Scholarly record

MEMORY NARRATIVES IN CONTEMPORARY LATVIAN AND NORTH AMERICAN LIFE-WRITING

Sandra Meskova, J. Semeneca, E. Badina

Abstract

The paper investigates memory narratives in contemporary Latvian and North American life-writing with the focus on Latvian writer Anita Liepa's autobiographical fiction and Canadian writer Alice Munro's short stories. The theoretical framework of the paper is related to the fast developing memory culture after the end of the Cold War in Europe and Latvia as well as globally, and sketches out the theoretical framework of memory writing referring to the studies of Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, Paul Ricoeur, Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Vieda Skultans, Ene Kõresaar, M?rti?š Kapr?ns, Baiba Bela-Kr?mi?a, James V. Wertsch, Astrid Erll who represent history, philosophy, cultural anthropology, sociology, literary studies. The broad interdisciplinary field provides rich opportunities for dealing with the complex issues of memory and identity. The specific focus of the paper is on the spatial and temporal aspects of memory representation in A. Liepa's memory novel "Kume?a gadi” (Colt Years) (1993) and A. Munro's “Lives of Girls and Women” (1971) that reveal the familial and communal contexts of memories: parents’ house, native town/village, school, community. The paper also investigates the temporal framing of childhood and adolescence in both author's works.

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