Juan Goytisolo And The Poetics Of Contagion

Juan Goytisolo is arguably Spain’s foremost contemporary novelist. This book is one of the few major studies in English to examine all of his mature works, from Señas de identidad in 1966 to Las semanas del jardín, published in 1997. It focuses on the interface between the thematic content of the novels and its formal expression, viewing this as the crucial nexus of their meaning. Goytisolo’s writing is, in his own words, a "commitment of myself ... for a transformation of the world". The Poetics of Contagion dissects the nature of the relationship between writer and reader to show how Goytisolo’s political commitment is reflected in his work.

Juan Goytisolo is arguably Spain’s foremost contemporary novelist. This book is one of the few major studies in English to examine all of his mature works, from Señas de identidad in 1966 to Las semanas del jardín, published in 1997. It focuses on the interface between the thematic content of the novels and its formal expression, viewing this as the crucial nexus of their meaning. Goytisolo’s writing is, in his own words, a ‘commitment of myself ... for a transformation of the world’. The Poetics of Contagion dissects the nature of the relationship between writer and reader to show how Goytisolo’s political commitment is reflected in his work.

This collection of essays looks at the most recent work of Juan Goytisolo from a variety of perspectives and critical stances. The contributors, all specialists in the work of the Spanish author, employ theories of intertextuality, postmodernist irony, queer ethics and even the esoteric science of Hurufism to uncover the complexities of Goytisolo's creative practice, in particular his radical blurring of the generic boundaries between fiction, autobiography and literary criticism. Such challenging of genre conventions is seen as both integral to the author's own questioning of his identity as an expression of his radical dissidence and essential to the response his work evokes in the reader. Life and writing, autobiography and fiction, constitute the interconnecting poles of Goytisolo's artistic universe. The essays included in this volume explore the varying patterns of confluence of these twin strands in the writer's later work as a whole, but particularly in novels such as Las semanas del jardín (1997) and Carajicomedia (2000). The essays are set in context by a contribution from Juan Goytisolo himself in which he sums up his philosophy of life and writing as a pursuit of 'non-profitable knowledge'.

This book assesses Goytisolo's contribution to cultural debates in Spain since the sixties and revises the prevailing critical interpretation of his fiction, arguing that his works represent an ethical engagement with postmodernist theory rather than an illustration of it. This monograph offers two new perspectives on Spanish writer, Juan Goytisolo. First, under the themes of authorship and dissidence, it integrates his writing across several genres, providing a rounded assessment of his contribution to cultural debates in Spain since the sixties and arguing that resistance to repressive discourses characterizes his essays and autobiographies as much as his fiction. Second, it revises the prevailing critical interpretation of Goytisolo's fiction by building on four premises: that his novels are less clearly oppositional than prevailing interpretations imply; that, in order to engage with discourses of identity, he employs an idiom which, contrary to his own statements, is not a poststructuralist autonomous world of words; that a textual practice grounded in the recognizable experience of post-Civil War Spain, rather than one which seeks out the realm of pure textuality, is essential to Goytisolo's subversive political intentions; and that the autobiographical element of much of his work constitutes a more complex narrative aesthetic than has been appreciated. The book argues that ifGoytisolo's work is interpreted as an ethical engagement with postmodernist theory, rather than as an illustration of it, then certain contradictions for which he has been criticized are seen in a new and valuable light. ALISON RIBEIRO DE MENEZES is a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at University College Dublin.

This volume is an innovative exploration of cultural heritage through museum studies, metacriticism and literary criticism. This is an innovative exploration of cultural heritage and the literary traditions that shape the contemporary literary scene in Spain. Through a coalescence of museum studies, metacriticism and traditional literary criticism thestudy interweaves discussion of museum spaces with literary analysis, exploring them as agents of memorialisation and a means for preserving and conveying heritage. Following introductory explorations of the development of museums and the literary canon, each chapter begins with a "visit" to a Spanish museum, establishing the framework for the subsequent discussion of critical practices and texts. Case studies include examination of the palimpsest andunconscious influence of canonical cores; the response to masculine traditions of poetry and art; counter-culture of the 1990s; and the ethical concerns of postmemory writing. STUART DAVIS is a Lecturer in Spanish, Girton College, and Newton Trust Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Cambridge.

Rewriting Franco’s Spain proposes a new reading of some of the most culturally significant and closely studied works of Spanish memory fiction from the past seventy years. This book explores how the work of the French writer Marcel Proust has shaped the ways Spanish novelists write about the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.

This volume, prompted by the publication in 1999 of Moya Longstaffe's remarkable study, Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel, further investigates and analyses the multiple appearances of Passion and Heroism in literature. It pursues the exploration of these themes in a variety of cultures (English, French, German, Spanish), genres, and critical approaches. In addition, the chronological span represented is extremely wide. Contributions range from La Fontaine, Molière and Voltaire to Rimbaud and Camus; from Baudelaire to Beckett; from Wagner to Goytisolo. This very diversity gives necessary context, providing scope for reflection and analysis. Although passion seems timeless, can heroism have any real meaning - apart from an individual and existential one - in our postmodern age? Has a notion at the centre of European culture for so many centuries really disappeared from our intellectual and cultural universe? This volume will be of interest to all students of literature, whatever their critical or linguistic allegiance, since it focuses on the varying manifestations of two vital ingredients of all societies and cultures.

This study explores the extraordinary afterlife of the Spanish legend of King Roderick and La Cava in plays, poems, novels and operas from the Eighth century to the present day.