Literature as a Response to Cultural and Political Repression in Franco's Catalonia

237 Pages·2011·0.963 MB·English

by  Jordi Cornellà-Detrell

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during the 1950s and 1960s, several key Catalan a
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authors set about rewriting some of their narrative work l
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despite the obstacles to publication in Catalan under the re
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Franco regime. this study describes the social, political a
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and cultural conditions that impelled Salvador espriu, rs

Xavier Benguerel, Sebastià Juan Arbó and Joan Sales to ea
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revise Laia, El testament, Tino Costa and Incerta glòria, r
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concentrating particularly on the linguistic debates and ie
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literary trends from the 1950s to the early 1970s.
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drawing on a wide range of theoretical fre cultural and political repression
perspectives, this book examines the
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reasons for the rewriting, including no
censorship and self-censorship, c c
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generational and ideological changes u
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within the Catalan literary field, sl
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controversies over linguistic purism, the cu
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appearance of new literary trends and r
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gender and political issues. it focuses a
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on the (re)construction of a distinctive l
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national identity and the impact of
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Jordi Cornellà-detrell repression, memory, exile and silence id
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is a lecturer in Spanish in the on the representation of the war and the
School of Modern languages
post-war periods. this study explores
at Bangor University. not only how writers or society at large J in franco’s catalonia
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CoVer deSiGn: SiMon loXleY were affected by the dictatorship, but r
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how the armed conflict left its mark on i

the writing process itself. C
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an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620, USA Jordi Cornellà-Detrell
www.boydellandbrewer.com
Colección Támesis
SERIE A: MONOGRAFÍAS, 295
LITERATURE AS A RESPONSE TO
CULTURAL AND POLITICAL REPRESSION
IN FRANCO’S CATALONIA
Tamesis
Founding Editors
†J. E. Varey
†Alan Deyermond
General Editor
Stephen M. Hart
Series Editor of Fuentes para la historia del teatro en España
Charles Davis
Advisory Board
Rolena Adorno
John Beverley
Efraín Kristal
Jo Labanyi
Alison Sinclair
Isabel Torres
Julian Weiss
JORDI CORNELLÀ-DETRELL
LITERATURE AS A RESPONSE TO
CULTURAL AND POLITICAL REPRESSION
IN FRANCO’S CATALONIA
TAMESIS
© Jordi Cornellà-Detrell 2011
All Rights Reserved.Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
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transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Jordi Cornellà-Detrell to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2011 by Tamesis, Woodbridge
ISBN 978 1 85566 201 8
Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
1. Introduction: The Rewriting ofLaia,El testament,Tino Costaand 1
Incerta glòria
2. Language,LiteratureandtheWriterinFranco’sCatalonia 23
Generationalandideologicaldivisionsbetweenthepost-war 23
writers
Linguisticcontroversiesbetween1956andtheearly1960s: 35
the Catalan writers and their social duties
Themythofthespokenlanguage 50
3. DisembodyingtheNation:TheRewritingofLaiaby 62
Salvador Espriu
ThevanishedvoicesofLaia:sexuality,witchcraftanddeath 62
Thepost-wartext:voicesfromthelandandthesea 72
4. ReadingBetweentheLines:SilencesandDoubleLanguagein 88
Xavier Benguerel’sEl testament
TheendlessnightofXavierBenguerel:challengingthecritical 88
reception ofEl testament
Fromthe1955tothe1967text:empoweringthereader 105
5. ChronotopeandLanguageChangeinArbó’sTinoCosta 113
Realistversusmythicaldiscourseinthe1968version 113
Disempoweringthenarrativevoice:class,religionandsocial 122
change inTino Costa
6. TheUndercurrentsofHistory:Memory,LanguageandFictionin 130
Joan Sales’sIncerta glòria
Fromthe1956tothe1971version:genderedvoices,political 130
engangement and censorship
Cruellsfacingtheangelofhistory:spies,traumas,homicidal 154
somnambulism and conspiracy theories in ‘Últimes notícies’
Reverberatingvoices:directspeech,multilingualismand 177
expressive clichés in the 1969 text
7. Conclusion 193
Bibliography 199
Index 217
OnebeginningandoneendingforabookwasathingIdidnot
agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely
dissimilarandinter-relatedonlyintheprescienceoftheauthor,
or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.
Flann O-Brien,At Swim-Two-Birds(1939)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Frederic Barberà, Kathryn Crameri, Josep-Anton Fernàndez
and Louise Johnson for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this
book. My gratitude also goes to Francesc Feliu, Joan-Lluís Marfany, Phil
Payne, Xavier Pla, August Rafanell, Galin Tihanov and Fina Grabuleda-
Poch,whocommentedonportionsofthedraftmanuscript.Iamalsograteful
to the members of the Department of European Languages and Cultures
(Lancaster University), the School of Modern Languages (Bangor Univer-
sity),theDepartamentdeFilologiaiFilosofia(UniversitatdeGirona)andthe
Institut Ramon Llull. Particular thanks are due to Ian Smallwood and Jo
McVicker, who have read the whole manuscript, and, last but certainly not
least, Ernest Beattie. Finally, I am indebted to the writers this book deals
with, because without them it would not have been possible to carry out this
research and unashamedly attached my name to theirs.
Twoofthechaptershavebeenpreviouslypublishedinjournals:anearlier
versionofChapter4appearedas‘TheEndlessNightofXavierBenguerel:a
New Critical Approach to El testament’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 84
(2007),pp.223–238,anda slightlymodifiedversionofthesecondsectionof
Chapter6appearedas‘TheUndercurrentsofHistory:Spies,Traumas,Homi-
cidalSomnambulismandConspiracyTheoriesinJoanSales’Incertaglòria’,
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 15 (2009), pp. 107–124. I
thank the publishers for permission to reprint this material.
The manuscript on which this book is based was awarded the Premi
Fundació Mercè Rodoreda 2009 (I would like to thank the members of the
jury: Joaquim Molas, Joaquim Mallafrè and Joan Triadú).