Fictional Representations of Hitler
American writers have taken Hitler as a fictional character more often than European writers did and their work has received more scholarly attention. Scholars like Gavriel Rosenfeld and Michael Butter roughly conclude to two opposing trends in American Hitler fiction, a humanizing and demonizing on...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/td, |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
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Teksty Drugie
2024
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| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | American writers have taken Hitler as a fictional character more often than European writers did and their work has received more scholarly attention. Scholars like Gavriel Rosenfeld and Michael Butter roughly conclude to two opposing trends in American Hitler fiction, a humanizing and demonizing one. This article discusses recent non-American novels, focusing on five of them, two in German (Hans Keilson and Timur Vermes), one in Dutch (Harry Mulisch), one from Great-Britain (A. N. Wilson) and one from Israel (Lavie Tidhar). These five novels show striking similarities in their preference for a frame story and for elements of counterfactual history. More importantly, only one, the Dutch novella, fits the demonizing trend that is so prominent in American Hitler fiction. Contrary to what historian Gavriel Rosenfeld claims, however, the over-all humanizing approach does not have a trivializing effect. By picturing Hitler as a human being and not as a demon, either in a metaphysical or in a metaphorical sense, the distance a reader may feel to this literary character, will be bridged to some degree. His humanness could have a more alarming effect than the comfortable idea of his absolute otherness, by implicitly asking questions about the reader’s empathy and the essence of being human. |
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