Photography as Illustrative Material in Representation of Traumatic Experience in J. S. Foer’s Novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

Abstract

The paper aims to determine the role of documentary and pseudo-documentary photography in the process of representation of a terrorist attack indirect witness’s traumatic experience in J. S. Foer’s novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. The article analyzes illustrative means of trauma representation in the novel and considers the issue of integrating different forms of documentary materials into the literary text based on real events. The scientific originality of the research lies in the fact that Russian literary studies view the synthesis of documentary and artistic visual material in J. S. Foer’s novel as an example of metonymic representation of trauma for the first time. The results show that the illustrative material in the form of photography which J. S. Foer makes a part of the narration contributes to the creation of the effect of interaction between the art and the reality specific for the 9/11 traumatic narration.