Skip Navigation

Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1993 7(3):402-420; doi:10.1093/hgs/7.3.402
© 1993 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Patterson, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Articles

The Word in Exile: A Phenomenology of Silence in the Holocaust Novel

David Patterson

Oklahoma University Stillwater, Oklahoma

This essay draws on some fifteen Holocaust novels to argue that the problem confronting the novelist is not the breakdown of a link between reality and imagination but the restoration of the relation between word and meaning. When that relation collapses, the word goes into exile, leaving a silence to which the novelist would impart an eloquence; only when silence may thus speak can meaning be returned to the word. In Its phenomenological approach, the essay examines silence as a subtext that reveals what transpires in the novel's creation and what is called for in the reader's response.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.