For Life: A Study Of Poetic Remembrance Of The Holocaust In Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl

The Shawl is a highly significant and influential novella by Cynthia Ozick,a prominent female Jewish American writer in the 20^th century.Ozick has written directly or indirectly about the Holocaust during World War II.A considerable number of studies on Ozick have yielded insightful results,though,they are primarily conducted abroad,and studies on this author are few and far between in China.Ozick’s commentators and critics employ a range of critical approaches such as feminism,formalism,cultural studies,and identity studies.With a synthesis of insights from New Historicism,the literary views of Cynthia Ozick herself,and the historiography of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,this thesis intends to yield a newer interpretation by answering two questions Ozick has raised in the novella:one is the relationship between imaginative literature and history,particularly between poetry and memory;the other concerns Jewish victims of Holocaust and their struggle to survive with the traumatic memories.Comparatively analyzing the protagonist Rosa’s life experiences before,during and after the Holocaust,this thesis argues that imaginative literature is just as powerful a means to represent history;poetry,which involves the use of robust metaphors,is just as effective a way of remembering.Furthermore,the thesis relies on Nietzsche’s insight that memory,to affirm“life,”is to be understood and explored between remembering and forgetting.Thus this thesis,with Cynthia Ozick’s work as the example,attempts to refute the view that the Holocaust cannot be“narrated”or should not be represented through imaginative literature.On the contrary,it is with imaginative literature that redemption in the face of historical catastrophes such as the Holocaust becomes possible.