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This article argues that the use of humour and the carnivalesque is not only a productive means to approach the Spanish Civil War, but that a comparison of works that have employed these perspectives reveals the shifting nature of Civil War remembrance in Spain over time. The article compares in particular, Luis García Berlanga's La vaquilla (1986), Eduardo Mendoza's Riña de gatos, Madrid 1936 (2010) and Álex de la Iglesia's Balada triste de trompeta (also 2010). It stresses the role of carnivalesque subversion and of the esperpento tradition as a means of being productively contestatory and thus broadening prevailing memory horizons without disqualifying any one of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores issues of memory, postmemory, and trauma in the domain of the family via close textual analysis of Josefina Aldecoa's Civil War trilogy, Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro, and La fuerza del destino. These novels draw an allegorical parallel between the family and the nation in order to chart the intergenerational transmission of trauma and its overcoming. They thus reveal the importance of Aldecoa's contribution not only to Spain's contemporary memory debates, but also to the broader concerns of theories of cultural memory, postmemory, and the coding of historical experience as trauma. Este artículo analiza los temas de memoria, postmemoria y trauma en el contexto de la familia, con una exposición detallada de la trilogía de novelas de la guerra civil, Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro, y La fuerza del destino, de Josefina Aldecoa. Estas obras crean un paralelo entre la familia y la nación para demostrar la transmisión intergeneracional de trauma y su superación. De este modo revelan la importancia de la contribución de Aldecoa no sólo a los debates contemporáneos en España sobre la memoria histórica sino también a las teorías de la memoria cultural, la postmemoria y la codificación de la experiencia histórica como trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Portuguese novelist António Lobo Antunes’ first work of fiction, Memória de elefante, can usefully be viewed in a comparative context alongside Spaniard Luis Martín-Santos’s novel Tiempo de silencio. Both novels represent a narrative response to dictatorship, and they display common strategies to engage their readers in a psychoanalytic interpretation of late twentieth-century Spain and Portugal and the existence of complicit attitudes to dictatorship therein. A reading of Lobo Antunes’ little discussed novel in the light of works by a comparable Spanish novelist, about whom there is a strong critical tradition, highlights significant new features and refutes the prevailing view of his early work as being postcolonial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the depiction of homosexuality in the novel 'Carajicomedia,' by Juan Goytisolo. Discussion of his treatment of sexuality in his literary works; Expression in the novel which can be read as a reflection by Goytisolo on his previous sexual/textual practice; Treatment of homosexuality in his autobiography.