The post-memory of the Armenian genocide and the myth of origins in Antonia Arslan’s works

Abstract

This contribution aims to analyse the postmemory of the origins through the work of an Italian author of Armenian descent, Antonia Arslan, and stems from an ongoing research project about “Narrating the Trauma in European Literatures and Cultures” based at La Sapienza University of Rome. I will therefore focus on the link between this research project, which serves as a theoretical framework, and the specific case study concerning Antonia Arslan. The project originates from two concerns: the first one being the awareness of the loss of poets and writers’ long-lived faith in the creative power of the artistic gesture, a widespread belief before the two world wars, and the second one consisting in a reflection on a general change of the theoretic framework of literature, especially in the case of the narration of traumatic experiences such as wars, genocides, migrations and displacements of people, which have taken place in Europe during the 20th Century [Neohelicon, 2004(1), Migratio et litterae].