Girl interrupted: Representing Anne Frank through visual and verbal modalities

Περίληψη

The Diary of Anne Frank can be considered as a  powerful matrix, which has been generating an ad infinitum polysemy and a variety of adaptations, new readings, interpretations, and revisions since it first appeared in Amsterdam in 1947. lts study shares some of the basic concerns of the Holocaust literature such as the impossibil­ ity of representing the inexplicable, but also the catalytic challenge of rendering into literature the human experience regarding the trauma and the horror of the Holocaust. This chapter is focused on a specific picturebook created by an acclaimed British duo, the writer Josephine Poole and the illustrator Angela Barrett. Anne Frank (2005) is a powerful synergy of verbal and visual narrative aimed at the narration of Anne 's short life, from her birth to her apprehension, the discovery of her diary on the floor of the secret annex and its subsequent publication by the only survivor of the Frank family, the father. The book is a realistic and yet imaginative re-creation of Anne's life and, at the same time, a multimodal (verbal and visual) narrative about the legacy of Anne and her diary's everlasting  memory. For the analysis two conceptual /theoretical tools are applied: the philosophical concept of the parergon (frame/framing) after Kant and Der­rida, and the female development plot which is associated with an established generic tradition in literature from 19th century to the present.