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SOURCE: Kritzman, Lawrence D. “Ernaux's Testimony of Shame.” Esprit Créateur 39, no. 4 (winter 1999): 139-49.
In the following essay, Kritzman evaluates Ernaux's treatment of shame in La honte, noting how effectively the author portrays the emotion and its fragmenting effect on self-identity.
Annie Ernaux's La honte (1997) is a semi-autobiographical work in which the author explores how a traumatic memory is stored and frozen in the mind.1 Her reflection is built on the assumption that memory can never be truly authenticated since traumatic experience precludes direct access to testimony. “Il n'y a pas de vraie mémoire de soi” (37). Consequently her attempt to remember things past, the adolescent youth of the summer of 1952 as “little Annie D,” constitutes a quest for understanding unimpeded by the imposition of an artificial reality. “Naturellement pas de récit, qui produirait une réalité au lieu de la chercher” (38). Based on the premise that...
This section contains 4,964 words (approx. 17 pages at 300 words per page) |
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