Overview

"Bilingual Legacies examines the role of father figures in shaping several major authors' gender and linguistic consciousness in Spain after Franco's dictatorship. Bilingual Legacies examines fatherhood in the work of four canonical Spanish authors born in Barcelona and raised during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Drawing on the autobiographical texts of Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Barral, Terenci Moix, and Clara Jans, the book explores how these authors understood gender roles and paternal figures as well as how they positioned themselves in relation to Spanish and Catalan literary traditions. Anna Casas Aguilar contends that through their presentation of father figures, these authors subvert static ideas surrounding fatherhood. She argues that this diversity was crucial in opening the door to revised gender models in Spain during the democratic period. Moving beyond the shadow of the dictator, Casas Aguilar shows how these writers distinguished between the patriarchal ""father of the nation"" and their own paternal figures. In doing so, Bilingual Legacies sheds light on the complexity of Spanish conceptions of gender, language, and family and illustrates how notions of masculinity, authorship, and canon are interrelated."

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9781487545000

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Reviews

An important contribution to both the study of autobiography and bilingualism in post-Franco Spain. A richly detailed analysis of canonical and less known titles puts them in a new light where the politics of language become inseparable from family stories. Bilingual Legacies is essential reading about the intricacies of literary depictions of Spanish and Catalan linguistic identities. - Alberto Medina, Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University Through an illuminating reading of the autobiographical works of four major literary figures - Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Barral, Terenci Moix, and Clara Janes - Anna Casas Aguilar interrogates the complex interplay of compliance and rebellion and exposes how familial affiliation impacted their lives as writers and particularly their choice of literary language. - Mario Santana, Associate Professor of Spanish Literature, University of Chicago Through brilliant close readings, Bilingual Legacies tackles politically fraught issues of literary, linguistic, and gender subjectivity. It also reveals the centrality, as well as the potential lines of fracture, of the masculinist and patriarchal literary economy in which the authors operated. This is an important book, one that helps us better understand the linguistic and gender dynamics of contemporary literary discourses in Spain and Catalonia. - Javier Krauel, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Colorado at Boulder

Author Information

Anna CASAS AGUILAR is an assistant professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of British Columbia.

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