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In recent years, much Spanish literary criticism has been characterized by debates about collective and historical memory, stemming from a national obsession with the past that has seen an explosion of novels and films about the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship. This growth of so-called memory studies in literary scholarship has focused on the representation of memory and trauma in contemporary narratives dealing with the Civil War and ensuing dictatorship. In contrast, the novel of the postwar period has received relatively little critical attention of late, despite the fact that memory and trauma also feature, in different ways and to varying degrees, in many works written during the Franco years. The essays in this study argue that such novels merit a fresh critical approach, and that contemporary scholarship relating to the representation of memory and trauma in literature can enhance our understanding of the postwar Spanish novel. The volume opens with essays that engage with aspects of contemporary theoretical approaches to memory in order to reveal the ways in which these are pertinent to Spanish novels written in the first postwar decades, with studies on novels by Camilo José Cela, Carmen Laforet, Arturo Barea and Ana María Matute. Its second section focuses on the representation of trauma in specific postwar novels, drawing on elements from trauma studies scholarship to discuss neglected works by Mercedes Salisachs, Dolores Medio and Ignacio Aldecoa. The final essays continue the focus on the theme of trauma and revisit works by women writers, namely Carmen Laforet, Rosa Chacel, Ana María Matute and María Zambrano, that foreground the experiences of female protagonists who are seeking to deal with a traumatic past. The essays in this volume thus propose a new direction for the study of Spanish literature of 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, enhancing existing approaches to the postwar Spanish novel through an engagement with contemporary scholarship on memory and trauma in literature.
This book proposes a new direction for the study of Spanish literature of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, arguing that novels of this period merit a fresh critical approach that enriches existing perspectives on the Spanish novel during the first two decades of the Franco dictatorship. Essays take an interdisciplinary approach to reveal how contemporary cultural theory relating to memory and trauma can enhance our understanding of the postwar Spanish novel.
Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women analyzes five novels by women writers that present women’s experiences during and after the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship, highlighting the struggles of female protagonists of different ages to confront an unresolved individual and collective past. It discusses the different narrative models and strategies used in these works and the ways in which they engage with their political and historical context, particularly in the light of campaigns for the so-called recovery of historical memory in Spain (the “memory boom”) and in the broader context of memory and trauma studies. The novels that are examined in this book are Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002), Rosa Regàs’s Luna lunera (1999), Josefina Aldecoa’s La fuerza del destino (1997), Carme Riera’s La mitad del alma (2005), and Almudena Grandes’s El corazón helado (2007). These works all highlight the multiple nature of memories and histories and demonstrate the complex ways in which the past impacts on the present. This book also considers the extent to which the memories represented in these five novels are inflected by gender and informed by the gender politics of twentieth-century and contemporary Spain.
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) pitted conservative forces including the army, the Church, the Falange (fascist party), landowners, and industrial capitalists against the Republic, installed in 1931 and supported by intellectuals, the petite bourgeoisie, many campesinos (farm laborers), and the urban proletariat. Provoking heated passions on both sides, the Civil War soon became an international phenomenon that inspired a number of literary works reflecting the impact of the war on foreign and national writers. While the literature of the period has been the subject of scholarship, women's literary production has not been studied as a body of work in the same way that literature by men has been, and its unique features have not been examined. Addressing this lacuna in literary studies, this volume provides fresh perspectives on well-known women writers, as well as less studied ones, whose works take the Spanish Civil War as a theme. The authors represented in this collection reflect a wide range of political positions. Writers such as Maria Zambrano, Mercè Rodoreda, and Josefina Aldecoa were clearly aligned with the Republic, whereas others, including Mercedes Salisachs and Liberata Masoliver, sympathized with the Nationalists. Most, however, are situated in a more ambiguous political space, although the ethics and character portraits that emerge in their works might suggest Republican sympathies. Taken together, the essays are an important contribution to scholarship on literature inspired by this pivotal point in Spanish history.
Studies various constructions of memory in contemporary Spanish literature, evoking different aspects of a past of repression, from both the civil war and the Franco regime. This book analyzes narrative texts published between the 1960s and 1990s that present memory and the recuperation of a traumatic past as their main theme.
Spanish comics represent an exciting and diverse field, yet one that is often overlooked outside of Spain. Spanish Comics offers an overview on contemporary scholarship on Spanish comics, focusing on a wide range of comics dating from the Francoist dictatorship, 1939-1975; the Political Transition, 1970-1985; and Democratic Spain since the early 1980s including the emergence of the graphic novel in 2000. Touching on themes of memory, gender, regional identities, and history, the chapters in this collection demonstrate the historical and cultural significance of Spanish comics.
This book offers a collection of reflective essays on current testimonial production by researchers and practitioners working in multifaceted fields such as art and film performance, public memorialization, scriptotherapy, and fictional and non-fictional testimony. The inter-disciplinary approach to the question of testimony offers a current account of testimony’s diversity in the twenty-first century as well as its relevance within the fields of art, storytelling, trauma, and activism. The range of topics engage with questions of genre and modes of representation, ethical and political concerns of testimony, and the flaws and limitations of testimonial production giving testament to some of the ethical concerns of our present age. Contributors are Alison Atkinson-Phillips, Olga Bezhanova, Melissa Burchard, Mateusz Chaberski, Candace Couse, Tracy Crowe Morey, Marwa Sayed Hanafy, Rachel Joy, Emma Kelly, Timothy Long, Elizabeth Matheson, Antonio Prado del Santo, Christine Ramsay, Cristina Santos and Adriana Spahr.
Narratives of contemporary Spanish writer Soledad Puértolas (1947-), inducted into the Real Academia Española in 2010, depict the psychological struggles of the individual in postmodern democratic European society. Puértolas’s realist style emphasizes storytelling and character portrayal, and her urban middle-class characters seek satisfying interactions with others and a sense of purpose. Memory aids characters in their quest for meaning and identity, and their use of memory reveals their self-perception and outlook on life. This book maps four ways in which Puértolas’s narratives use memory to approach the fundamental problem of the individual’s search for purpose and identity. Some characters are burdened by memory in certain texts, especially Días del Arenal (1992) and Burdeos (1986). Reflection upon a painful self-defining memory affects their present mood and behavior. For some, this burden causes them to withdraw or to act irresponsibly; others accept and overcome the scars of the past. A second type of character takes an escapist approach to memory, as seen in Queda la noche (1989).Their nostalgic retreat indicates a restless dissatisfaction with the present. In a third type of memory, a secondary character provides the organizing force behind a protagonist’s reminiscences, often an extroverted foil to highlight the protagonist’s introspective nature. Memory of the relationship motivates the protagonist to mentally order his or her own life through the life review process; Una vida inesperada (1997) and La señora Berg (1998) provide examples. Finally, in the amnesic mode, Puértolas departs from realism to experiment with different forms of amnesia, as in La rosa de plata (1999) and Si al atardecer llegara el mensajero (1995). Memory loss highlights the centrality of memory to personhood and identity, while at the same time it draws attention to the inadequacy of memory to explain the totality of existence.
This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines contemporary public history’s engagement with the Spanish Civil War. The chapters discuss the history and mission of the main institutional archives of the war, contemporary and forensic archaeology of the conflict, burial sites, the affordances of digital culture in the sphere of war memory, the teaching of the conflict in Spanish school curricula, and the place of war memory within human rights initiatives. Adopting a strongly comparative focus, the authors argue for greater public visibility and more nuanced discussion of the Civil War’s legacy, positing a virtual museum as one means to foster dialogue.