FANTASTIC ELEMENTS IN THE NARRATION OF PAST TRAUMA IN LISA WEEDA’S NOVEL ALEKSANDRA
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Date
2025
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Plovdiv University Press
Abstract
The article analyzes the narrative of past trauma in Lisa Weeda's novel Alexandra as a third-generation trauma narrative. The aim of the study is to assess the role of the fantastic elements in the narrative strategy of the author. Lisa, the protagonist and narrator, seeks to discover the history of her relatives, the Krasnov family, but the sources she needs are remote in time and separated in space. Therefore, the novel creates an imaginary chronotope, the Palace of the Lost Don Cossack, where Lisa meets the dead, and imaginary narrators, the deer, symbols of the Don Cossacks. In this way, the author fills in the gaps in the information concerning the experience of the traumatized generation and comprehends the impact of her ancestors’ experience on the present of her contemporaries. The fantastic elements contribute to the realization of the narrative as a dialog between generations and turn the neglected history of the Ostarbeiters into an emotionally accessible one. The knowledge that Lisa recovers from obscurity helps her understand the first phase of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 as a return to the arbitrariness of the Soviet dictatorship which has not been condemned for its crimes because it has silenced its victims.
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Keywords
third generation trauma narrative, Ostarbeiters, postmemory, fantastic elements in narration