Timely Representations: Writing the Past in the First-Person Present Imperfect Academic Article

abstract

• The present article draws from Henry Rousso's La Dernire Catastrophe (2012) and Ivan Jablonka's L'Histoire est une littrature contemporaine (2014) to analyze a series of novels published recently in France, dealing with the twentieth century's greatest tragedies, and to explain what they reveal about contemporary society and current developments in historiography. The "present imperfect" refers not only to the first-person narrative mode prevalent in these works, but also to the "imperfection" stemming from the fact that (a) this past is not yet entirely over or complete (thus "imperfect" in the etymological sense) and (b) the narrator thus becomes irremediably involved in this history.

authors

• Bracher, Nathan

published proceedings

• History and Memory

altmetric score

• 0.5

author list (cited authors)

• Bracher.

citation count

• 2

publication date

• March 2016

publisher

• Indiana University Press  Publisher

published in

• History and Memory: studies in representation of the past  Journal

keywords

• 43 History, Heritage And Archaeology
• 4302 Heritage, Archive And Museum Studies
• 4303 Historical Studies

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.2979/histmemo.28.1.3

start page

• 3

end page

• 3

volume

• 28

issue

• 1

URL

• http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.2979%2Fhistmemo.28.1.3