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  • Carmen Martín Gaite in the Twenty-First Century:What Defines Her Legacy?
  • Joan L. Brown

Carmen Martín Gaite was a complex figure who transformed Spanish literary and cultural fields. At the 2015 MLA Convention, a special session was convened to assess her legacy, fifteen years after her passing. Presenters and audience members, many of whom knew the author, worked together to characterize her innovations in the realms of fiction and nonfiction. The overarching goal was to define Martín Gaite’s enduring contributions to Spanish literature and explain why she has such strong appeal today.

The session began with a brief introduction to our subject. Martín Gaite lived for three-quarters of the twentieth century, from 1925 to 2000. She was a creative writer, a critic and a scholar with a doctorate in philology from the University of Madrid. Her works crossed boundaries and blended fields, earning prizes from the Nadal to the National Prize for Literature (twice). She invented a hybrid novel that melded fiction, metafiction, memoir and fantastic literature. She introduced the study of material culture to Spain, mixing scholarly references with popular ones. She developed her own iconoclastic feminism, which was expressed in essays and illustrated in works of fiction. She appropriated printed images to create a visual diary. Her productivity encompassed multiple genres: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenplays, stage plays, collages, and a textbook. Definitive versions of Martín Gaite’s works, edited by José Teruel and titled Obras completas, are being published in seven volumes: the first four are already in print.

Seven roundtable participants delivered short papers. David K. Herzberger of the University of California–Riverside discussed Martín Gaite’s contributions to history and historiography and to our understanding of the Civil War and the postwar era in Spain. Randolph D. Pope of the University of Virginia explored the autobiographical elements that pervade her writing. José Teruel of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid analyzed Martín Gaite’s personalized approach to the genre of the essay with special attention to El cuento de nunca acabar. David T. Gies of the University of Virginia highlighted her transformative scholarship on the Spanish eighteenth century and shared both documents and insights. María Luisa Guardiola of Swarthmore College analyzed Martín Gaite’s reinvention of the genre of the female epistolary novel in Nubosidad variable. Alexandra Saum-Pascual of the University of California–Berkeley identified innovative techniques and commentary in the author’s nonfiction and collages that presage the conventions of digital literature. Lastly, I outlined the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that make El cuarto de atrás a quintessentially canonical novel. The second portion of the session was reserved for discussion. The audience of about fifty ranged from graduate students to distinguished professors, and their contributions were both fascinating and diverse. [End Page 662]

The essays presented here are revised versions of the panelists’ papers. Following the last essay, a conclusion summarizes salient topics introduced in the discussion between audience members and panelists and points out some additional elements of the Martín Gaite legacy.

Joan L. Brown
University of Delaware

WORKS CITED

Martín Gaite, Carmen. Obras completas. Ed. José Teruel. Vol. 1–3. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de Lectores, 2008–10. Print.
———. Obras completas. Ed. José Teruel. Vol. 4. Barcelona: Espasa/Círculo de Lectores, 2015. Print. [End Page 663]
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