ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews a few insights from the history of trauma research and begins to speculate on the ways these insights might bolster or reshape the ways literary scholars address depictions of trauma in literature. It offers a few insights gleaned from this history – along with some suggestions as to how they might shape or reshape our reading of creative texts about trauma. The rise of cognitive theories of trauma coincided with the increasing availability of imaging technologies that actually allowed researchers to look at the ways trauma and traumatic memory affect the brain. One common characterization of trauma focuses on its emotional effects on those who suffer it. Van der Kolk’s somatic characterization of trauma and its effects is helpful in understanding Hanya Yanagihara’s wrenching 2015 novel A Little Life. Trauma theorists often justify their focus on anti-narrative, fragmented, modernist forms by pointing to similarities with the psychic experience of trauma.
