Reality, fantasy and ideology in pere calders' poetics

Abstract

This paper analyses the value and meaning of the concepts «reality» and «fantasy» in Pere Calders' literary world, as the foundations of a literary attitude upholding the imaginary and the fantastic and facing realistic literature of committed or testimonial nature. Secondly, it analyses the author's critiques of positivist scientism and his claim of art and literature as gnoseological alternatives. The analysis of two short stories completes the ideological approach to Calders' oeuvre: «The First Harlequin», as opposed to religious thinking, and «The Streak and the Wish»,2 as a metaphoric view of Catalonian exile.