Towards a Theoretical Approach to the Literature of Resilience

Abstract

Recent scientific evidence suggests that, despite the pervasive influence of the disease paradigm, healthy reactions to trauma are the norm. Resilience is part of our DNA, since it accounts for our success to survive and thrive in adverse conditions during evolutionary times. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the theme of survival in extreme adversity has run through countless literary texts. Yet, discussions of resilience have tended to be shunned from the literary theorization of trauma. Given fiction's outstanding capacity to incorporate notions from diverse disciplines, it is not far‐fetched to talk about fictional narratives of resilience. This article takes up E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) as a case study to test the hypothesis that literary texts may be profitably discussed from the perspective of resilience. In order to do so, it draws both on recent psychological theories of resilience and on the psychoanalytical concept of sublimation to provide some answers about the nature of Ragtime's alternative approach to trauma response. Its main aim is to explore how resilience as a cultural notion may manifest itself at both a thematic and a formal level in literary texts. The ultimate goal is to argue for the existence of what may be termed “resilience narratives.”