The Representation of the Spanish Civil War and Fascism in El siglo, by Javier Marías, and O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis, by José Saramago

Abstract

This article analyses the representation of the Spanish Civil War and fascism in the novels O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis, by José Saramago and El siglo, by Javier Marías. Both texts respond to a desire to recover national history and at the same time testify to the search for new narrative aesthetics connected with international literary modernity. The novels, written in contexts of both political and literary transition, propose an elliptical, indirect and fragmentary representation of the Civil War. In dialogue with the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, we will show that these novels try to produce historical knowledge through the work of the literary form, maintaining a double commitment: to historical memory and with the aesthetic renovation of the literary field.