Memory and representation of World War II in contemporary British and German fiction: a comparative analysis
This thesis constitutes the first detailed attempt to compare British and German contemporary prose fiction in relation to the representation and transmission of collective memories of the Second World War. The primary aim of this comparison is to establish the existence of a transnational literary approach adopted by authors to address questions of how to remember the events that occurred during the Second World War in the absence of living memory. I will argue that prose fiction contributes to the interdisciplinary field of what could be loosely called 'memory studies' and that the similarities between British and German fictional responses to the Second World War indicate that there is a development towards a subgenre of memory fiction that transcends national boundaries.
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