“It happened to all of us”: Disclosing Sexual Abuse in Catholic Ireland in Roddy Doyle’s Smile

In Smile (2017), Roddy Doyle represents a society that is still heavily influenced by the moral authority of the Catholic Church and that, therefore, avoids any open discussion about sexuality in any of its manifestations. In the midst of this climate, Victor Forde, the working-class protagonist of the novel, tries to disclose the sexual abuse he suffered as a child in a Christian Brotherhood School. In my article, I argue that the silences and taboos that permeate the society as represented in the novel, and the protagonist’s awareness that his social position made him the perfect target for abuse, condition Victor’s only opportunity for disclosure; this – and the absolute failure of his attempts at divulgence – ultimately frustrates his chances of healing from trauma and of leading an ordinary life.

Acosadores, violadores y maltratadores

Este artículo pretende dar respuestas, a través de ejemplos literarios, a la pregunta clave de por qué los poderes fácticos y la opinión pública reaccionan de manera tan tibia al acoso y maltrato ejercido por demasiados hombres sobre las mujeres. La razón básica es que la dependencia femenina sigue vigente en el imaginario colectivo universal y el discurso dominante se resiste a revisarla por miedo a los cambios sociales y económicos que tal revolución supondría. Es más útil contar los femicidios por miles que admitir razones lógicas incontrovertibles – ya Goya lo dejó inscrito artísticamente: “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos”. A estos monstruos, que nos rodean con apariencia ‘normal’, hemos de darles la denominación que se merecen y juzgarles por la Ley Antiterrorista. La literatura, de todas las nacionalidades y de todas las lenguas, deja amplia constancia de tales abusos a través del tiempo y del espacio. Aquí se analizan varios ejemplos en obras de Ruth Rendell, Louise Doughty, Judith Hermann, Nawal al-Saadawi, Roddy Doyle, Mohsin Hamid, Suniti Namjoshi y Margaret Drabble.

The Dead Republic, by Roddy Doyle: The Wisdom of Comic Heroism

Roddy Doyle is a writer who has reflected that human existence is an interplay between comedy and tragedy, and that therefore all kinds of evils—fanaticism, absolutism, dogmatism—result from cultivating only the tragic perspective. This becomes obvious in The Dead Republic (2010), a novel in which Henry Smart’s comic attitude to life allows Doyle to offer the reader a detached and non-sentimental view of contemporary Irish history. Both John Ford and the IRA want to reshape Henry’s story as a Republican hero to fit their own notion of Irishness and it is precisely in Henry’s response to this perversion of Irish history, politics and national identity that he reveals himself as the perfect comic hero and debunks all efforts to mystify the past.

ENTREVISTA: La angustia y el gozo de traducir. Entrevista a Miguel Martínez Lage

ResumenMiguel Martínez-Lage es uno de los más importantes traductores literarios del inglés que hay actualmente en nuestro país. Tras cursar estudios universitarios en Navarra y en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, se dedica profesionalmente a la traducción desde 1984. Entre los autores que ha traducido destacan Martin Amis, W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, J. M. Coetzee, Joseph Conrad, Roddy Doyle, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Nick Hornby, Aldous Huxley, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Dylan Thomas y Virginia Woolf, entre muchos otros. Ha sido también ponente en numerosos congresos sobre traducción y escritor de artículos y reseñas. Miguel Martínez-Lage mantuvo esta conversación para Odisea en octubre de 2007 como anticipo a una visita a la Universidad de Almería.Palabras clave: Traducción literaria, traducir del inglés, ofi cio del traductor, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Johnson.AbstractMiguel Martínez-Lage is one of the most important English-Spanish literary translators currently working in Spain. He studied at the University of Navarra and at the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid, and he is a full-time translator since 1984. Among the list of authors he has translated into Spanish some names stand out: Martin Amis, W.H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, J. M. Coetzee, Joseph Conrad, Roddy Doyle, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Nick Hornby, Aldous Huxley, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Dylan Thomas and Virginia Woolf, among many others. He has also given papers in several conferences on translation and has written articles and reviews. He had this conversation with Odisea in October 2007 previous to a visit to the University of Almería.Key words: Literary translation, translating from English, the profession of a translator, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Johnson.