New Holocaust Literature: Third-Generation Identity, Memory, and the Reader in Hanna Rajs' Under Månen (2020)

Abstract: This thesis explores the functions of memory, collective identity, and communication of those same categories to the reader by means of the poetic form in Hanna Rajs’ poetry collection Under månen (2020). Situated or framed within a discussion on Holocaust Literature, Rajs’ poetry is considered in the light of a general historical purview of Holocaust writing, and her specific place within an authorial Jewish third-generation tradition in diaspora, specifically in Sweden and in Europe. This thesis dissects the means of temporal and transcultural travel found in Under månen. Through poetry Rajs takes part in and enacts cultural memory, simultaneously allowing for a polyphony of voices (a "we" and a plural "you") to be heard, through mediation, at once enacting communicative memory. This kind of interplay also evokes questions of addresses and readers’ positions present in relation to memory acts pertaining to the Holocaust at this seminal point in time for memorialization. Whether or not the reader “finds” themselves in Rajs’ lyrical subject – they are always, necessarily, negotiating their position amid topics of commemoration, antisemitism, Jewish tradition, and what is to come due to the spoken, social-media infused, language evoked and lyrical form.