Creative Writing: Canvas, a Novel. Critical Commentary: An Exploration of the Representation of Trauma Memory in relation to Kristeva’s Theory of Abjection in Anne Enright’s The Gathering, Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Sara Baume’s A Line Made by Walking, and my own novel, Canvas

This thesis is comprised of two parts: a creative project in the form of a novel, Canvas, and a critical commentary titled, ‘An Exploration of the Representation of Trauma Memory in relation to Kristeva’s Theory of Abjection in Anne Enright’s The Gathering, Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Sara Baume’s A Line Made by Walking, and my own novel, Canvas.’

My novel, which forms the first part of this thesis, depicts a first-person narrator and her attempt to bring into language the traumatic experiences of her childhood. This is a trauma novel and a love story that explores the ways in which the present can make the past traumatic. My interest lay in this process, how it comes about, and how to represent that creatively.

My critical commentary examines the intersection of trauma theory and Kristeva’s theory of abjection. In the first chapter, I describe and identify the critical framework through which I examine the representation of trauma memory as abject. In the second chapter, I look at Enright’s The Gathering, examining the representation of trauma memory through engagement with the language of the body. The third chapter explores the use of language to represent trauma memory in McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, with reference to the modernist, stream-of-consciousness style of the novel. The fourth chapter looks at Baume’s A Line Made by Walking and examines the use of art to represent trauma and the fragmented self. The final chapter is a self-reflective commentary where I apply the same critical framework to my own novel, Canvas, to describe the ways in which I engage with the concept of trauma memory as a narrative device, and how the representation of trauma in my novel seeks to model, structurally, the process which it describes.