La imaginación desmadrada de Juan José Millás: humor y melancolía en La soledad era esto
This essay explores Juan José Millás's novel La soledad era esto (1990) as means of interrogating current appropriations of disenchantment and melancholy in discussions of contemporary Spanish culture and society. Through a detailed analysis of this novel as well as theoretical studies of affect, this essay aims to achieve three goals. First, to analyze how psychological and ideological processes of melancholy are transformed in Millás's text into a sort of autobiographical simulacrum that deliberately blends fiction and autobiography, thus laying the groundwork for a possible challenge to the tendency to reduce literary works to mere historical documents, and the creativity of writers to psychological diagnoses. Second, to reformulate the medical and political conception of melancholy in an aesthetic conception that locates a strange form of knowledge in black humor—understood both as melancholia in the Hippocratic tradition and as a comedy of despair. Finally, to examine how this reformulation of melancholy in humorous terms interrogates cultural critiques of "desencanto," insofar as such interpretations may themselves be self-referential and disenchanted—while melancholy may work as a model for hope.
Acto de Odio: Los Abanicos del Caudillo Y El Caso de la (In)Visibilización del Disenso en la Cultura de la Transición
Abstract:Este artículo estudia Los abanicos del Caudillo del poeta navarro Ramón Irigoyen. El poemario fue seleccionado en 1980 como ganador de las ayudas económicas a la creación literaria convocadas por el Ministerio de Cultura de la Unión de Centro Democrático. Sin embargo, solo un año después y tras haber entregado una versión más trabajada, el jurado denegó la segunda mitad del premio, arguyendo motivos de índole estética. A la luz del examen que se desarrolla en este estudio, esta justificación constituyó un intento del Estado de invisibilizar la carga política del poemario mediante la autocensura. La crónica autobiográfica elaborada en los versos de Irigoyen se conforma como examen, denuncia e interpelación poética, ética y política de la transición. En sus versos, ese periodo aparece como memoria y legado irresuelto del franquismo. Particularmente relevantes son los actos de habla con que la voz poética se dirige con odio a sus lectores-Este odio revela la frágil fantasía de consenso sobre la que se construyó la democracia española. La obra de Irigoyen denuncia el déficit democrático pero, a la vez, su recorrido en el campo cultural de la transición obliga a matizar su juicio y, prestando atención a las alternativas propuestas desde la literatura, a reconsiderar las dinámicas existentes en el campo de la Cultura de la Transición.
Mutiny Echoes: India, Britons, and Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities
This essay asks what, if any, import the Indian ““Mutiny”” of 1857 had on A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens�s fictionalized account of the French Revolution. Begun shortly after the Indian uprising started, Dickens�s historical novel appears studiously to avoid any mention of events on the Indian subcontinent, even though these events preoccupied and enraged the author. Few scholars have attended to the question of A Tale of Two Cities and the ““Mutiny,”” but when they have, scholars have looked for analogies between India and Dickens�s account of the French Revolution. In this essay, by contrast, I examine A Tale of Two Cities in a larger context——of Britons9 response to the Uprising, of Dickens9s short stories and essays in Household Words in the years before the ““Mutiny”” and immediately after, of Dickens9s disenchantment with aspects of British culture, and of his need to articulate a national identity grounded in action. I argue that the events in India were the match that ignited Dickens9s already established midcentury interests in national identity, nobility, and masculine heroism. I do not wish to suggest that A Tale of Two Cities is an Indian ““Mutiny”” novel, but rather that it is a novel about the ““Making of Britons,”” an important endeavor for an author who was intensely dissatisfied with the Britain that he saw around him.