Literary Labyrinths in Franco-Era Barcelona

Taylor & Francis

Literary Labyrinths in Franco-Era BarcelonaNarrating Memory and Place\nAuthor(s): Colleen P. Culleton\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9781409448587, 978-1409448587\nSynopsis\nBringing together works by Salvador Espriu, Juan Goytisolo, Merc Rodoreda, Esther Tusquets, and Juan Marsa that portray memory as a disorienting narrative enterprise, Colleen Culleton argues that the source of this disorientation is the material reality of life in Barcelona in the immediate post-Civil War years. Barcelona was the object of harsh persecution in the first years of the Franco regime that included the erasure of marks of Catalan identity and cultural history from the urban landscape and made Barcelona a moving target for memory. The literature and film she examines show characters struggling to produce narratives of the remembered past that immediately conflict with the dominant version of Spain's historical narrative formulated to.