„Ucieleśnienie” traumy w powieści historycznej Hägring 38 Kjella Westö

Abstrakt

Applying close-reading the transdisciplinary article investigates the way in which trauma experienced by women during the Finnish civil war (1918) is presented in Kjell Westö’s novel Mirage 38. Focusing on the female body and working with the term “body memory”, it discusses symbolical literary representations of traumatic memories, which cannot be described verbally and are often hided from the other members of the community, as well as their destructive impact on the psyche and social relations of the traumatised person – in this case the main character of the novel Milja Matilda Wiik. The human body is perceived here as a place of embodiment of suppressed memories. Consequently, the body can be also seen as a medium of memory.