‘Fascism In Catalonia’ In Merce Rodoreda’s Death In Spring- A Study

Abstract

Merece Rodorera is a well-known Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Among Rodoreda's works, Death in Spring, translated in English in 2009, is hailed as a masterpiece. Rodoreda fled her nation and went into exile during the Spanish Civil War, later returning to her homeland after living in exile in France and Barcelona. During her exile, she authored Death in Spring, which was only published after her death. Rodoreda appears to have written this work in Catalan while in exile. She imagined what her motherland would have endured under Franco's fascist and authoritarian rule in Catalonia. Franco's fundamentalist regime enforced in Catalonia and Spain the policy of one language, one culture, and one nation. Rodoreda, as an expatriate, appears to depict the influence of fascism subtly via symbols and pictures. This research attempts to trace how fascism is represented in this literature. Death in Spring by Rodorada is a complicated work filled with rich and intense symbolism and imagery. The term itself is an illustration of this, as spring is a season of fresh birth rather than death. Life and death, courage and fear, desire and despair, young and old, good and evil, and spirit and body are all examples of binaries. There is a schism between beliefs, customs, and myths. It is clear in the writing of an exile. The novel is also a meta-fiction on the technique of novelization.