Professor Melissa Dinverno
email: mdinvern@indiana.edu

S564	Contemporary Spanish Literature
Topic: Contesting Repression: XXth Century Spanish Cultural
Production

MW 2:30pm – 3:45pm/section #4148/3 cr./Ballantine Hall 321

During the turbulent years prior to the Civil War, Spain began one
of the most complex periods of its history.  The pre-war years, the
experience of the war itself, and Franco’s repressive dictatorship
have been determining factors in Spain’s cultural production in the
twentieth century.  Ultimately permeating society, their effects
have lingered on well past even the country’s recent transition to
democracy.  This course will analyze contemporary Spanish cultural
production within the frame of repression and resistance.  Departing
from various formulations of repression (gendered, sexual, class,
racial/ethnic, political, etc.), we will look at ways intellectuals
have configured and contested forces of constraint.

In the first section of the course we will look at different
artistic projects that react to repressive political, social and
economic conditions in pre-war Spain.  What central issues in the
Spanish cultural landscape are embodied in the creative projects of
the late 20s and early 30s?  In what ways do intellectuals engage in
contestatory practices and to what degree do their projects give in
to the forces they are resisting?  The second section aims to
explore how artists both represent and contest repression and the
totalitarian state from within the system itself.  How can those
within position themselves in order to contemplate and resist a
system that labels and combats both of these very acts as
subversive?  We will explore the kinds of spaces writers create that
allow them room for maneuver and within which they can both struggle
with authority and speak of the experience as a subject of
totalitarianism.  The third and final section examines the idea of
contesting in terms of “response” as the country undergoes a
transition and moves beyond the Franco regime.  Here, we will look
at the way these texts respond to the Franco era as a past event, as
they not only reexamine the Civil War and life under Franco, but
also voice a preoccupation with self-construction and defining the
emergent
new Spain.

Some of the issues we will discuss in our readings are (self)
censorship, notions of gender and sexuality, cultural and personal
memory, the power of writing/storytelling, exile, and identity
construction.  Our texts will most likely include work by Lorca,
Cernuda, Buñuel, Cela, Sastre, Fuertes, Martín Santos, Rodoreda,
A.González, Martín Gaite, Rosetti, Muñoz Molina, Fernández Cubas and
Mañas.  Class discussion is in Spanish.  Evaluation will most likely
be based on at least one oral presentation, a number of short
analytical papers and a longer final paper.