Editor’s Introduction

From the studies of Freud to the works of Primo Levi, the study of literature and trauma rests upon a number of interlocking theoretical formulations, principal works, and ethical dispositions that have now become the foundational set of initiation points for much of the work and study that has followed. Out of these theoretical, literary, medical, and philosophical reactions the study of literature and trauma up to the present moment has branched out and finessed and enlarged its field of study, intensified its theoretical focus, and deepened the philosophical and ethical positions underpinning the investigation of human suffering. The major catastrophes, political horrors, and increased technologies of human destruction that reached their apparent crescendo in the mid to later twentieth century in European and Western modernity have demanded this response. We are now at a point in which this necessary moment is redoubling its intensity; not only is literature and trauma study increasing its range and depth of subject matter, but it is simultaneously looking inward into the convictions, bases, and major texts of its primary foundational and theoretical development. This edition of the Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies marks this turn to self-reexamination and increased theoretical expansion and intensity. The articles presented here range from major reinterpretations of the seminal works of trauma and literature study to considerations of the demands of class on the major categories of trauma analysis, the role of figurative and poetic language in trauma testimony and theory, and the interlocking of hermeneutics, trauma theory, and theology. These articles mark both a return to primary ethical concerns and a renewed theoretical energy.