish history. In the four long stories of The Emigrants and his last novel, Austerlitz (2001), Sebald unfolds his concept of trauma through a myriad of themes and tropes, such as, intermingled identities of survivor and victim, speaker and listener; exile; individual and collective trauma; silence; forgetting and remembering, and Holocaust memory. One of the most acclaimed writers of twentieth-century German literature, Sebald’s works convey a profound mode of despair and melancholy, often projected onto images of urban decay. We will examine the representation of trauma not only thematically, but also through Sebald’s narrative techniques that render writing itself traumatic. Selected essays by Sigmund Freud will serve as reference, when needed. Although Freud does not present a fully-developed trauma theory, his fundamental concepts, including repression, resistance, forgetting, and the unconscious, inform the notion of trauma as an underlying cause of mental disorder.
Texts:
The Rings of Saturn, by W.G. Sebald,translated by Michael Hulse. Vintage, 2002.
The Emigrants, translated by Michael Hulse. New Directions, 1997. or: New Directions, 2016
Austerlitz, translated by Anthea Bell. Random House, 2002.
Distributed as PDFS:
by Sigmund Freud:
“Mourning and Melancholia” (1917; pdf).
“Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through” (1914; pdf).
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920; excerpts, pdf).
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Ülker Gökberk
Ülker Gökberk is Professor Emerita of German and Humanities at Reed College. She earned her Ph.D. in Germanics at the University of Washington (1986) and her M.A. and B.A. degrees in Philosophy at the University of Istanbul. She has been at Reed since 1986. Her forthcoming book is titled Excavating Memory: Bilge Karasu’s Istanbul and Walter Benjamin’s Berlin.
