Through the Looking Glass: Marçal’s Literary Revision in ‘Joc de màscares’

Abstract

The Catalan poet Maria-Mercè Marçal is celebrated for her defence of her nation, gender, and proletarian class—concerns which pervade her output. To a certain degree, however, these issues have served to condition the critical response. The present article seeks to provide a less restrictive approach from a perspective which is more literary in orientation. Informed by the canonical deviation at the heart of Bakhtin’s dialogism and Kristeva’s intertextuality, the Catalan’s lyrical short story ‘Joc de màscares’ (1995) is posited as a creative and ideologically critical revision of Valle-Inclán’s Sonata de otoño (1902), one of the classics of Spanish modernism. Of additional interest in this respect will be the reconsideration, seemingly effected by the author, of the autobiographical dimension to her work. It is proposed that, when this story is viewed through the lens of Wayne Booth’s seminal speculation on the tension between the ‘Implied Author’ and the ‘Flesh and Blood Person’, a clearer understanding can be achieved of the development of Marçal’s triumphant yet tragic identification of autobiography and verse in the sestinas of ‘Terra de Mai’ (1982).