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Con el viento solano de Ignacio Aldecoa y la novelistica española de postguerra

University of British Columbia

Ignacio Aldecoa (1925-1969) is an important figure of the Spanish novelistic revival that has evolved in the decades after the Spanish Civil Far (1936-1939). The present study examines his second novel; Con el vicnto solano (With the East Find), published in 1956, in the light of the literary and historical background of the period, with the purpose of revealing the realities and preoccupations, both literary and social, that it reflects, and of determining its intrinsic value. The study is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter we provide a recapitulation of the Spanish, post-war narrative through the presentation of three established, distinct and complementary critical approaches (the chronological, the thematic and the formal) and through the subsequent explanation of pertinent taxonomy and nomenclature (divisions such as first post-war generation, second post-war generation, new novel, and terminology such as realism, new-realism, neo-realism, objectivism, objective realism, behaviouralisM, nouveau roman and others are discussed). Aldecoa is identified as a member of the generation of novelists of the 1950's recognized as having brought to Spanish literature, from external influences, a needed breath of technical awareness and for having directed the focus of attention to the common everyday aspects of the national social crisis. In the second chapter we explore the themes of the novel in question from the perspective of the three main thematic directions of the period: the "existential" of the forties, the "social" of the fifties, and the "structural" of the sixties. Con elviento solano, in fact, synthesizes these three directions, and by incorporating the last one, it assumes the role of a precursor. The last chapter constitutes an investigation of the formal aspects of the novel. We look at two elements of form (structure, and narrative perspective), to find that this novel shows important advances in Spanish narrative technique that are symptomatic of a new and general visualization of the world. The structure is analysed through the concept of "discontinuity", which in our novel seems to be closely linked to the cinematographic montage technique. Stylistically, AideCoa moves from instances of objective technique to moments of poetic subjectivity, on occasions presenting a selective balance of the two, through which his narrative achieves a characteristic overall sense of objectivity. Furthermore, we also perceive in the narration the sometimes unavoidable involvement of external elements. The presence of objects ("objectalism") has, at times, a fatalistic effect. The ever—present east wind acquires a mythic and deterministic value. As an image-motif, the wind represents the author's fatalistic philosophy and corresponds with the novel's structural discontinuity, thus constituting the integral expression of the work.

Text

2010-03-30

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/23069

Hispanic Studies

University of British Columbia

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