This panel includes four papers that collectively propose new approaches to the study and interpretation of memory within literary texts. All too frequently treatments of memory can be categorized into one of two polarizing positions. Firstly, there are approaches that simply do not raise the question of memory and, consequently, memory is seen as infallible. More recently, however, and particularly in the subfield of literary trauma theory, memory has been understood as highly fragile as evidenced by texts that appear broken, full of narrative gaps, and which frequently use ellipses to emphasize absence within the text. As popular as this second approach has been, it unfortunately produces severe limitations on the capacity for textual interpretation as well as the ability to learn from the past. As a result of these limitations, it is clear that a new approach to the study of memory-work in literature is required. The four papers selected to form the panel ‘Memory-Work in Literature’ respond to the short-comings of both of these positions by attempting to think memory differently as it appears and functions within a variety of intersecting bodies of literature.

Dr. Jorgelina Corbatta’s “Memory and Truth in Fiction and Psychoanalysis” explores the nexus of memory, truth, and fiction as it appears in the written relationship between a practicing psychoanalyst, Robert Ackeret, and one of his patients, Serge Doubrovsky, who also happens to be a writer. Dr. Corbatta’s work opens the panel in questioning the relation between text and memory, but also of the influence of psychoanalysis on approaches to memory in literary studies more broadly. By putting the accounts of both the analyst as well as the patient into dialogue, Dr. Corbatta’s work also serves to undermine the presumed authority of clinical accounts of memory, which in the context of the doctor-patient relationship can be understood to represent the pole of objectivity.

Luke Wilson’s “Longing for Lives They Never Lived: Toward a Definition of Postnostalgia in Jérémie Dres’ Nous N’Irons Pas Voir Auschwitz” continues the line of questioning raised by the first paper in attempting to locate and then to articulate what he calls ‘postnostalgia’ in Jérémie Dres’ novel. More precisely, Wilson seeks to answer why third-generation writers of the Holocaust experience a feeling of nostalgia for a pre-Shoah life that they have never experienced. Wilson’s work extends the insights provided by Marianne Hirsch’s work on ‘postmemory’ but attempts to account for the idealization and imagination that takes place in the children of survivors of the traumatic past.

Vanessa Evans’ “Requiem for the Trilobites: ‘Simultaneousity’ as Resurgence in Eden Robinson’s Son of a Trickster” similarly tackles traditional linear conceptions of time in her exploration of the decolonizing capacity of Indigenous literatures. Evans’ project comes at a timely moment in its interpretation of Canadian Indigenous literature in that by rethinking the temporality of memory within a text, Evans’ work also challenges Euro-centric worldviews. Consequently, Evans’ project also responds to Canada’s ongoing process of reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples and demonstrates a concrete application of literary theory to address contemporary socio-political issues.

Josh Dawson’s “Storytelling and Traumatic Narratives” takes up threads from the three preceding papers to consider how storytelling practices in testimonial texts responding to both the Holocaust and Canada’s Residential Schools (IRS) provide a means of counteracting traumatic experiences. Dawson’s paper looks to emphasize understudied features of canonical texts responding to the Holocaust, as well as to introduce research on selections from IRS memoirs that have only recently been published. As a result, Dawson’s research addresses blind spots in the history of literary trauma theory as it arises out of psychoanalysis, but also links the literatures of the Holocaust and the IRS through their shared approach to storytelling.

Each of the four papers will be allotted 15 minutes with which to present, leaving the remaining time for discussion and responding to questions. In approaching questions of memory in literature using several different methodological approaches and by drawing upon three distinct bodies of literature, this panel will be highly comparative and interdisciplinary in nature. Ultimately, this interdisciplinarity will provide the grounds for this panel to address a variety of representations of memory within literary texts and to develop a deeper understanding of the purpose and function of such representations that departs from the polarizing positions outlined above.