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Literary texts which do not conform to a realist and mimetic practice have been generally disregarded by critics in the context of Mexican literature, even though a significant number of texts following this tendency have been published since the nineteenth century. This paper focuses on science fiction, one of the categories of ‘the unusual’ in Mexican literary productions, and more specifically on the subgenre of the dystopia. Many examples of this tendency can be found in different literary and filmic expressions, particularly since the end of the twentieth century. Through the analysis of four novels by recognized contemporary authors (Fuentes, Aridjis, Boullosa and Sheridan), this article explores the main themes present in this tendency and proposes a distinct typology for this subgenre in contemporary Mexican fiction, which addresses the extra-textual connections between the texts and the tragic events witnessed by the country in the last decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bernardo Atxaga in Obabakoak (1988), as elsewhere, develops deep metaliterary discussions about Euskara, the Basque language. This paper puts Atxaga's metaliterature into the context of Boccaccio and Cervantes linguistic fights, romantic philosophy, and today's linguistic politics. The Euskara language has a negligible literary tradition according to a number of Basque authors, such as B. Atxaga and Iban Zaldua, among others. Anything written before the 1980s would be of little value by international standards, but Obabakoak changed the landscape. Atxaga offers a combination of wit, literary tradition and theory, and good story telling at the service of literature written in Euskara. But, building a literary tradition in Euskara is also a political stance, and Atxaga's own linguistic politics are based on an artful discussion of plagiarism, originality, language status, and literary tradition. Yet, in Obabakoak, the debate on how to create an international tradition for Basque literature ends in the mumbling of a wilful narrator neutralized by a lizard that eats his brain and words away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the death of the dictator, Spanish cinema began to offer a series of films committed to portraying the Civil War. These narratives often selected characters from the Republican side—civilians or combatants—underscoring their suffering and the violence that characterized this era. Yet, it could be asked whether these productions genuinely attempt to rehabilitate the Republicans, who previously had been so vilified. In contrast to the films made during the dictatorship, which were based on simplified and mythical representations, do these new stories succeed in creating new myths? This paper sets out to examine what has changed and what has not in representations of the Civil War in film productions from the transition to democracy onwards. In this way, we can analyse how aspects of the Francoist myth-making persist in certain films which retain obvious links to the cinema of the dictatorship. It also explores how the representation of the war evolves in five films dealing with two Republican myths: the siege of Madrid and the defence of Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]