Mellan dröm och verklighet : Skildringar av tid, trauma och sexualitet i Antanas Škėmas novellistiska prosa

Sammanfattning: The subject of this dissertation is the representation of temporality, trauma and sexuality in Antanas Škėma’s fiction. The chapter “Temporal structures” examines temporal order in the writer’s novella “Isaac” according to Genettes narratology. The analysis reveals deliberately inserted mechanisms in the construction of the text, which disrupt the narrative investigation. A survey of temporal structures exposes invented events in the text and the definitions of “factual reality” and “imaginary reality” are introduced. The narrative analysis results in a hypothesis that Škėma’s text has been constructed as an imitation of human memory and as a representation of the factual reality outside the text. The chapters “Representation of trauma” and “Representation of sexual perversion” use Freud’s trauma theory and sexual theory as a method. Trauma appears to constitute the construction of the narrator and his urge to distort temporal links between the narrative and the story. When the narrator in Škėma’s “Isaac” focuses on the depiction of sexually perverted consciousness, the text affects the reader by forcing him to break off his horizons of expectation. The depiction of rape in Škėma’s fiction links the themes of sexuality and power and of sexuality and trauma. The writer detaches the representation of sexuality from the definition of love: sexuality, portrayed in the analyzed texts, appears to create its own norms. This is one of many ways to transform the depiction of sexual perversion into a social norm in Škėma’s narrative. The chapter “Škėma’s Autobiography and literary critics” provides a re-reading of the writer’s autobiography and his journalistic texts. The chapter ”Publication and reception of Škėma’s fiction” provides a compiled reading of earlier research and a survey of the writer’s books published in exile.