Measures of obliviousness and disarming obliqueness in Anna Burns’ <i>Milkman</i>

In this essay, I explore the techniques by which Burns uses and explodes myth of unspeakable through deployment a picaresque mode that enables an ethical trauma narrative. demonstrate how Burns’ work refutes ‘event-based’ reading discuss narrative Milkman enacts difficulty finding vocabulary with to make traumatic experience intelligible. suggest novel refusal suspicious insisting on authority its narrator her capacity name harm, instantiates belief as primary ground reader reception. This is linked possibility re-thinking in public sphere articulating specificity gender-based violence. Modifying received wisdom field studies associated Judith Herman, Cathy Caruth, others, expand Clare Hutton’s sensitive language significance voice, per Peter Boxall’s work, illuminate connection between Rita Felski other feminist theorists discussion aesthetic or ‘literary’ quality within telling trauma.