Language of Trauma: War and Technology in Hoffmann, Freud, and Kafka

In The Language of Trauma, John Zilcosky explores how E.T.A. Hoffmann, Sigmund Freud, and Franz Kafka responded to the emergence of modern trauma in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He argues that these writers found the language of trauma by allowing their writing to mimic the experience itself, rather than attempting to name it conclusively. This linguistic skepticism emerged alongside the medical inability to name trauma, placing it at the heart of both medicine's diagnostic predicament and modern literature's most daring experiments.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 192 pages
\n Publication date: 14 June 2021
\n Publisher: University of Toronto Press
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From the Napoleonic Wars to the invention of the railway, to the shell shock of World War I, writers sought to give voice to the suffering wrought by war and industrial technology. However, they repeatedly encountered the limitations of language in describing such anguish. Those who experienced trauma, those who attempted to heal it, and those who represented it all struggled to find the appropriate words. In his book, The Language of Trauma, John Zilcosky explores the responses of three major central European writers – E.T.A. Hoffmann, Sigmund Freud, and Franz Kafka – to the emergence of modern trauma in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Zilcosky argues that these writers found the language of trauma by not attempting to name it conclusively but rather allowing their writing to mimic the experience itself. Just as the symptoms of trauma did not correspond to a physical cause, the writers' words did not directly connect to the objects of the world. While doctors sought to overcome this indeterminacy, these writers embraced and investigated it, seeking a language that described the tragic limits of language and exemplified the wider literary and philosophical crisis of their time.

Zilcosky boldly asserts that this linguistic skepticism emerged alongside the medical inability to name the experience of trauma. By placing trauma at the heart of both medicine's diagnostic predicament and modern literature's daring experiments, Zilcosky offers a fresh perspective on the enduring impact of war and industrialization on human suffering.

\n Weight: 302g\n
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 16 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781487509422\n \n