Transcription in Twenty-First Century Peninsular Narrative Fiction
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TRANSCRIPTION IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY PENINSULAR NARRATIVE FICTION by MEREDITH L. JEFFERS B.A., Lafayette College, 2005 M.A., University of Colorado at Boulder, 2007 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Spanish and Portuguese 2013 This thesis entitled: Transcription in Twenty-First Century Peninsular Narrative Fiction written by Meredith L. Jeffers has been approved for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese ____________________________ Dr. Nina Molinaro ____________________________ Dr. John D. Slater ____________________________ Dr. Juan Herrero-Senés ____________________________ Dr. Leila Gómez ____________________________ Dr. Robert Buffington Date ____________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above-mentioned discipline. iii Jeffers, Meredith (Ph.D. Spanish Literature, Department of Spanish and Portuguese) Transcription in Twenty-First Century Peninsular Narrative Fiction Dissertation directed by Associate Professor Nina L. Molinaro In my dissertation I examine transcription as a rhetorical figure in six contemporary Peninsular novels: La voz dormida (Dulce Chacón, 2002), Los girasoles ciegos (Alberto Méndez, 2004), Soldados de Salamina (Javier Cercas, 2001), La mitad del alma (Carme Riera, 2004), Llámame Brooklyn (Eduardo Lago, 2006), and Bilbao-New York-Bilbao (Kirmen Uribe, 2008). My analysis is built around one central question: what does transcription add to a work of literature? Literary transcription appears to be a simple means of copying actual and notional source texts and testimony within a work of fiction. But it is a complex, meaningful process. Transcription co-opts and interrogates the conventions of historiography and thus critiques the notion of recovering both history and memory. To demonstrate this, I consider the following: how transcription violates the ethics of politically motivated historical fiction, how transcription signals the lucrative possibilities of representing historical ruin, and how transcription enables characters to simulate a response to absent people and traditions. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing my dissertation has proven to be the most challenging endurance race that I have ever attempted. It has also been the most rewarding. I view my dissertation as the culmination of all of my experiences at CU-Boulder. Everything I learned inside and outside of the Rose Room contributed to the completion of my project. For this reason, I find it impossible to articulate the gratitude I feel towards all of the faculty members, staff, fellow graduate students, and undergraduates who have helped to shape me as a student, a teacher, and a scholar. So here goes my best effort. I first thank my adviser, Professor Nina Molinaro, who has played a principal role in transforming me from a quiet, first-year MA student into a confident doctoral candidate. Nina is a strong, intelligent role model who is passionate about her students and their improvement. Her class on Peninsular literature published after the Spanish Civil War inspired me to specialize in this area and it was in that class, during my first semester, that I was exposed to many of the texts that sparked my interest in the suggestive recurrence of transcription in contemporary works of fiction. Subsequent classes that I took with her served as examples for how to teach effectively and how to motivate others to care about literature. I am grateful for her encouragement, her patience, her dedication, her high academic standards, and her tremendous attention to detail. I do not know anyone who would have read every last word of every last revision as she did. Nor do I know anyone else who rewards marathons with cupcakes. I appreciate every effort she has made and I could not have finished this dissertation without her. I also thank my second reader, Professor John Slater, who has repeatedly discovered more in my work than I ever thought was there. His feedback is as intimidating as it is inspiring. v I admire his wit and his ability to think through a text in new and meaningful ways. He has provided me with invaluable insight that has vastly improved my writing and my belief in myself as a scholar. In fact, every piece of advice he has given me over the last seven years has been unbelievably helpful. Without him, I never would have taken the time to live in Spain and I never would have returned to Boulder ready to complete a doctoral thesis on Peninsular Spanish literature. Both experiences have defined me, for which I express my sincerest thanks. In addition to being patient and flexible, Professor Juan Herrero-Senés has been a careful third reader and a kind educator. He was able to offer me a unique point of view that prompted me to reconsider my understanding of Spain and literature in general. I enjoyed my time in his class and I appreciate the encouragement that he expressed for this project. I also extend my appreciation to the final readers of my committee, Professor Leila Gómez and Professor Robert Buffington. Leila is wonderful and I respect her ability to engage students even in the most controversial discussions. I fully appreciate the time and energy she has contributed toward my progress throughout graduate school. While I have not had the pleasure of taking a class with Professor Buffington, I am grateful for his willingness to meet with me one on one in the early phases of this project. Without even knowing me, he provided me with useful resources and avenues for future investigation. I thank them both for their willingness to serve on my committee because they are both are extraordinary scholars and people. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese has given me so much. In addition to offering me an opportunity to come to Boulder, the faculty, staff, and my fellow graduate students provided me with a desire to stay. vi Last but not least, I would like to thank all of my family and friends. In particular, my parents encouraged me to pursue my interest in literature and education at the graduate level despite the fact that it meant moving across the country. They put my goals in Boulder over their wish to have me closer to home and I thank them for their sacrifice and their unfailing support. My sister, Melissa, I thank for her “opaque” advice and for always making me feel like I never left. To my friends, especially T, B, and D, I cannot thank you enough for being there at all hours of the day and night. I have smiled and laughed throughout this process because of you. I also need to acknowledge the spirit, companionship, and diversion that Daisy offered. She was truly there for every minute of writing and revision, and she motivated me to take breaks and maintain perspective. Finally, Josh, you are the best. There’s no other way to say it: I dedicate this dissertation to you. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 ......................................................................................................................39 CHAPTER 2 ....................................................................................................................101 CHAPTER 3 ....................................................................................................................149 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................187 NOTES .............................................................................................................................194 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................218 1 INTRODUCTION The last several years have witnessed a boom in the publication of Peninsular narratives dedicated to history, memory, and the process of preserving both in print. Within this large narrative corpus, there exists a subset of novels that seeks to explore such issues through the process of transcription, representing both the act of writing down oral testimonies and of copying what is written elsewhere. On the surface transcription would appear to be a straightforward narrative technique, a manner for getting actual and notional antecedent documents and testimony from one location to another. This is what binds transcription in literature to transcription as a procedure utilized in professional fields, the social sciences, and even genetics: the allure of creating an exact copy. However, on a more profound level transcription is a rhetorical figure, one that exposes the impossibility of fulfilling said wish. Not unlike Pierre Menard precisely recreating the Quijote, line for line, into a new version, transcription as a rhetorical figure shows that the desire to replicate is really a fatal attraction. Rather than reproduce, literary transcription situates texts in new contexts and prevents them from ever again existing in the same light. The literary effects of transcription as a rhetorical figure have added significance within the context of Spain in the twenty-first century, which thus far has been consumed by social and ideological debates about historical memory and the exhumation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)