Cultural Trauma Of The Great War In Alfred And Emily

Although researches on Doris Lessing's literary works have been many and diverse, it is until recent years that literary trauma studies have been gathering momentous academic attention since researchers discovered that trauma theories serve as an efficient tool to unwrap the mysteries hidden between Lessing's lines. However,some research gaps still demand much research efforts. First, the theories that many trauma analysts adopted in their analysis are not updated in spite of the constant emergence of new trauma genres and trends such as colonial trauma and cultural trauma. Second, in terms of trauma studies, too much attention has been paid to analyze psychological trauma in Lessing's works and other aspects has been ignored.Third, criticism mainly focuses on Lessing's best-selling novels such as The Golden Notebook, the novel Alfred and Emily, Lessing's last imaginative piece, has been underevaluated and has seldom been examined from the perspective of cultural trauma.Under the guidance of cultural trauma theories put forward by U.S. theorists Kai Erikson and Jeffrey C. Alexander, the present study aims to explore the cultural trauma caused by the Great War and how it is reflected in the text of Alfred and Emily.And to achieve the research aim, three research questions are proposed as follows.(1) What impact has the Great War casted upon Britain and its people?(2) How did war trauma become cultural trauma?(3) How does Lessing represent this cultural trauma in Alfred and Emily?Bearing these questions in mind, the present study finds out that the Great War,the “war that would end all war” inflicted everlasting effects upon Britain. Before the war, Britain brimmed with high expectations for it; however, the war hardly fulfilled any of them. On the contrary, it reduced the British population and economy.Spiritually, it smashed up the idyllic dream of the Edwardian age and annihilated its traditional British war ideology.The novel also depicts the war-induced trauma of the main characters Alfred and Emily, who serve as both witnesses and victims of the Great War. Later through the means of discourses and representations, the war trauma was converted into cultural trauma, which would leave indelible scars on the minds of the British people..In Alfred and Emily, Lessing gives free rein to her literary talents to integrate trauma into the text. She mainly makes full use of writing techniques like conflating collective memory and family remembrance, representing cultural trauma within dual narratives and employing photographs and encyclopedic information, to highlight the theme of the novel: the Great War as cultural trauma will remain in the collective memory of Britain.