Dimensions of memory objects and spaces in novels by Grass, Perec, Modiano and Walser
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Date
31/07/2021Item status
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31/07/2023Author
Leworthy, Paul
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Abstract
Arguing that embodied human experience of the physical world has shaped
thought and language used in relation to memory, this thesis asserts the importance
of not only the metaphors of the storehouse and the writing-surface in Western thinking
about memory but also the spatial forms from which they derive their meaning, the
container and the surface. An original reading strategy is developed centring on the
identification of surface and container motivic chronotopes of memory with a view to
more comprehensively accounting for the textual significance of objects and spaces
in literary texts concerned with the negotiation of past and present than has hitherto
been possible. This reading strategy is used to analyse novels by Günter Grass (Die
Blechtrommel), Georges Perec (La Vie mode d’emploi), Patrick Modiano (Dora
Bruder) and Martin Walser (Ein springender Brunnen). In each instance, original
insights are revealed not only in relation to how ideas about memory are articulated
by objects and spaces in the text but also concerning which specific ideas about
memory are present and how the work relates to its respective context.
In the first part of the thesis, I survey and supplement scholarly work exploring
how objects and spaces feature in memory practice and theory. After reviewing work
on their potential to mediate information about the past, I assess the role objects and
spaces have played in metaphorizations of memory processes. Exploring the cultural
genealogy of the important memory metaphors of the storehouse and the writingsurface,
I show that the images articulate distinct conceptions of memory. Proposing
that our embodied experience of the physical world has shaped the way we think and
talk about memory, I ascribe the enduring significance of the storehouse and the
writing-surface images to the spatial forms with which they are associated, the
container and the surface. I argue that different spatial dimensions are associated with
different conceptions of memory and construe the relationship between the present
and the past in different ways: while three-dimensional forms typically claim inertia,
preservation and continuity, two-dimensional spaces connote the present’s connection
to the past in terms of exertion, production and discontinuity. Identifying a common
source of the storehouse and writing-surface metaphors, a pervasive root metaphor
of memory (the record and repository metaphor) within which the two sub-metaphors
operate, I demonstrate that these two ways of thinking about memory are in fact
different ways of construing and framing the same putative procedure. As well as
explaining how and why it is foreseeable that the two conceptions of memory will coexist
in differing proportions rather than exist binarily, exploring the root metaphor also
exposes how their respective spatialities are fundamental to the two metaphors.
On the basis of these insights, I propose and theorise the surface and container
motivic chronotopes of memory which form the core of an original reading strategy
that makes it possible to better understand the significance of objects and spaces in
literary texts in which the connection between present and past is a key theme.
Crucially, I show that, even when they are not functionally involved in memory-work,
intradiegetic objects and spaces are meaningful in relation to memory on account of
their spatial dimensions, as they expose a tendency and preference to conceive
memory in particular terms. In the second part of the thesis, I deploy this reading
strategy in discussions of novels by Grass, Perec, Modiano and Walser. My analyses
reveal not only how the surface and container chronotopes of memory are established
through a great multitude and variety of objects and spaces in the texts, but also how
their meanings mutate according to context.
Reading for chronotopes of memory allows me to more fully understand the
underlying postulates about memory in each novel, including claims made about what
is possible and what is desirable in terms of the role of the past in the present. Although
in very different ways, each of the primary texts is marked by – and writes in response
to – the legacy of National Socialism, engaging a key concern of European literature
in the second half of the twentieth century. While the predominance of either spatial
imaginary of memory does not automatically indicate the text’s adoption of an ethical
or unethical position, it does – when considered in the specific context of its production
– serve as a means to identify the politicised positions assumed and articulated in it
as well as a basis to make specific situated ethical evaluations about it.
In the case of Die Blechtrommel, I reveal how objects and spaces can be read
to articulate – through their physical dimensions – an insistence on a more active form
of engagement with Germany’s National Socialist past in the post-war period. I show
that spatial dimensions are likewise integral to a reflection on the usefulness of the
past for present life in La Vie mode d’emploi, which I suggest as a response to the
modernisation of Paris in the decades following WWII. Although I highlight the
importance of container spaces in both Dora Bruder and in Ein springender Brunnen,
I argue that in the former they are linked to the pursuit of an ethically legitimate form
of remembrance in accordance with prevailing moral paradigms, while in the latter
they form the basis of an attempt to resist demands in contemporary memory culture
to remember the National Socialist period in a particular way. Facilitating a more
adequate account of the contribution of intradiegetic objects and spaces in relation to
individual and cultural memory in literary texts than would have otherwise been
possible, my reading strategy enables me to more precisely situate the novels within
the historical moments and memory cultures from which they emerged and to which
they contribute.