Catalan Literature: Civil War to the 1970s and Beyond

Posted on Jan 31, 2025 in Latin

Catalan Literature: From the Civil War to the 1970s

During the Franco dictatorship, literary production in Catalan faced a crisis. Many writers were forced into exile, and new cultural groups emerged in their places of residence. The literature of this exile often reflected the writers’ experiences, incorporating exotic notes from their new living spaces while also remembering and denouncing the war and its consequences.

Literary Innovations

Novelists of the 1930s had to wait until well into the post-war period to write normally. Nevertheless, they incorporated several innovations from Europe:

  • The substitution of the omniscient narrator with an observer or an “equiscient” narrator.
  • The replacement of direct style with indirect and free indirect style.
  • The substitution of interior monologue with the disappearance of monologue.
  • The disappearance of traditional plot structures.
  • The disappearance of the traditional hero.
  • A new conception of time and a break from linearity.

Enric Valor

Enric Valor began his literary career by writing highly creative literary and folkloric tales. He employed a rich vocabulary, even incorporating popular language within the established regulations. Valor carefully selected tales based on good taste and used a five-part narrative structure.

Classification of Tales

Valor classified his tales into three groups:

  1. Marvelous tales: Featuring supernatural beings or objects.
  2. Tales of customs: Reflecting the lifestyle of society.
  3. Animal tales: Similar to fables.

Valor’s novelistic production is considered mature. Notably, his three novels of the Cassano cycle, where Cassano is a “transsumpte” (a literary representation) of Castella. His novels can be categorized within the traditional realistic narrative, employing a third-person narrative style, distinct from more recent experimental approaches.

Merce Rodoreda

Merce Rodoreda was born into a family with a strong literary background. After the Civil War, she went into exile and lived in Paris until the 1960s, when she returned to Catalonia. Her fictional work can be divided into three stages:

  1. The Years of Learning: This period includes her first novel, Aloma, where a young woman loses her virginity to an experienced man.
  2. The Stage of Maturity: During this time, she wrote Twenty-Two Stories, which explores her typical themes: the race to bed, the monotony of daily life, and the impossibility of a fulfilling relationship between man and woman. This period also saw the creation of The Diamond Square, which utilizes the internal monologue of the protagonist.
  3. The Final Stage: In this phase, she wrote Broken Mirror, approaching the style of a serial novel.

Rodoreda’s work is characterized by its psychological treatment of characters and a bold, symbolic narrative style.

Narrative of the 1970s and 1980s

The 1970s saw a narrative of rupture, diverging from classical narrative techniques. In the 1980s, writers experienced a desire to return to more traditional narrative forms and cultivated various narrative genres. These trends can be classified into three novelistic currents:

  • Psychological Realism: Novels in this category examine the inner world of characters and their psychology. Some works attack transgressive topics or bourgeois morality.
  • Genre Novels: This includes the cultivation of noir, erotica, young adult, and historical fiction, reflecting universal concerns.
  • Mythical Universes: These works are often related to the author’s biography, attempting to recapture childhood memories or youth.