Post-War Narrative Production in Portugal: A Literary Renaissance
Post-War Narrative Production in Portugal
A Literary Renaissance
The Rise of the Novel After 1936
Narrative production in Portugal experienced a significant interruption after the coup of 1936. The first novel of the post-war surge appeared in 1950: The People of the Barrier by Ricardo Carvalho Calero. Since then, there has been a consolidation of this genre. While not always reaching high-quality standards, this period enabled the emergence of numerous noteworthy works.
Narrative Trends in the 1950s
Later in the 1950s, a series of storylines began to emerge, some of which continue to this day. Followers of the narrative tradition focused mainly on the theme of the nobility’s decline, a subject explored by Otero Pedrayo. This theme is also present in Carvalho Calero’s The People of the Barrier.
Popular Realism
Light the Oil Lamp by Ánxeles Fole is a work of popular realism. It establishes the context for the narrative by presenting stories told by different characters. The author adopts a model of oral narrative transmission, drawing inspiration from popular legends and stories. The ethnographic work is enhanced by detailed descriptions of the geography of Caurel, including anthropological and linguistic notes. The fourteen tales are told in the first person, following short story techniques. The structure is simple, with a small argument, often reduced to a linear anecdote. Ánxeles Fole repeats this formula in Land and Wild Tales of Solaini.
Characteristics of Ánxeles Fole’s Writing
- Narrative Language: Adopts oral language as a model, reproducing its dialectal diversity and archaic practices.
- Preference for Storytelling: Prioritizes the told story over the written one.
- Narrative Realism: Fantastical elements are explained as products of hallucinations, beliefs, and fantasies.
- Landscape: Perceives landscape as a differentiating element of Portuguese literature.
- Moral Commitment: Demonstrates a commitment to the author’s land and time.
- Originality: Seeks technical and stylistic originality.
Fantastic Realism
Álvaro Cunqueiro’s narrative is defined by fantastic realism, blending cultural and popular elements with everyday reality and fantasy. Cunqueiro is considered a Galician writer with a unique literary world, style, and technique. His work often features:
- Fragmented Novels: Constructed with the accumulation of unconnected stories.
- Oral Style: Draws stylistic inspiration from oral tradition and everyday storytelling.
- Blending of Extraordinary and Ordinary: Superimposes the extraordinary and wonderful with the everyday, humanizing myth and mystifying man.
- Humor: The clash of the real and mythical worlds produces humor, often in the form of irony.
Social Realism
Social realism finds its highest expression in Eduardo Blanco Amor’s novel Inaugural Serenade. This work showcases a mature narrative style, marked by the assimilation of new techniques that renewed 20th-century narrative. Inaugural Serenade can be considered the starting point of the modern Galician narrative. It features narrative modalization, going beyond the limitations of two narrators, and achieves a high degree of ambiguity characteristic of contemporary narrative.
New Narrative Novel
The new narrative novel represents a break from the literary conventions of the Franco era. It introduced a new way of narrating, moving beyond traditional formulas. This movement is represented by works published between the late 1950s and early 1970s. These works showcase a variety of techniques, processes, and themes characteristic of innovative novels. The new narrative in Galician literature involves the assimilation of techniques from contemporary novels. Key characteristics include:
- Multiple narrative voices and alternating narrators.
- Escape from specific locations and timeframes.
- Challenging the idea of a traditional argument and denial of conventional action.
- Creation of artificial and unsettling literary worlds.
- Merging of reality and fantasy.
- Presence of violence, tension, and themes of sex and death.
- Treatment of absurdity and existential problems.
- Practice of intertextuality.
Major authors and works include:
- Carlos Méndez Ferrín: The Twilight and the Ants, Northern Suburb, and Peraval and Other Stories.
- María Xosé Queizán: In the Ear Hole.
- Gonzalo Rodríguez Mourullo: Memories of Taino.
- Xohana Torres: Adios, Maria.
- Suárez-Méndez Ferrín Llanos: Away from the Node and Within.
These works represent the first stage of this literary trajectory, characterized by a rejection of costumbrismo and classical realism, as well as the presence of anti-heroic and pathological characters, the merging of the fantastic with the normal and abnormal, etc.
Xosé Neira Vilas and Children’s Literature
In the 1960s, Xosé Neira Vilas produced high-quality and widely disseminated work. In 1961, he published Memoirs. Neira Vilas was a pioneer of children’s literature in Galician. He exhibits different characteristics compared to the authors of the new Galician narrative. He demonstrates a concern for narrative renewal. His narrative formula focuses on the construction of narrative discourse. His work is characterized by a realistic and sometimes harsh portrayal of Galician rural life. In contrast, the new narrators often focus on urban environments and conflicts revolving around a confusing world of desires. Neira Vilas’s themes center on the tragedies and miseries of the Galician village during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath.