Historia e historias en la novela Inés y la alegría. Episodios de una guerra interminable, por Almudena Grandes

History and Stories in the Novel Inés y la alegría. Episodios de una guerra interminable by Almudena Grande. In the past decades, a certain careless neglect seems to have gradually blurred twentieth-century historical events that are still relevant because they have not been completely clarified; they particularly concern dramatic nation-wide events which some of the long-lived Spaniards witnessed. The phenomenon is natural in a society that is advancing by huge strides towards the future, just as it is natural to have people who want to keep alive the memory of those men and women who, during the Civil War and then during the Franco dictatorship, endured the impact of such terrible convulsions. Literature, despite its availability for invention and its inherent subjectivity, is a wonderful way to save this fading image of the past. My paper aims to study the recovery work done by Almudena Grandes, who in her novel Inés or the Joy. Episodes of an Interminable War, presents an episode known as the invasion of the Aran Valley, when 4,000 guerrillas organized by the Spanish Communist Party (P.C.E.) and the Spanish National Union (U.N.E.), crossed the Pyrenees Mountains from France in October 1944. Here, the writer brings to life an abundant documentary material drawn out from archives, libraries and oral testimonies, and manages to enrich History - with capital 'H' - with small personal histories, some invented, others true; historic reality intertwines with the sinuous threads created by her fantasy in order to weave a very agitated and vivid canvas in vibrant colors. Keywords: Spanish novel, Almudena Grandes, the invasion of the Aran Valley, twentieth-century history

Crisis and Dystopia in the Current Spanish Novel Un incendio invisible, by Sara Mesa and Por si se va la Luz, by Lara Moreno

Europe in general and Spain in particular are still experiencing the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. Spanish cultural narratives have imagined other possible scenarios around a financial crisis that has not only been an economic one, but also a social one. In that context, Spanish literature was used not only as a means to elaborate coherent narratives in times of crisis but also as a space to create other possible worlds. The novels Un incendio invisible (2011), by Sara Mesa, and Por si se ve la Luz (2013), by Lara Moreno, are both set in imaginary places in which their protagonists – sometimes driven by desire and other times by necessity – survive in hostile, abandoned and primitive places. The article attempts to analyse the dominance of the construction of dystopian places and the creation of ‘another possible world’ as a consequence of the financial crisis of 2008.

Celestina – a Spanish Novel on the East German Stage before and after German Reunification

Este estudio compara dos adaptaciones alemanas de Celestina —una escrita antes y otra después de la reunificación de Alemania en 1990. Las dos adaptaciones cambian el argumento de Fernando de Rojas de diferente forma. Mientras Karl Mickel introduce dos miembros de la Inquisición, los cuales planifican y dirigen la trama, Manfred Wekwerth introduce un cura hipócrita y, por otra parte, intensifica la codicia y las habilidades comerciales de Celestina, para lo cual añade diálogos entre ella y sus cómplices referentes al «dinero». En los dos casos, las razones de los diferentes cambios son socio-políticas. Mientras Mickel usa el texto de Fernando de Rojas para criticar la realidad de Alemania oriental antes de la caida del Muro con su policía secreta omnipresente, Wekwerth usa el mismo texto para expresar su descontento sobre la introducción del capitalismo en esta parte del mundo.

«The good comic novel»: la narrativa comica di Henry Fielding e l’importanza dell’esempio cervantino

«The good comic novel». La narrativa comica di Henry Fielding e l’importanza dell’esempio cervantino analyses the influence of Don Quixote on Henry Fielding’s fiction, starting with a survey of the reception of the Spanish novel in England. Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones are analyzed and compared with the Spanish novel, from which Fielding overtly borrowed some characters, episodes, and Cervantes’ parodic strategies. Fielding’s and Cervantes’s narrative proceeded from the parodic deconstruction and subsequent innovation of previous literature, with the main purpose of teaching and amusing the reader at the same time. Finally, the volume examines the role of Fielding and Cervantes in the rise of the fictional and the self-conscious novel.

Nouvelle approche à la tâche de traduction du chevalier de Mailly

El caballero de Mailly (1657-1724) publicó una veintena de obras a lo largo de su carrera literaria, tres de las cuales fueron presentadas como traducciones: La Vie d'Adam, que provendría de un texto italiano; Histoire du prince Erastus, en la cual algunos críticos vieron la traducción de una novela en lengua italiana, otros la de una obra en español; por último, Le Voyage et les avantures des trois princes de Sarendip, que pretendía proceder de un texto en lengua persa. Mailly también dio a la imprenta un relato breve, “Avantures de Dom Leandre”, cuyos primeros párrafos traducen el íncipit de una novela española. Además de intentar esclarecer la verdadera ascendencia de los originales que sirvieron de referencia a Mailly, queremos mostrar cómo evoluciona su concepción de la traducción literaria, pues comienza siendo muy fiel al texto fuente pero, poco a poco, se permite ciertas adaptaciones –ya sea en el fondo o en la forma– y, finalmente, termina adueñándose de la obra que traduce para crear una nueva. The chevalier de Mailly (1657-1724) published more than twenty works throughout his literary career, three of which were presented as translations. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to clarify the true origin of the works which Mailly translated: La Vie d'Adam, from a text originally in Italian; Histoire du prince Erastus, considered by some critics to be the translation of a novel written in Italian, by others the translation of a Spanish work, and finally, Le Voyage et les avantures des trois princes de Sarendip, which claimed to come from a text in Persian. Mailly also submitted for printing a tale, “Avantures de Dom Leandre”, whose first few paragraphs are a translation of the incipit of a Spanish novel. The second aim is to analyse how Mailly’s conception of literary translation evolved. At the beginning, the author remains faithful to his source text. Little by little, he succumbs to some modifications –in either form or contents–. Eventually, the writer ends up transforming the work he is translating by adding new stories to it. Au long de sa carrière littéraire, le chevalier de Mailly (1657-1724) publia une vingtaine d'ouvrages dont trois parurent comme des traductions: La Vie d'Adam, qui proviendrait d'un texte italien; Histoire du prince Erastus, où la critique a vu la traduction d'un roman tantôt en langue italienne tantôt en langue espagnole, et Le Voyage et les avantures des trois princes de Sarendip, supposément traduit d'un texte persan. Mailly fit aussi publier une nouvelle, “Avantures de Dom Leandre”, dont l'incipit était une traduction des premiers paragraphes d'un roman espagnol. Le but de cet article est double. Il s'agit, d'une part, de mettre en lumière la véritable origine des oeuvres citées. D'autre part, nous étudierons l'évolution de la conception maillynienne de la traduction, puisque l'auteur est d'abord très fidèle au texte source puis, peu à peu, il se permet quelques adaptations –soit dans le fond, soit dans la forme– et finit par s'approprier de l'oeuvre qu'il traduit pour en créer une autre.

Pragmatic reproduction of cultural-linguistic referents in translation from Spanish to Chinese

This paper examines the pragmatic translation of cultural-linguistic items through a relevance-theoretic study. The results suggest: 1) implicative value of the cultural-linguistic items is context-dependent and 2) loss of the linguistic form might imply the loss of the implicit clue. The study aims to expose the pragmatic values conveyed by the cultural-linguistic elements of Spanish and its Chinese translation. Furthermore, it explores how much original Spanish linguistic elements are accessible to the target readers of the Chinese translation. Based on a Spanish novel, namely La Colmena, and its Chinese translation Feng Fang, linguistic cultural referents from the Spanish original and their translations were compared, considering their cognitive contexts. This research points to the fact that the cognitive-environmental values of cultural-linguistic elements are generally underestimated, especially in Spanish-to-Chinese translation and, a large number of Spanish linguistic items do not maintain their implicatures in the Chinese translation due to different contextual assumptions.

Spanish 21th Century Narrative: an Expanding Galaxy

This essay is a synchronic exploration of peninsular literature in Spanish, and its main aim is to draw a map – within the inescapable boundaries imposed by strict immediacy – of tendencies, developments, filiations, thematic patterns and socio-political contaminations that may characterise it. Starting from a negotiated definition of ‘the aughts’ as a referential frame for this reflection, the argumentation translates into an analysis of ultra-contemporary Spanish novel as a mutant and polymorphous phenomenon, on the edge (or past it, according to those who claim it has already died) of the expiration of novela social, the acrobatic statements of afterpop, the intra- and extra-literary claims of postmemory, the permeability towards the worldwide diffusion of brevity and auto-fiction, the conflict between local hyper-specificity and panhispanic pangea.

Cuatro calas en la novela española actual: Esther GarcÍa llovet, Mario Cuenca Sandoval, Andrés Neuman y Aroa Moreno Durán

La novela española actual, la que ha surgido en el siglo XXI, está dando frutos muy diversos en sus distintos registros estéticos, lingüísticos y temáticos. Buena prueba de ello son las cuatro narraciones de las que aquí nos ocupamos. La aceleración de la historia actual, junto con los conflictos relativos a la vida cotidiana proporcionan al narrador de nuestros días materia más que suficiente para que, a través de la ficción, podamos comprender algo mejor nuestro mundo, ya se trate del presente, ya del pasado que sigue condicionándonos. The current Spanish novel, which has emerged in the 21st century, is bearing very different fruits in its different aesthetic, linguistic and thematic registers. Good proof of this are the four narrations that we are dealing with here. the acceleration of current history, together with the conflicts related to everyday life, provide the narrator with more than enough material so that, through fiction, we can understand our world better, whether it is the present, past that continues conditioning us.

El exiliado en la Transición española y polaca. Crematorio de Rafael Chirbes y Niskie Łąki de Piotr Siemion

The exiled in Spanish and Polish transition. Crematorio by Rafael Chirbes and Niskie Łąki by Piotr SiemionThe aim of the article is to present a picture of the exiled in a society undergoing processes of democratic transformation on the basis of Crematorio 2009, a novel by Rafael Chirbes, and Niskie Łąki by Piotr Siemion 2000. The author employs a research method from comparative literature and refers to the category of supranationality “supranacionalidad” proposed by Claudio Guillén, a Spanish comparativist. An analysis of the texts indicates that the presence of the exiled, notwithstanding fundamental differences concerning e.g. the evaluation of capitalism, serves to extract and highlight the end of great narrations which accompanies transformation processes: in the Spanish novel it is the end of ideology communism and history F. Fukuyama whereas Niskie Łąki refers to the end of the romantic paradigm M. Janion.