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Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, La Saga/Fuga De JB, and The Beyond Borders: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, La saga/fuga de J.B., and the Construction of Literary Fields by Michael L. Martínez, Jr., B.A., M.A. A Dissertation In Spanish Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved Dr. Carmen Pereira-Muro Chair of Committee Dr. Sara Guengerich Dr. Susan Larson Mark Sheridan Dean of the Graduate School May, 2018 Copyright 2018, Michael L. Martínez, Jr. Texas Tech University, Michael L. Martínez, Jr., May 2018 For those professors—Carmen, Sara, and Susan—who, through their dedication and kindness, taught me about the kind of person I want to be… And for my biggest fans: Dad & Grandma. ii Texas Tech University, Michael L. Martínez, Jr., May 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................ vi INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 I. BOURDIEU AND THE GENERAL SCIENCE OF PRACTICES ............ 16 I. Subjectivist and Objectivist Modes of Knowledge .................................... 17 II. Sociological Modes of Knowledge .......................................................... 21 III. Habitus .................................................................................................. 23 IV. Capital ................................................................................................... 31 V. Field ........................................................................................................ 35 II. GONZALO TORRENTE BALLESTER: HABITUS, FIELD, CAPITAL.................................................................. 42 I. A Highly Generative Habitus: The Case of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester .... 44 A. Torrente’s Early Childhood Habitus .................................................. 45 B. Torrente’s Professional Habitus ......................................................... 53 C. The Formative and Intermediate Period ............................................. 54 D. The American Period ......................................................................... 58 II. Surveying the Fields ................................................................................ 63 A. History of Spanish/Galician Relations: The Field of Power ................ 65 B. Constructing the Linguistic Field ....................................................... 70 C. Constructing a National Literary Field: Spain .................................... 77 D. Constructing a National Literary Field: Galicia .................................. 89 E. Beyond Relational Field Positions ...................................................... 96 III. The Master Strategist: Torrente’s Geopolitical Strategies for Accruing Cultural Capital .................. 98 A. Mapping Torrente in the Field of Power: The Politics ...................... 103 B. Javier Mariño .................................................................................. 110 C. The Cervantine Tradition ................................................................. 113 D. Galicia, Myth, and Torrente Ballester .............................................. 123 E. The Latin American “Boom” ........................................................... 129 F. Literary Theory in the United States ................................................. 132 G. Speaking from the Grave ................................................................. 136 IV. Intersections ......................................................................................... 147 iii Texas Tech University, Michael L. Martínez, Jr., May 2018 III. LA SAGA/FUGA DE J.B.: HABITUS, FIELD, CAPITAL................................................................ 153 I. La saga/fuga de J.B.: A Brief Summary .................................................. 155 II. Habitus and La saga/fuga de J.B ........................................................... 159 A. Who Narrates? ................................................................................. 159 B. Breaking the Pact: A Readerly Habitus ............................................ 165 C. The Habitus of José Bastida-as-Character ........................................ 188 D. Conclusions ..................................................................................... 196 III. Surveying the Fields of Castroforte ...................................................... 202 A. Castroforte’s Political Economy: The Goths .................................... 205 B. Castroforte’s Poltical Economy: The Natives ................................... 217 C. Chapter Three: Scherzo y fuga ......................................................... 228 IV. The Struggle for Capital in Castroforte ................................................. 242 A. Discursive Practices: The Goths ...................................................... 244 B. Discursive Practices: The Natives .................................................... 257 IV. CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................... 268 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................ 293 iv Texas Tech University, Michael L. Martínez, Jr., May 2018 ABSTRACT “Beyond Borders: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, La saga/fuga de J.B., and the Construction of Literary Fields” examines the formation of the concept of a national literature by way of a close reading of the 1972 novel La saga/fuga de J.B. by the Galician author Gonzalo Torrente Ballester. Guided by the theoretical framework of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the political, social, and cultural intersections of the traditionally unbalanced center/periphery relationship between Galicia and its suzerain the Spanish State are assessed. Once situated into their historical contexts, it is argued that Torrente and his novel transcend the binaries that have been employed to define the Galician and the Spanish national literary fields. To support this premise, an analysis of the dialectical relationship between the historical context and the text’s formal and thematic characteristics is carried out. This Bourdieusian theoretical approach is then employed to dismantle the exclusionary essence of the binaries that have informed the construction of national literary fields. To conclude, this dissertation proposes a more comprehensive approach to literary fields that accounts for the historically mediated artificiality of their formation. v Texas Tech University, Michael L. Martínez, Jr., May 2018 LIST OF TABLES Table I ................................................................................................. 192 Table II ............................................................................................... 193 Table III .............................................................................................. 226 Table IV ............................................................................................... 233 vi Texas Tech University, Michael L. Martínez, Jr., May 2018 INTRODUCTION Gonzalo Torrente Ballester is now recognized as one of the most influential Spanish novelists of the twentieth-century, though his meteoric rise to popularity in the twilight years of his life was not without its complications. During the better part of a century he wrote more than twenty-five novels, six dramatic works, reams of newspaper articles, and a handful of books of literary criticism. He published his first work, El viaje del joven Tobías, in 1938 and continued to write professionally until his death in 1999. After toiling in relative anonymity for more than three decades, he began his ascent to literary fame in both critical and popular circles alike: in 1972 he published La saga/fuga de J.B., for which he was awarded the Premio de la Crítica; he was inducted into the Royal Spanish Academy in 1974; he published Fragmentos de apocalipsis in 1977, for which he won an unprecedented second Premio de la Crítica; in 1981, he published La isla de los jacintos cortados, the last of his so-called Fantastic Trilogy and for which he was awarded the Premio Nacional de la Novela. In 1985, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, which honors the lifetime achievements of the Spanish language’s most outstanding writers. His long road to literary accolades, however, was late-in-coming due in large part to the vicissitudes of Spanish history.1 Spain throughout the twentieth-century was rife with contentious divides both political and cultural, which reached their culmination in the bloody, internecine Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In the wake of the Nationalist victory, Francisco Franco’s subsequent dictatorial regime sought to unite the fractious nation. Militarism, conservatism, Catholicism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism were some of the elements that permeated the rhetoric of the sole political party of Franco’s Spain, the 1 Texas Tech University, Michael L. Martínez, Jr., May 2018 Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista. In order to curtail dissenting ideologies and justify his own authority as head of state, Franco furthermore promoted the homogenization of a single national Spanish identity. Indeed, “[t]he Franco
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