HISTORICAL MEMORY AND LITERATURE

Abstract

This article examines the complex and multifaceted relationship between historical memory and literature, positing that literature functions not merely as a reflection of the past but as a primary and dynamic medium through which historical memory is constructed, contested, transmitted, and transformed. Moving beyond a simplistic view of literary texts as historical documents, the analysis explores how narrative structures, genres, symbolic language, and fictional invention actively shape collective understanding of bygone eras. Literature serves as both an archive of cultural memory and a laboratory for its reinterpretation, capable of giving voice to forgotten or suppressed histories, challenging dominant narratives, and exploring the traumas and silences that official history often omits. The article argues that through its aesthetic and imaginative power, literature provides unique access to the emotional, psychological, and subjective dimensions of history, forging a link between the factual record and lived human experience. By analyzing key theoretical frameworks from memory studies and examining illustrative examples from various literary traditions, this work demonstrates how literary texts act as sites of memory (lieux de mémoire), where the past is perpetually revisited and renegotiated in the light of present concerns and future aspirations. Ultimately, the article contends that the study of historical memory is incomplete without a serious engagement with literature, as it is through stories, poems, and plays that societies continually narrate themselves into being, grappling with the meaning of their history and the contours of their identity.