THE USE AND IMPLICATIONS OF MEMORY IN SELECTED NOVELS By EUDORA WELTY

Abstract

Man is sometimes described as the only animal that has history and I add that man is the only animal that can make use of this history through Memory. All through human history, memory has been the preoccupation of historians, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, physicists, physicians and literary writers and critics. To all these and regardless of their various interests, concerns, associations and definitions of memory, memory, generally, seems to refer to two areas. Memory refers first to the faculty that recalls the past and second to the faculty that interprets and makes use of this past by applying the values gained from it to the present and sometimes to the future.

In literature, memory is of greater importance. Firstly, all the diversity of the notion of memory as an interest of a wide circle of specialists is reflected in it. Secondly, as an issue that conveys a deep conception of time, memory has often been investigated by writers in their literary works. Particularly in times of great historical changes, literary works often contemplate past and future and resort to memory for the right attitude to both. Because of the time issues inherent in memory, writers have often tackled man's predicament with time's transience through memory not only when it is presented as an issue but also as a technique particularly in fiction. Because fiction is based on a very complicated time illusion, the use of memory makes it a subject of much literary discussion and contemplation. Fiction is based on the time illusion that annihilates the real present and makes us live in a past that never happened. Thus, when memory is used as a technique when writers choose to unfold their stories in retrospect, either intermittently or exclusively, the time illusion becomes more complicated. Furthermore, when retrospective patterns are used, they also often dictate other narrative and stylistic devices and thus memory as a technique has always been of great significance for readers as well as for critics and writers.

For all the above mentioned reasons, many great writers have devoted much of their literary writings to exploring the use and importance of memory in both literature and life. One of those writers is Eudora Welty, the subject of this thesis.

The choice of Eudora Welty [1909 : 2001] is not only because she is a fervent believer in memory as a basis of both life and literature as she has often declared, but also because her use of memory can yield to the study of the traditional, modern and some quite recent ( .. approaches to memory. This fact has encouraged a hoped for comprehensive study of as many as available of the variet;ies and diversities of the meanings and uses of memory in Eudora Welty's fiction in this thesis.