Identity and Memory in the 1939 Catalan Literature of Exile

Abstract

The present article reflects on and emphasises the importance of the still-unrecognised work by Catalan writers who bore witness to the exile of 1939 and the preceding historical period of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–39) and the Civil War (1936–1939). The article explores how these exiled writers and their literary corpora played a fundamental role in recovering Catalan historical collective memory and identity. In particular it focuses on two writers, Domenec Guanse and Vicenc Riera Llorca, in the light of recent studies of literary history that have begun this process of re-evaluating the literature of exile, and relates their work to the theories of Lowenthal, Ricoeur and Traverso regarding the past and memory.