Memory and trauma in the postwar Spanish novel
Subtitle: revisiting the past
By: edited by Sarah Leggott and Ross Woods
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 174
ISBN-13: 9781611485301; 9781611487152
Subjects: Spanish fiction; Psychic trauma in literature; History and criticism; Memory in literature
Description: "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 chapters in this book 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 chapters 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 early 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 chapters continue to 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 traumatic pasts. The chapters in this volume thus propose a new direction for the study of Spanish literature of the 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"--Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-166) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction / -- Sarah Leggott -- and -- Ross Woods -- I: Revisiting the past : memory and history.; title: The ghosts of the past : revisiting La familia de Pascual Duarte  -- Ross Woods ;; title: Remembering the canon : La familia de Pascual Duarte and Nada revisited  -- Anne Walsh ;; title: War, history, and memory in Arturo Barea's La forja de un rebelde  -- Alison Ribeiro de Menezes ;; title: Memory and history in Ana María Matute's Los soldados lloran de noche  -- Francis Lough -- II: Reading the wounded generation : plurastic trauma.; title: Opening and closing history's wounds : Mercedes Salisachs's Los que se quedan  -- Christine Arkinstall ;; title: Representing individual and collective trauma : Dolores Medio's Nosotros, los Rivero  -- Sarah Leggott ;; title: Ignacio Aldecoa's El fulgor y la sangre : the politics of memory under Franco  -- Julia van Lusk -- III: Narrating traumatic experience : uncovered trauma.; title: "The unsuspected truth" : silence and trauma in Carmen Laforet's Nada  -- Federico Bonaddio ;; title: The trauma of coming of age in Rosa Chacel's Memorias de Leticia Valle and Ana María Matute's Primera memoria  -- Daniela Omlor ;; title: The cathartic exercise of memory in María Zambrano's Delirio y destino -- Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez.