Literature as Work of Memory: Disputes over Conflictive Pasts in Two Works of Fiction

Abstract

This paper focuses on the close linkage between literature and collective memory, based on the claim that literary texts restitute the historicity of a time and may raise reflections on processes of configuration of social memories and oblivion. To develop this argument, it discusses two novels: Der vorleser (1995), by Bernhard Schlink, a work that reflects the complex disputes over the definition of public memory in postwar Germany; and La carroza de Bolívar (2012), by Evelio Rosero, which evinces the tension between hegemonic national memories and local dissident memories in Colombia in the 19th and 20th centuries, manifested in the various significations of Simon Bolivar as a liberator.