Defying and defining the darkness: Translating French memories of the Holocaust

Munyard, Stephanie Faye 2020. Defying and defining the darkness: Translating French memories of the Holocaust. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This project contributes to a growing body of scholarly work that reads the Holocaust in translation. It illustrates how Francophone writers bridge the gap between their experience of the Holocaust and its representation using "substitute vocabularies". "Substitute vocabularies" is a term employed in this thesis to describe some of the narrative techniques - multilingualism, poetry and song, the visual and literary idioms - used by Holocaust writers to communicate life-changing experiences of loss, absence and grief, and other related phenomena. The project brings together the analysis of Holocaust manuscripts, published narratives, graphic novels and films, as cultural products that translate Holocaust experiences for their authors. It explores how the various agents involved in the transmission of the Holocaust (translators, victims' family members, editors and illustrators) interact with such "substitute vocabularies", and the knowledge that these vocabularies communicate, across different modalities and in different languages (French, English and German). This thesis explores how translation is transformative for Holocaust representation in three case study chapters, allowing "the source text to live beyond itself, to exceed its own limitations" (Brodzki 2007, p.2). This thesis, therefore, stages translation as a critical tool that can enable new forms of knowledge about the Holocaust to come to light in a future soon to be without living witnesses.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Modern Languages
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DC France P Language and Literature > PC Romance languages P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
Funders:	Cardiff University School of Modern Languages
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	20 July 2020
Last Modified:	05 Oct 2022 09:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/133555

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