This thesis examines the relationship between memory and trauma, specifically autobiographical memory and trauma, through the analysis of two novels: W, or the memory of childhood (W ou le souvenir d'enfance, 1975) and The Man Who Saw Everything (2019). It highlights certain key ideas in trauma theory and major findings about the role played by memory in society in general, as well as in literature, to connect the unique aspects of autobiographical memory with the unique aspects of writing about such (traumatic) memories, which is, in itself, an ethical act. The way we experience ourselves, history and collective memory, of which we are always a part of, is linked with different types of narratives: our life narrative, the stories of our families' pasts, a certain historical trauma which shaped our lives. Since texts which center around life narratives and traumatic memory best illustrate the way in which that precise memory reshapes our inner world, such texts have the potential to open up new paths of exploring memory at a crossroads between the collective and the personal.
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