Beyond Referentiality: New Language and Meaning in Spanish Avant-garde Novels of the Twentieth Century (and Beyond) examines how language is treated as material (rather than medium) in Spanish experimental novels of the twentieth century. Chapter One centers on Cazador en el alba by Francisco Ayala and Víspera del gozo by Pedro Salinas, two key figures of the Spanish historical avant-garde. I demonstrate how these novelas líricas, using uniquely poetic language that embodies the rebellious artistic impulses of the period, rebuff narrative convention and thus compel a reconsideration of meaning. In the absence of plot, these richly sensorial works invite the reader to truly see language not as avenue to story, but as a carefully crafted art object that is itself inherently worthy of appreciation. Taking us into the future of Franco’s dictatorship, Chapter Two analyzes Volverás a Región by Juan Benet, an exemplar of the (revolutionary) nueva novela whose painstakingly dense language obscures narrative action even as it tackles the tragic (and long-lasting) destruction of the Spanish Civil War. I argue that Benet uses linguistic opacity—for him, the zone of the irrational—as an alternate way of comprehending the incomprehensible. In Chapter Three, I study Larva: Babel de una noche de San Juan by Julián Ríos, a product of the lighthearted Movida (and a newly democratic Spain) that nevertheless engages in its own intensely objectifying formal transformations. I show how narrative structure and language are (playfully) mutilated beyond recognition, leaving the reader to contend with an incredibly complex textual labyrinth in which signifiers do not straightforwardly (or reliably) signify. Here, as in the earlier instances, meaning is not a matter of interpretation, but instead attention, a shift that accentuates language’s (innately) material identity.
I will conclude my consideration of Spanish narrative objecthood by turning to the future, the (decidedly contemporary) concept of literary archaeology guiding me through a closing (and again, contemporary) counterpoint –the Proyecto Nocilla by Agustín Fernández Mallo. How do these twenty first century avant-garde novels compare (and contrast) with the earlier examples? What objectifying strategies do they share? What is new? And lastly, how do their particular formal innovations inform—and alter—my understanding of the previously discussed experimental works? In all cases, radical form makes narrative language uniquely dimensional. How does such dimensionality manifest differently in these different historical periods? These are the questions I will answer in order to demonstrate the shared, yet singular materiality that characterizes the language-focused novels of Francisco Ayala, Pedro Salinas, Juan Benet, Julián Ríos, and Agustín Fernández Mallo.