Holocaust - A Literary Inspiration?

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Ruhr-University of Bochum (Englisches Seminar), course: Jewish American Literature, language: English, abstract: In the following paper I would like to examine to what extent the Holocaust is appropriate as a literary inspiration. I will cite Art Spiegelman's comic strips MAUS I and MAUS II (with focus on the latter) as examples since they are two of the most extraordinary works among Holocaust literature and art. In general I want to demonstrate that Adorno s thesis about the impossibility of writing about the Holocaust is not true. By giving the example of Spiegelman s MAUS it should be made clear that it is even possible to use the Holocaust as some kind of inspiration in a fairly unusual way.