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“ Sleeping Beauty ” in Chelmno : Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose or Breaking the Spell of Silence

2011; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/edl.221

2296-5084

Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère, Géraldine Viret,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

This article analyses Jane Yolen's Briar Rose from the perspective of trauma studies as a novelistic transposition of " Sleeping Beauty " in the context of the Holocaust. It argues that the fairy tale fulfils a key psychological and even existential role for the fictional survivor of the extermination camp, but also a pedagogical, moral and political one through the figure of the cowitness central to the economy of the novel. Through Becca's recovery of the biographical elements underlying her grandmother's retelling of the story, Yolen shows how the fairy tale can serve to communicate traumatic personal memories and transmit collective cultural knowledge to counter the disappearance of first-hand witnesses.