1st Edition

Memory and Spatiality in Post-Millennial Spanish Narrative

By Lorraine Ryan Copyright 2014
    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    Focusing on literary texts produced from 2000 to 2009, Lorraine Ryan examines the imbrication between the preservation of Republican memory and the transformations of Spanish public space during the period from 1931 to 2005. Accordingly, Ryan analyzes the spatial empowerment and disempowerment of Republican memory and identity in Dulce Chacón’s Cielos de barro, Ángeles López’s Martina, la rosa número trece, Alberto Méndez’s ’Los girasoles ciegos,’ Carlos Ruiz Zafón´s La sombra del viento, Emili Teixidor’s Pan negro, Bernardo Atxaga’s El hijo del acordeonista, and José María Merino’s La sima. The interrelationship between Republican subalternity and space is redefined by these writers as tense and constantly in flux, undermined by its inexorable relationality, which leads to subjects endeavoring to instill into space their own values. Subjects erode the hegemonic power of the public space by articulating in an often surreptitious form their sense of belonging to a prohibited Republican memory culture. In the democratic period, they seek a categorical reinstatement of same on the public terrain. Ryan also considers the motivation underlying this coterie of authors’ commitment to the issue of historical memory, an analysis which serves to amplify the ambits of existing scholarship that tends to ascribe it solely to postmemory.

    Introduction; Chapter 1 Degenerative Space, Fertility, and Post-Transitional Justice in Dulce Chacón’s Cielos de barro; Chapter 2 The City and the Body in Ángeles López’s Martina, la rosa número trece; Chapter 3 The Nullification of Domestic Space in Alberto Méndez’s “Los girasoles ciegos”; Chapter 4 Spatial Assimilation and the Corruption of the Child in Emili Teixidor’s Pan negro; Chapter 5 A Resistant Barcelona: Hidden Transcripts in Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s La sombra del viento; Chapter 6 Rurality, the Second Space, and Global Memory Structures in Bernardo Atxaga’s El hijo del acordeonista; Chapter 7 Rememory, Hybridity, and in-between Space in José María Merino’s La sima; conclusion Conclusion;

    Biography

    Lorraine Ryan is a Birmingham fellow at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

    "That said, the book is a very valuable contribution in which Ryan constructs a sustained meditation on the great significance of spatiality in the act of recollection. Through an incisive critical eye, a deep knowledge of memory theory and fastidious attention to the vicissitudes of Spanish history and its polemics in the new millenium, Ryan's work is an important reference point for those interested in the field of memory studies in contemporary Spain." -- William Viestenz, University of Minnesota, Bulletin of Spanish Studies