Durham E-Theses `A pesar de todo, hubo algo comico en aquello': Humour in the Postwar Spanish Social Realist Novel HILBORN, MATTHEW How to cite: HILBORN, MATTHEW (2019) `A pesar de todo, hubo algo comico en aquello': Humour in the Postwar Spanish Social Realist Novel, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13187/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 ‘A pesar de todo, hubo algo cómico en aquello’: Humour in the Postwar Spanish Social Realist Novel Matthew David Kyte Hilborn Master of Arts by Research in Hispanic Studies School of Modern Languages and Cultures Durham University 2018 Supervisor: Dr. Michael Thompson Abstract Whilst a darkly comic vein is often acknowledged in Spanish neorealist cinema, the postwar social realist novel has been pigeonholed as dispassionate, solemn, and sombre, featuring monotony, disgust, and filth. One character in El Jarama (1956) encapsulates the mood: ‘una vida que no tiene chiste’ (57). However, this thesis argues that, alongside the brutality, an undercurrent of dark, sardonic humour encourages laughter from the bleakest of situations, before immediately questioning the veracity and appropriateness of this mirthful reaction. Full-length studies of Laforet’s Nada (1945), Cela’s La colmena (1950) and Sánchez Ferlosio’s El Jarama (1956) introduce the term ‘grey humour’ to describe an amusement born fundamentally, and paradoxically, out of weariness and tedium. The thesis cements its understanding of the comic in the latest advancements in the field of Humour Theory, exploring five central manifestations of Francoist feel-bad comedy: 1. How the humour of hardship and its mordant irony destabilise the testimonial, realist stance 2. What it means to be just joking (both 'fair', and 'only’ joking), given the complicity and hostility of the narrator 3. What I call grey humour and the comedy of comedown: the debilitating humour of hiatus, bathos, and tedium 4. Comic-kazi humour: the laughable fallout of a splintered self, when characters find their situation and their bodies ludicrous but inescapable 5. The degradation of fiesta atmosphere through the corruption of Bakhtinian carnivalesque laughter, and the resultant comedy of failure and discontent To treat these novels as dreadfully comic unsettles many existing readings of reception, interpretation, and affect in the Spanish postwar novel. It establishes that social realism is capacious enough to encompass comedy (and vice versa), thus capturing the full flavour and complexity of experience. This thesis will ask how comedy affects the representation of social conditions (and the reception of such representations), and whether this humour of hardship is ultimately critical or collusive. Contrary to criticism that has worked hard to perceive a critical function, undercutting triumphalist rhetoric under Franco’s regime, social realist humour serves not to overcome the misfortune but, merely, to endure it. Contents Introduction: The Greying of Humour? 7 1. ‘A pesar de todo, hubo algo cómico en aquello, chica’ – Nada (Carmen Laforet, 1945) 29 2. A Sting in the Tail – La colmena (Camilo José Cela, 1950) 67 – A Note on Pabellón de reposo (Cela, 1943) 100 3. Grey Humour: The Comedy of Tedium – El Jarama (Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, 1956) 107 Conclusion: A Hollow Humour 140 Bibliography 152 Appendices – Appendix A: The (Amusing) Dearth of Mirth on Social Realism 182 – Appendix B: The Rumour of Humour – The ‘60s Social Novel 213 Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Michael Thompson. I could not have achieved this thesis without his continual feedback and encouragement, and it is with great pleasure that I continue to a doctorate under his tutorship. Thank you also to the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, which awarded me a Faculty Scholarship to undertake this research. My parents, David and Mia, and my sister, Alice, have listened throughout the project and have offered sound and sympathetic advice, especially on cutting down a first draft of over 100,000 words! I love you all. A massive thank you must also go to Alex Ross, a great friend who has been there right from the beginning. Academia can be a strange beast at times, and I thank you for keeping me sane through the good and the bad. Estela García has been my rock, even at my lowest troughs. Your warm, cheery disposition is pure and precious, and I could not have done this without you. A major debt of gratitude is also to be owed to Miss Dominique Saulnier, who was there for me when I needed her most. Thank you for your laughter, verve, compassion and understanding, and for allowing me to pick your brain about the knottiest parts of the thesis. Thank you for putting a smile on my face, and for extracting me from the umpteenth rabbit hole of the week day. Special gratitude goes out to Miss Marta Muñoz Mora for her unwavering support and guidance on this bold undertaking. Despite the distance that separates us, you have been a bright spark throughout, and have lightened up even the gloomiest of days. Thank you for putting up with me when I’m a cascarrabias. Last but not least, thank you to Miss Isabella Bird for her delicious white chocolate panna cotta (and much else besides), which kept me going when nothing else could. Thank you for your endless pearls of wisdom and level-headed approach. Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. – Friedrich Nietzsche When I was very young and in the cave of Trophonius I forgot to laugh. Then, when I got older, when I opened my eyes and saw the real world, I began to laugh and I haven’t stopped since. I saw that the meaning of life was to get a livelihood, that the goal of life was to be a High Court judge, that the bright joy of love was to marry a well-off girl, that the blessing of friendship was to help each other out of a financial tight spot, that wisdom was what the majority said it was, that passion was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined 10 rix-dollars, that cordiality was to say ‘You’re welcome’ after a meal, and that the fear of God was to go to communion once a year. That’s what I saw. And I laughed. – Kierkegaard, Either/Or Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping! – William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (IV.iii.486) 6 Introduction The Greying of Humour? MR. PLOPPY: Ah no, Sir, he’s the executioner. But he does sometime make the tea. BLACKADDER: Yes, and your name is? BALDRICK: Baldrick, my Lord, but I’ll change it to Ploppy if it’ll make things easier. BLACKADDER: No thank you. I can cope with more than one name. What are you doing here? BALDRICK: Well, it's a hobby. MRS. PLOPPY: It would be more… more fun, Sir, if he were to change his name. Give the place a more family atmosphere. BLACKADDER: A family atmosphere? This is meant to be a place of pain and misery and sorrow. MRS. PLOPPY: That's what I mean, Sir. MR. PLOPPY: Eh, Mistress Ploppy is a bit of a social realist, Sir. – Blackadder (BBC), Season 2 Episode 2: ‘Head’ (1986) Several scholars have observed that social realism, within postwar Spanish cinema, is distinctively shot through with dark comedy. Indeed, for Tatjana Pavlović (2009: 89), ‘[o]ne characteristic that distinguishes Spanish neorealism from its Italian counterpart is its use of esperpento’.1 Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar agrees: ‘entre los años 50 y 60 se dio en España cierto neorrealismo que, a diferencia del italiano, era más feroz, más divertido y menos sentimental’ (quoted in Vidal i Llorens 1989: 116). As early as 1954, García Escudero (quoted in Ferrando 2009: 230) had already identified a ‘dark neorealism’ in Spanish cinema, which he further subdivided into ‘sombre’ and ‘bitter’, and of a neorealism that he qualified as pink (laughable, unobjectionable, sainetesco). However, a corresponding blend of the 1 Esperpento is a darkly comic vein, built on distortion, exaggeration, and inversion of hierarchies, that is prevalent in Spanish culture. Coined by Valle-Inclán in Luces de bohemia (1924), Nil Santiáñez defines it in his study of Valle’s theatre as ‘a radical form of literary and political dissidence’, featuring ‘the comic and the grotesque’, ‘ridicule and debasment’, ‘attraction to the decadent’, ‘profanation’, and an ‘erosion of the line dividing the serious from the comic’ (2004: 485). 7 ferocious and the amusing in depictions of downtrodden, everyday individuals has not yet been explored within the postbellum novel of the 1940s and 1950s.