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Module content and indicative topics

In this module you will examine the changing ways in which the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship have been represented in the contemporary Spanish novel. As you will see, despite the fact that Spain’s transition to democracy after 36 years of dictatorship was held up as a model for other nations to follow, it left many dissatisfied. You will see how Spain’s novelists articulated that dissatisfaction in a variety of ways and in works written between the late 1970s and the 1990s. Beginning with the period immediately after Franco's death, when writers tried to navigate the minefield of addressing the War and dictatorship while the on-going transition made those topics taboo, you will gain an insight into the country’s lasting sense of trauma. More importantly, you will also read six thought-provoking and engaging novels (two by men, four by women) which seek to evade or confront these taboos in a variety of genres including the fictional memoir/fantastic novel, social realism, the historical novel and the trauma narrative.

Set Texts

• Carmen Martín Gaite, El cuarto de atrás (1978)

• Julio Llamazares, Luna de lobos (1985)

• Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, El pianista (1985)

• Josefina Aldecoa, Historia de una maestra (1990)

• Josefina Aldecoa, Mujeres de negro (1994)

• Josefina Aldecoa, La fuerza del destino (1997)

Teaching delivery

This module will be taught in a combination of lectures and seminars. Some sessions will feature group work among peers.

By the end of the module you should be able to:

• Identify the causes of the Spanish Civil War.

• Discuss the key features of Francoism.

• Analyse the successes and failures of Spain’s transition to democracy.

• Critique the intervention in public life of Spanish novelists in the late twentieth century.

• Evaluate the essential features of a variety of novelistic genres.

Recommended Reading

In preparation for the module, we advise reading the following core texts. These can be found in the UCL Library:

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• Paloma Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy, trans. by Mark Gordon Oakley (London: Berghahn Books, 2000)

• Julián Casanova and Carlos Gil Andrés, Twentieth-Century Spain: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)

• Ronald Fraser, In Hiding: The Life of Manuel Cortés (London: Verso, 2010)

• Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

• Interrogating Francoism: History and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Spain, ed. by Helen Graham (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)

• Jo Labanyi, ‘The language of silence: historical memory, generational transmission and witnessing in contemporary Spain’, Journal of Romance Studies, 9 (2009), 23-35

• Jeremy Treglown, Franco's Crypt (London: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2013)