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.”

中文翻译：

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对韧性文学的理论研究

最近的科学证据表明，尽管疾病范式的影响无处不在，但对创伤的健康反应是常态。复原力是我们 DNA 的一部分，因为它是我们在进化时期能够在不利条件下生存和茁壮成长的原因。因此，极端逆境中生存的主题贯穿了无数文学文本也就不足为奇了。然而，关于复原力的讨论往往被创伤的文学理论所回避。鉴于小说融合不同学科概念的出色能力，谈论弹性的虚构叙事并不牵强。本文以 EL Doctorow 的 Ragtime (1975) 作为案例研究，以检验从弹性的角度讨论文学文本可能有利可图的假设。为了做到这一点，它借鉴了最近的心理弹性理论和升华的心理分析概念，为拉格泰姆的创伤反应替代方法的性质提供了一些答案。它的主要目的是探索作为一种文化概念的弹性如何在文学文本的主题和形式层面上表现出来。最终目标是论证可能被称为“弹性叙事”的存在。