Nós retornamos em canções: ficção, história e memória em romances do século XXI sobre a Segunda Guerra Mundial

Abstract

Since the 1990s the Second World War has been repeatedly taken as inspiration for fictional works that aim at portraying the historical past in their plots. This tendency follows several instances of reconsideration of the Second World War as a topic of both academic and political interest, such as the end of the Cold War, the Americanization of the Shoah and the boom of the so-called “memory studies”. Though particularly notable in English-speaking cultures, this resurgence of WWII in fiction can also be noticed in the cultural production of different countries, especially through cinema, but also, in TV, videogames and literature. This work departs from this realization and investigates the representation of the Second World War in 21st century novels by authors from the USA, the UK, Germany, Spain and Brazil, centering the analysis on two axes: memory and historical fiction. The thesis is supported by the critical and theoretical fortune of memory studies and studies on testimonial literature developed by Erll, Assmann, Seligmann-Silva and others; articulated around theories of the historical novel and historical fiction by De Groot, Lukács, Wesseling, Hutcheon and others. The gap between the two theoretical corpora is brdiged by the work of philosopher Paul Ricoeur. The analysis departs from a historical overview of the different moments of the Second World War novel in each of the countries analyzed, and reaches the of five recent novels: Peter Ho Davies’s "The Welsh Girl"; José Maria Blanco Corredoira’s "Añoranza de Guerra"; Anthony Doerr’s "All the Light We Cannot See"; Marianne Nishihata’s "Amor entre Guerras"; and Ralf Rothmann’s "Im Frühling sterben". Based on the analyses, it is argued that the recent historical novels about the Second World War engender a historiographical perspective that privileges the authority of the discourse of memory under the guise of the testimony, even though the novels themselves are not examples of testimonial literature. This diagnosis suggests the continued impact the memory theories developed throughout historiographical debates since de 1980s have over recent literary and cultural production.