Psychoanalysing the Nation. A Comparative Reading of António Lobo Antunes’Memória de elefante and Luis Martín‐Santos’s Tiempo de silencio

Abstract

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.