Denationalization and Extraterritoriality in the Spanish Novel (1966-1986)

Abstract

This article reads several novels in light of the effects that the Franco regime had on the relations that their authors (born or newcomers after the Civil War) maintained with the idea of a national literature. Thus, a stage is proposed that would cover around two decades (1966-1985) throughout which poetics characterized by the rejection of national identity and its literary tradition are recorded. Such rejection is reflected in forms of iconoclasm, self-exile or in the search for a literary language without traces of the territory of origin, as well as through the forging of genealogies of political significance. Since the 1980s, movements can be seen that allow us to speak of a return to national literature by a part of those born after the war (and not exactly by the rest, as I will argue), an issue that I address from works of Juan Goytisolo, Jesús Torbado, Javier Marías, Julián Ríos, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Jesús Ferrero y Enrique Vila-Matas.