Memory and Mastery: Primo Levi as Writer and Witness

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Roberta S. Kremer
SUNY Press, Apr 12, 2001 - Literary Criticism - 249 pages
This book carefully examines the work of Primo Levi, one of the premier survivor-writers of the Holocaust and one of the outstanding Italian writers of the twentieth century. Artists, writers, and educators have all turned to Levi s writing as a source of inspiration and wisdom in coping with the tragedy of the Holocaust. Until recently, however, there have been few book-length works in English on Levi. This collection of essays from an international group of writers aims to bring greater critical attention to Levi s work by exploring all aspects of his oeuvre, including his science-fiction writings and his poetry, as well as his fictional and nonfictional writings about the Holocaust. Interdisciplinary in nature, this collection includes literary, psychoanalytic, linguistic, and historical approaches to Levi s work.
 

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Contents

The Haunted Journey of Primo Levi
3
Primo Levi and His Concept of Time Time of the Gun Time of the Spirit
21
The Rhetoric of the Univers Concentrationnaire
35
Levi and Science
57
Primo Levis Science as Evil Nurse The Lesson of Inversion
59
Moral Snares and Parables Between Science Fiction and Midrash
75
Levis Poetry
89
At an Uncertain Hour The Other Side of Primo Levi
91
On Language and Personhood A Linguistic Odyssey Patricia Sayre and Linnea Vacca
115
Levis Legacy
131
Bridging the Narrative and Visual Primo Levi as a Source of Inspiration for Contemporary Artists Stephen C Feinstein
133
The Duty and Risk of Testimony Primo Levi as Keeper of Memory Franca Molino Signorini
173
Legacy in Gray Lawrence L Langer
197
Bibliography of Selected Works by and About Primo Levi
217
Contributors
235
Index
239

Levi and Language
103
On Language and Violence Brian Cliff
105

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About the author (2001)

Roberta S. Kremer is Executive Director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

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