Description:
A sophisticated introduction to contemporary Basque literature that chronicles its growth and success after the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

By developing a new theory of postnationalism about the relationship between minor and major literatures, this book chronicles the growth and success of Basque literature after the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (1975), and the historical and literary struggles that took place in its aftermath in order to achieve global recognition: the reduction of Basque literature to a representation of an exotic and magic place and people (the Basque Country), best exemplified by Bernardo Atxaga’s novel Obabakoak (1988). The book also deploys postnationalist theory in order to chronicle the way in which women’s literature challenged and changed this model in the 1990s and paved the way for what is now a complex and diverse literature.


CONTENTS:

Introduction: On the English Translation

Postnationalism and Basque Literary History

Minor and Major Literatures: A Postnationalist Approach

From National to Postnational: A Postnational History of Twentieth-Century Basque Literature

Postcolonial and Postnational Literatures: Obabakoak (1988-92)

On Canon Formation: Ethiopia (1978)

The Legacy of Modernism: from Ethiopia to Obabakoak

Before Babel: Globalization, Ethnic Hybridity, and Enjoyment

Terrorism as Memory: Historical Novels and Masochist Masculinity

Maternal Exile: Women Writers, Cultural Politics, and Individual Utopia

Melancholic Migrancy: Writing a Postnational Lesbian Self

Nationalist Crisis: Women’s Literature and Neoliberalism

Epilogue: Basque Literatures 2001-17

Works Cited