Narrating the Past Narrating the Past

Narrating the Past

Fiction and Historiography in Postwar Spain

    • £18.99
    • £18.99

Publisher Description

The relationship between fiction and historiography in Francoist Spain (1939–1975) is a contentious one. The intricacies of this relationship, in which fiction works to subvert the regime’s authority to write the past, are the focus of David K. Herzberger’s book.
The narrative and rhetorical strategies of historical discourse figure in both the fiction and historiography of postwar Spain. Herzberger analyzes these strategies, identifying the structures and vocabularies they use to frame the past and endow it with particular meanings. He shows how Francoist historians sought to affirm the historical necessity of Franco by linking the regime to a heroic and Christian past, while several types of postwar fiction—such as social realism, the novel of memory, and postmodern novels—created a voice of opposition to this practice. Focusing on the concept of writing history that these opposing strategies convey, Herzberger discloses the layering of truth and meaning that lies at the heart of postwar Spanish narrative from the early 1940s to the fall of Franco. His study clearly reveals how the novel in postwar Spain became a crucial form of dissent from the past as it was conceived and used by the State.
Making a decisive intervention in the debate about the ways in which narration determines both the meaning and truth of history and fiction, Narrating the Past will be of special interest to students and scholars of the politics, history, and literature of twentieth-century Spain.

  • GENRE
    Fiction & Literature
    RELEASED
    1995
    24 May
    LANGUAGE
    EN
    English
    LENGTH
    196
    Pages
    PUBLISHER
    Duke University Press
    SIZE
    762.8
    KB

    More Books Like This

    Contesting the Monument: The Anti-illusionist Italian Historical Novel: No. 10 Contesting the Monument: The Anti-illusionist Italian Historical Novel: No. 10
    2017
    The Noé Jitrik Reader The Noé Jitrik Reader
    2005
    Postmodern Impegno Postmodern Impegno
    2009
    Do the Americas Have a Common Literature? Do the Americas Have a Common Literature?
    2012
    Mexican Literature in Theory Mexican Literature in Theory
    2018
    Genre Fusion Genre Fusion
    2014