Ethics and aesthetics of World War II memory: The case of David Foenkinos, Charlotte Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Winner of the 2014 Renaudot prize, David Foenkinoss novel Charlotte recounts the tragic life and highly original work of the German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, arrested in the south of France and deported to her death at Auschwitz in the fall of 1943. As is often the case in twenty-first-century narratives, Foenkinos engages in a highly personal mode of narration that plunges back into the most momentous aspects of World War II and the Holocaust. Charlotte thus links the quandaries of the narrators own life and times to those of this protagonist in ways that lead us to face key questions of ethics and aesthetics. These concern not only the destiny of Charlotte Salomon, but also our own manner of approaching and remembering the most momentous events of the twentieth century through the medium of the literary text.

published proceedings

  • Journal of European Studies

author list (cited authors)

  • Bracher, N.

citation count

  • 1

complete list of authors

  • Bracher, Nathan

publication date

  • March 2018