From Literary Trauma Theory to Turkish Trauma Literature

The literary trauma theory, which facilitates the transmission of traumatic psychology through the philosophy of language, enables the analysis of the emotional, psychological and sociological connections between the literary text and its author. Utilizing linguistic data and engaging in sequential and syntactic readings, the literary trauma theory helps examine the reflection of psychological traumas in the text and explore narratives of the post-traumatic period. Grounded in the common ground of psychology and literature, this theory has been established by various theorists ranging from Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) to Geoffrey H. Hartman (1929-2016), Dori Laub (1937-2018), Dominick LaCapra (1939-), Judith Lewis Herman (1942-), Kirby Farrell (1942-), BesselA. Van der Kolk (1943), Cathy Caruth (1955-), Michelle Balaev (1974-) and others. Thus, the genre that can be called Trauma Literature, which emerges as a result, reveals the literary trauma theory based on symptomatic readings. Narratives of post-traumatic psychology provide data for identifying the psychobiographies of authors and poets. Thus, within the scope of trauma literature, contributions of traumatic artists to the genre of psychobiography can also be interpreted through literary works. In this study, the previously unexplored history of literary trauma theory, its conceptual and lexicological domain and its impact on Trauma Literature will be emphasized, along with the factors it alters in literary works.