scholarly journals Multimodal Stylistics in Graphic Novel: Understanding the Visual Language Syntax in Art Spiegelman’s Maus

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-51
Author(s):  
Baishalee Rajkhowa
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Verbal Language ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Words And Images

Maus (2003) by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel of unfolding his father, Vladek's, World War II ordeal and how he survived the holocaust. It is a gripping story of Spiegelman's own parents' experience in Poland during 1930s when Nazis invaded and persecuted the Jews. With a broken language, gaps in communication and visual strategy, Maus takes the readers across Europe unravelling the experiences of World War II and the Nazi Concentration camps. The characters are depicted as anthromorphic animals; the Nazis as cats, the Jews as mice and the Polish as pigs. It can be named as an autobiography or a memoir featuring a metareferential frame story with an author as narrator (Art) who tells his father (Vladek) that he wishes to write a comic book and so incited him to tell about " his life in Poland and the war" (Spiegelman, 2003). A graphic novel is written in a comic strip format which uses a combination of text and illustration in order to tell a story. The linguistic elements in a graphic narration are important as words and images cannot be analysed in similar terms. Multimodal stylistics represents this in the light of lexical and grammatical aspects of the verbal language. Maus (2003) represents a story of the holocaust and the traumatic experiences of Vladek.  It is a heteroglossic text with the presence of foreign languages and an authorial voice. The novel not only gives a different meaning but also an altogether different perspective to the verbal and visual significance.

scholarly journals Painful Neutrality: Screening the Extradition of the Balts from Sweden

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-92
Author(s):  
Lars Kristensen ◽  
Christo Burman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Baltic

Abstract The article deals with the extradition of Baltic soldiers from Sweden in 1946 as represented in Per Olov Enquist’s novel The Legionnaires: A Documentary Novel (Legionärerna. En roman om baltutlämningen, 1968) and Johan Bergenstråhle’s film A Baltic Tragedy (Baltutlämningen. En film om ett politiskt beslut Sverige 1945, Sweden, 1970). The theoretical framework is taken from trauma studies and its equivalent within film studies, where trauma is seen as a repeated occurrence of a past event. In this regard, literature and moving images become the means of reaching the traumatic event, a way to relive it. What separates the extradition of the Baltic soldiers from other traumas, such as the Holocaust, is that it functions as a guilt complex related to the failure to prevent the tragedy, which is connected to Sweden’s position of neutrality during World War II and the appeasement of all the warring nations. It is argued that this is a collective trauma created by Enquist’s novel, which blew it into national proportions. However, Bergenstråhle’s film changes the focus of the trauma by downplaying the bad conscience of the Swedes. In this way, the film aims to create new witnesses to the extradition affair. The analysis looks at the reception of both the novel and film in order to explain the two different approaches to the historical event, as well as the two different time periods in which they were produced. The authors argue that the two years that separate the appearance of the novel and the film explain the swing undergone by the political mood of the late 1960s towards a deflated revolution of the early 1970s, when the film arrived on screens nationwide. However, in terms of creating witnesses to the traumatic event, the book and film manage to stir public opinion to the extent that the trauma changes from being slowly effacing to being collectively ‘experienced’ through remembrance. The paradox is that, while the novel still functions as a vivid reminder of the painful aftermath caused by Swedish neutrality during World War II, the film is almost completely forgotten today. The film’s mode of attacking the viewers with an I-witness account, the juxtaposition and misconduct led to a rejection of the narrative by Swedish audiences.

scholarly journals WAR TRAUMA IN THE CONTEMPORARY SERBIAN NOVEL: THE HOUSE OF REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVIONBY FILIP DAVID, THE DELUSION OF ST. SEBASTIANBY VLADIMIR TABAŠEVIĆ, THE DOG AND THE DOUBLE BASSBY SAŠA ILIĆ

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 278-300
Author(s):  
Miloš Živković ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Psychiatric Treatment ◽  
Double Bass ◽  
War Trauma ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post Traumatic

The paper discusses the literary shaping of war traumas in the novels “The House of Remembrance and Oblivion” by Filip David, “The Delusion of St. Sebastian” by Vladimir Tabašević and “The Dog and the Double Bass” by Saša Ilić. The manner in which the Holocaust influences the life of Albert Weiss and the lives of other characters, decades after World War II, and the mystical contemplation of the meaning of evil stand out as the most important themes of David’s novel. The interpretation of “The Delusion of St. Sebastian” proceeds via the protagonist Karl and his attitude to the language he learned during the war. The war induces dissociative identity disorder, the protagonist’s adoption and subsequent overcoming of the victim’s position. The analysis of Ilić’s work focuses on the protagonist of the novel “The Dog and the Double Bass”, Filip Isaković, and his post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as psychiatric and anti-psychiatric treatment methods.

scholarly journals “It felt better to stay quiet”

Barnboken ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateusz Świetlicki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Role Model ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Ways Of Coping ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Coping With Trauma

This article analyzes Kathy Kacer’s Masters of Silence (2019), a novel about Marcel Marceau – the renowned mime artist who during the war cooperated with the French Resistance – and two fictional Jewish siblings struggling with the trauma of losing their parents, anti-Semitism, and the suppression of identity in a Catholic convent in southern France. The author examines the narrative techniques used by Kacer, including the combination of fiction with history and some elements of the biography of Marceau, and demonstrates that she not only shares the next-generation memory of World War II with her young readers but also depicts nonverbal ways of coping with trauma as potentially effective and empowering. Whereas Kacer’s indifference to historical dates may be connected to her determination to portray Marceau as an adolescent role model, the novel is a successful narrative about trauma and the Holocaust history, and the depiction of Marceau’s acts of resistance does not overshadow the young protagonists who do not just quiver and follow the instructions of the adults but mainly try to gain agency. 

scholarly journals Rethinking the Traumatic Memory of the Holocaust in Literature (Based on Monika Schneiderman’s Work “Fałszerze pieprzu. Historia rodzinna”)

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (45) ◽  
pp. 170-180
Author(s):  
Uliana Yevchuk
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

The article analyzes the attempt to reconstruct the historical memory of the Holocaust in the novel by Polish writer Monika Schneiderman “Fałszerze pieprzu. Historia rodzinna”. The writer questions the issue of Polish-Jewish relations, the responsibility and guilt of Holocaust witnesses to its victims. The author, who has a complex identity, seeks to find out for herself why her Polish family did not show enough sympathy for the suffering of Jews during World War II, including her Jewish relatives. As such indifference on the part of Poles to Holocaust victims was quite common, Monica Schneiderman tries to explain this by examining the relations between societies who lived side by side for centuries in the pre-war period, concluding that the two neighbouring nations lived in separate communities that were not open to each other. Based on the reproduction of the history of her own family, the author seeks answers to difficult questions of universal human values – perception and understanding of others, empathy, compassion. In her works Monica Schneiderman shows the need to include these recently “closed” but extremely important topics in the public discourse.

scholarly journals Dwa sanatoria / dwa uniwersytety

Schulz/Forum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Józef Olejniczak
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Great War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The University ◽  
The Great War

The starting point of the paper is Jacques Derrida’a reflection on the university today presented in his lecture on the „Unconditional University.” Then the author analyzes some passages from Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain to demonstrate that the novel has been based on the picture of the university during the anti-positivist reaction. In Mann’s novel, the Sanatorium is an allegory of the University, while the protagonist, Hans Castorp, is a student seeking Mentors and the Truth. Schulz’s story, “Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass,” has been interpreted as inspired by The Magic Mountain, since arguably it includes some traces of the „sanatorium – university” parallel. The paper refers also to Paweł Huelle’s novel Castorp, which tells a story of Mann’s character during a period of his studies in Gdańsk, anticipating the events described in The Magic Mountain. All the three texts – by Mann, Schulz, and Huelle – are connected by the debates characteristic of the humanities before the Great War (Mann, Huelle) and before World War II and the Holocaust (Schulz).

Painted Memories

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
mayer kirshenblatt ◽  
barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Daily Diet ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Yom Kippur ◽  
Root Vegetables

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers in words and paintings the daily diet of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust. Born in 1916 in Opatóów (Apt in Yiddish), a small Polish city, this self-taught artist describes and paints how women bought chickens from the peasants and brought them to the shoykhet (ritual slaughterer), where they plucked the feathers; the custom of shlogn kapores (transferring one's sins to a chicken) before Yom Kippur; and the role of herring and root vegetables in the diet, especially during the winter. Mayer describes how his family planted and harvested potatoes on leased land, stored them in a root cellar, and the variety of dishes prepared from this important staple, as well as how to make a kratsborsht or scratch borsht from the milt (semen sack) of a herring. In the course of a forty-year conversation with his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who also interviewed Mayer's mother, a picture emerges of the daily, weekly, seasonal, and holiday cuisine of Jews who lived in southeastern Poland before World War II.

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War, trans. Jessica Setbon. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2014. 496 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Armed Resistance ◽  
Second World ◽  
And Training

This chapter reviews the book The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War (2014), by Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, translated by Jessica Setbon. The Story of an Underground is about the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) who founded an underground movement during the Holocaust. The armed underground developed a plan to escape to the forests and join the partisans. The ghetto was liquidated in the summer of 1944. Many of the remaining Jews were sent to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps. The book highlights the dilemmas of Jewish armed resistance such as difficulties in obtaining weapons and training, some of the failures of the resistance, and some of the positive aspects of those who thought differently from members of the armed resistance.

Fragments of the Holocaust

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duindam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
A Site

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.

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