Alison Ribeiro de Menezes

Irony, the Grotesque, and the Dialectics of Reading in Luis Martín-Santos's Tiempo de silencio

Abstract This article considers Martín-Santoss novel, Tiempo de silencio, from the point of view of the role that it casts for the reader and suggests that, although usually seen as a highly innovative text, it is actually quite traditional. In Libertad, temporalidad y transferencia, Martín-Santos compares the process of psychoanalytic cure to literary narrative, suggesting that the patient must develop a sense of ironic distance from lifes events through the creation of an indeterminate space in which dispassionate interpretation is possible. Similarly, the reader of Tiempo de silencio must become detached from a text that is not just ironic but also grotesque. The novel functions rather like Isers reception theory, forcing the reader to re-evaluate situations that are at first merely ironic but then evoke a troubling emotional and visceral reaction. It is this second move, however, that creates problems for the authors intended aim of liberating his reader from oppressive official discourse. The creation of ambiguities through the use of ironic discourse is undermined as grotesquery makes the weight of Martín-Santoss moral and ethical position clear, and thus undermines the existentialist aim of reciprocal respect for the others, and hence ones own, freedom.

Family memories, postmemory, and the rupture of tradition in Josefina Aldecoa’s Civil War trilogy

AbstractThis article explores issues of memory, postmemory, and trauma in the domain of the family via close textual analysis of Josefina Aldecoa’s Civil War trilogy, Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro, and La fuerza del destino. These novels draw an allegorical parallel between the family and the nation in order to chart the intergenerational transmission of trauma and its overcoming. They thus reveal the importance of Aldecoa’s contribution not only to Spain’s contemporary memory debates, but also to the broader concerns of theories of cultural memory, postmemory, and the coding of historical experience as trauma.Este articulo analiza los temas de memoria, postmemoria y trauma en el contexto de la familia, con una exposicion detallada de la trilogia de novelas de la guerra civil, Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro, y La fuerza del destino, de Josefina Aldecoa. Estas obras crean un paralelo entre la familia y la nacion para demostrar la transmision intergeneracional de trauma y su superacio...Abstract This article explores issues of memory, postmemory, and trauma in the domain of the family via close textual analysis of Josefina Aldecoa’s Civil War trilogy, Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro, and La fuerza del destino. These novels draw an allegorical parallel between the family and the nation in order to chart the intergenerational transmission of trauma and its overcoming. They thus reveal the importance of Aldecoa’s contribution not only to Spain’s contemporary memory debates, but also to the broader concerns of theories of cultural memory, postmemory, and the coding of historical experience as trauma. Este artículo analiza los temas de memoria, postmemoria y trauma en el contexto de la familia, con una exposición detallada de la trilogía de novelas de la guerra civil, Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro, y La fuerza del destino, de Josefina Aldecoa. Estas obras crean un paralelo entre la familia y la nación para demostrar la transmisión intergeneracional de trauma y su superación. De este modo revelan la importancia de la contribución de Aldecoa no sólo a los debates contemporáneos en España sobre la memoria histórica sino también a las teorías de la memoria cultural, la postmemoria y la codificación de la experiencia histórica como trauma.

From recuperating Spanish historical memory to a semantic dissection of cultural memory : la malamemoriaby Isaac Rosa

This article examines the representation of the Spanish Civil War and treatment of the theme of memory in La malamemoria (1999), the first work by young novelist Isaac Rosa (b. 1974). It argues for a shift away from the prevailing critical focus on ‘recuperación de la memoria histórica’, as it is termed in Spanish, and towards an examination of the shifting landscape of cultural memory in Spain since the transition to democracy. In this regard, the article stresses the importance of Rosas examination of the discourse of Spanish war memory, and in particular his dissection of the semantic reference of certain key concepts, including olvido, desmemoria, and the war as a collective locura. Rosas work is briefly compared to the better known novel, Soldados de Salamina, by Javier Cercas, and its intertextual evocation of the work of Luis Martín-Santos and Juan Goytisolo is highlighted.This article examines the representation of the Spanish Civil War and treatment of the theme of memory in La malamemoria (1999), the first work by young novelist Isaac Rosa (b. 1974). It argues for a shift away from the prevailing critical focus on ‘recuperacion de la memoria historica’, as it is termed in Spanish, and towards an examination of the shifting landscape of cultural memory in Spain since the transition to democracy. In this regard, the article stresses the importance of Rosas examination of the discourse of Spanish war memory, and in particular his dissection of the semantic reference of certain key concepts, including olvido, desmemoria, and the war as a collective locura. Rosas work is briefly compared to the better known novel, Soldados de Salamina, by Javier Cercas, and its intertextual evocation of the work of Luis Martin-Santos and Juan Goytisolo is highlighted.

Language, Meaning and Rebellion in Juan Goytisolo's Don Julia´n : The Gongorine Intertexts

The most exalted literary figure in Goytisolo’s seminal novel, Reivindicación del Conde don Julián, is the Golden-Age poet Luis de Góngora, whose reputation has undergone considerable reassessment in the past century. Góngora serves as guide and muse to the protagonistnarrator of Don Julián as he imagines himself exacting terrible revenge against the Francoist Spain from which he has banished himself. This solitary wanderer around the streets of Tangiers recites comfortingly recognizable lines from the Polifemo and Soledades as he fantasizes about a compelling, yet self-confessedly ineffectual, Oedipal destruction of his ‘madre patria’. Waking with the image in his mind’s eye of a Spain threateningly close across the Straits of Gibraltar, the protagonist turns to find escape in the soothing presence beside his bed of ‘el libro del altivo, gerifalte Poeta que despreciando la mentida nube, a luz más cierta sube’.1 Góngora’s poetry, obscure, difficult, and constructed from a web of complex allusions, exemplifies in Goytisolo’s eyes—and those of his protagonist/alter ego in Don Julián—a use of language which, apparently pivoting between literal and figurative uses, draws attention to the signifier as much as to the signified, and can thus be taken as precedent for the linguistic rebellion of Don Julián. Talking of Góngora in Disidencias Goytisolo notes that ‘los tropos e imágenes del poeta reafirman la existencia de una expresión lingüística perceptible en sí misma y no como

Legacies of war and dictatorship in contemporary Portugal and Spain

This multi-authored volume offers the first extensive exploration of cultural memory in Portugal and Spain, two countries that are normally studied in isolation from one another due to linguistic divergences. The book contains an important theoretical survey of cultural memory today and a comparative analysis of the historical background influencing studies of memory in the Iberian Peninsula. It includes the work of eleven specialists on contemporary Spanish and Portuguese history, culture and literature and establishes a series of parallel themes that lace the chapters together: resistance; literary and popular representations of the figure of the dictator; gender; intergenerational links and changing paradigms of war stories; and the performance of memory. The essays gathered here will be of interest to scholars of both national cultures as well as those concerned with issues of memory, trauma and the historical legacy of war and dictatorship.

Memory and Collective Defeat in Alberto Méndez's Los girasoles ciegos

This article examines the themes of memory and collective defeat in Alberto Mendezs Los girasoles ciegos (2004), arguing that Mendezs four narratives have two potential affiliations: first, the generational, by which he can be related to the so-called mid-century generation of writers; second, the aesthetic, via his use of imaginative investment and speculative narrative recreation, which is consonant with postmemorial approaches. Nevertheless, Mendezs handling of the theme of collective defeat accords with neither of these affiliations, echoing instead recent historical research which stresses the sheer material difficulties of life in postwar Spain and the hardships imposed by the Regime on its own less-well-off supporters, as well as on former Republicans. Mendezs work thus highlights the importance of an attention to the dynamics of remembrance and the shifting nature of Spains memory horizons over the past century.This article examines the themes of memory and collective defeat in Alberto Méndezs Los girasoles ciegos (2004), arguing that Méndezs four narratives have two potential affiliations: first, the generational, by which he can be related to the so-called mid-century generation of writers; second, the aesthetic, via his use of imaginative investment and speculative narrative recreation, which is consonant with postmemorial approaches. Nevertheless, Méndezs handling of the theme of collective defeat accords with neither of these affiliations, echoing instead recent historical research which stresses the sheer material difficulties of life in postwar Spain and the hardships imposed by the Regime on its own less-well-off supporters, as well as on former Republicans. Méndezs work thus highlights the importance of an attention to the dynamics of remembrance and the shifting nature of Spains memory horizons over the past century.

Juan Goytisolo's Cuaderno de Sarajevo: The Dilemmas of a Committed War Journalist

In those summer days, on that little piece of earth between the Drina and the dry frontier, in the town, in the villages, on the roads and in the forests, everywhere men sought death, their own or others’, and at the same time fled from it and defended themselves from it by all the means in their power. That strange human game which is called war became more and more intense and submitted to its authority living creatures and material things. (Andrić 1994, pp. 305–306)