Trauma, Gender and Ethics in the Works of E.L. Doctorow

by María Ferrández San Miguel

Overview

This project approaches four of E. L. Doctorow’s novels—Welcome to Hard Times (1960), The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1975), and City of God (2000)—from the perspectives of feminist criticism and trauma theory. The study springs from the assumption that Doctorow’s literary project is eminently ethical and has an underlying social and political scope. This crops up through the novels’ overriding concern with injustice and their engagement with the representation of human suffering in a variety of forms. The book puts forward the claim that E.L. Doctorow’s literary project—through its representation of psychological trauma and its attitude towards gender—may be understood as a call to action against both each individual’s indifference and the wider social and political structures and ideologies that justify and/or facilitate the injustices and oppression to which those who are situated at the margins of contemporary US society are subjected.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367236274
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/31/2020
Series:	Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

María Ferrández San Miguel is a lecturer at the Department of English and German Studies (University of Zaragoza). Her work has been published in journals such as Atlantis, The Nordic Journal of English Studies and Orbis Litterarum, and in volumes such as Memory Frictions: Conflict, Negotiation, Politics (Palgrave MacMillan).

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Welcome to Hard Times; the Frontier Reconsidered

Shame, Guilt, Violence and Trauma

In Search for a New Gender Order

Discussion and Conclusion

Chapter 2. The Book of Daniel; a Memoir Gone Awry

The Trauma of a Grievous Past

Gender Oppression and/as Power

Discussion and Conclusion

Chapter 3. Ragtime; Remembering the Future

Trauma and Resilience

The Politics of Gender

Discussion and Conclusion

Chapter 4. City of God; with Eyes Past All Grief

Fictionalizing the Holocaust

Voicing Gender

Discussion and Conclusion

Chapter 5. Discussion; the Ethics and Politics of Literature

Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"On the whole, Trauma, Gender and Ethics in the Works of E.L. Doctorow is a remarkable and exceedingly well-researched study that reads E.L. Doctorow’s literature through an innovative and intricate lens. Apart from the exquisite writing style, one of the book’s greatest virtues lies in its theoretical exuberance, which constitutes an essential tool to navigate the analysis and understating of the novels discussed. It is a brilliant study offering compelling and insightful material that should prove to be of great interest to lovers of literature and specialists in the fields of feminist and trauma studies."

Eva Pelayo Sañudo, Universidad de Cantabria, Nexus

As its title suggests, this book is more ideological study than literary explication. Ferrández San Miguel (Univ. of Zaragoza, Spain) looks at particular texts by Doctorow—Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, and City of God—and uses them to study trauma theory and feminist theory in Doctorow's work. (She explains in detail why she selected these particular titles.) The author casts Doctorow as a postmodernist—for example, Welcome to Hard Times is “post-Western"; Ragtime shows that social and economic structures “perpetuate the victimization of the underprivileged and the disenfranchised.” Doctorow's narrative is marked by some genre hopping and manipulation—for example, in The Book of Daniel Daniel speaks to the reader at the scene of the electrocution. The author has stated that fiction can be fact, and in so being becomes its own truth. This study illustrates how trauma helps the reader understand the eventual purpose of a narrative. The volume includes chapter endnotes and extensive bibliographies and is free of pretentious prose. Summing Up: Recommended.

—A. Hirsh, emeritus, Central Connecticut State University

From the Publisher