Book Description

Silvia Roig explores the narrative of Aurora Bertrana (1892-1974), an unknown writer today, but a successful and recognized female author in Catalonia and Spain during the 20th century. Aurora Bertrana's works are almost never mentioned in manuals of literature. Her rich, intellectual work has not received the attention it deserves, relegated almost to absolute oblivion. The author reviews and studies twenty-four of Bertrana's novels written in Catalan andSpanish, including: Ariatea (1960), El pomell de les violes (MS), L'inefable Philip (MS), La aldea sin hombres (mn.), La madrecita de los cerdos (MS), Entre dos silencis (1958), La ninfa d'argila (1959), Fracàs (1966) and La ciutat dels joves: reportatge fantasia (1971). She studies her work, published and unpublished, from a feminist approach, taking into account the intellectual history of Spain and Catalonia. Bertana's strong commitment to social issues reveals her association with the Modernist and Noucentists trends of her time. Bertrana's novels reveal a unique interest in non-Western cultures and lifestyles and her work undertakes controversial topics and socio-cultural issues, while she observes and draws special attention to the situation of women in different circumstances and cultural geographies. This book is therefore anchored on interpretive and theoretical parameters that intersect with consideration of gender, such as travel-and-gender and war-and-gender. Roig uses the work of feminists such as Simone De Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, Jelke Boesten, Margaret and Patrice Higonnet, Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Julia Kristeva to help assess Bertrana's engagement with gender and socio-political issues. This approach is particularly well suited for a writer like Bertrana, a Catalan and Republican intellectual woman forced into self-exile during the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Silvia Roig is a Faculty Member, BMCC Department of Modern Languages, The City University of New York.