LT 382 - Responses to the Holocaust in Literature

The aim of the course is to acquaint students with literary responses to the Holocaust in the hope that the aesthetic power inherent in the texts is strong enough to enable readers to face the shocking and depressing subject matter. The works are selected from American, Austrian, Italian, Israeli, British and Hungarian literature to emphasize the international relevance of the topic and to provide a basis for finding similarities and differences. We will discuss questions of identity and cognitive dissonance, the delicate balance between remembering and forgetting, as well as problems of gender, and the differences between documentation and literary representation.