Literature as a Response to Cultural and Political Repression in Franco’s Catalonia (review)

Jordi Cornellà-Detrell’s study focuses on narrative works by four Catalan writers of the Franco era. Crucially for his argument, the works selected comprise rewritings of earlier versions; indeed, in the majority of cases, there is more than one such revision. His aim is consider why Salvador Espriu, Xavier Benguerel, Sebastià Juan Arbó, and Joan Sales decided to amend, respectively, Laia (1932, 1934, 1952, 1968), El testament (1955, 1963, 1967), Tino Costa (1947, 1968), and Incerta glòria (1956, 1969, 1971). His objective is “to cast new light upon the social, political and cultural situation of Catalonia under Francoism” (2). There is a preliminary chapter that seeks to contextualize this situation more precisely by exploring the literary and linguistic controversies of the 1950s and 1960s in order “to shed light upon ideological struggles that converged on language and literature” (23). The author identifies as a key issue the separation of the spoken and written language and the conflict between “those who sought authenticity in everyday spoken usage and a linguistic aesthetic that tended towards archaism as the source of linguistic enrichment” (4). The point is well made and amply developed in the sub-chapter on the “myth” of the spoken language. He might, however, have considered the arguably unique case of Espriu’s Primera història d’Esther, where colloquialism and esotericism sit cheek by jowl in an effort to construct a monument to a language whose very survival was at stake. The urgency of the linguistic issue and the clear relevance of Catalan writers wondering about their social duties lose something of their focus because of an overly detailed account of the generational and ideological division between the post-war writers, for such disputes—tending at times to hair-splitting, at times, to the ad hominem excursus—do not greatly impact upon the substance of the texts studied (35).

The great value of this study resides in its tenaciously detailed analysis of the four novels. For all the legitimate attachment to theory, it has no ideological axe to grind. On the contrary, the author is resolutely pragmatic, opting for a “pluralistic method of inquiry” and an “eclectic approach to the analysis of literary texts” (8). Although the frame of reference is couched in postmodern terms, the working-through is, dare I say, refreshingly old-fashioned. As a result we can expect to be transported seamlessly from a meditation on universal concerns to an examination of linguistic practice, as in the chapter on El testament, where one minute we are invited to confront the provocative contention that exile is “a liberating phenomenon that allows the individual to break free from the constraints of his or her native society” (102), and the next, to ponder on the redefinition of language properties in the second and third versions of the novel, in order to appreciate how the psychology of the Aguilera family is adumbrated (107).

An evident benefit of such a complex and fastidious approach is that the occasional overarching definition strikes us as a discovery prompted by investigation rather than merely as an assertion or a hunch. For example, there is every justification for concluding that in its rewriting Laia “ceased to be an epigone of the rural novel filtered through European modernism and became the central pillar of a work devoted to Catalonia which could now embrace all readers” (87). In like manner, the meticulous, not to say microscopic, survey of the linguistic resources of Incerta glòria warrants the claim that the novel emerges as “the most stylistically complex work of the period” (191).

My sole reservation with this study concerns not so much its substance as what could be termed its marketing. The title is a misnomer; a disappointed purchaser, drawn to the book by what appears on the cover, might resort to trades’ description legislation. In the first instance, the unqualified term “literature” attached to a period of nearly forty years (the Franco era...