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In the context of a general discussion on whether it is advisable to ap-
ply modern terms and concepts from psychology to premodern contexts,
it has been contested in particular whether trauma as a modern concept
can be sensitively applied to premodern sources. As Donna Trembinski
shows, a consensus on this issue is still lacking as most scholars working
on this topic take either a strong pro or contra stance.69 While proponents
of reading trauma in premodern sources argue that it is possible to identify
transhistorically comparable psychological and mental reactions to trau-
matising experiences, their opponents insist that the nature of trauma as
a modern, Western-European concept is not a suitable analytical category
for premodern sources.70 As regards the use of the term trauma in this
article, I follow Wendy Turner and Christina Lee, who claim that even
though there was no comparatively uniform understanding of trauma in
premodern societies as there is in our contemporary world, traumatic ex-
periences themselves must have existed;71 and Donna Trembinski,72 who
suggests that trauma can be a useful category of analysis if we acknowl-
edge that its potential meanings and depictions of it are dependent on its
historical and cultural context.73 Trauma as an analytical tool thus goes
beyond the medical and diagnostic aspects of the term, historically con-
tingent on modern understandings of medicine, to encompass the broader
socio-cultural aspects of individual and collective traumatic experiences.74
Beispiel Paul Celans,” the German Quarterly 92 (3) (2019): 329. Along with the unsettling
details of the traumatic experience – for example, of an accident or being held hostage –
another difficult aspect for many traumatised people is being confronted with the question
of, why they specifically survived the event (Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: trauma,
narrative, and History (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 7, 60, and
65). The growing awareness of what could have gone wrong and how close they were to
death’s door is often the most traumatising feature.
69 Trembinski, “Melancholy” and idem, “Trauma as a Category of Analysis?” trauma in
Medieval society, ed. by Wendy J. Turner and Christina Lee, Explorations in Medieval
Culture 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 13–32.
70 Trembinski, “Melancholy,” 80–81.
71 Wendy J. Turner. and Christina Lee, “Conceptualizing Trauma for the Middle Ages,”
trauma in Medieval society, ed. by Wendy J. Turner and Christina Lee, Explorations in
Medieval Culture 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 8.
72 Trembinski, “Trauma,” esp. 14, 21, and 26.
73 See Trembinski’s discussion of the premodern concepts of melancholia and mania that
feature some similarities to the modern notion of trauma (“Melancholy,” 87–93).
74 On the difference between (individual) psychological trauma and (collective) cultural
trauma, see Neil J. Smelser, “Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma,” Cultural trauma
THE SILENCED TRAUMA IN THE Í sLEnDInGAsÖGUR