En los caminos literarios de la memoria: Soldados de Salamina de Javier Cercas y Sońka de Ignacy Karpowicz desde una perspectiva comparativa
On the Literary Roads of Memory. Soldiers of Salamis and Sońka in a Comparative Approach

Summary/Abstract: In the article two novels are confronted, a Polish one, Sońka by Ignacy Karpowicz and a Spanish one, Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, which belong to the so-called narrative of memory. Both in Poland and in Spain, the third generation of writers is confronted with the traumatic experiences that affected an entire generation in the 20th century and persist in the individual and collective memory of their descendants. Although the historical circumstances to which they refer are very different, certain parallels can be found: in both cases the nations experienced bloody warlike conflicts and then had to suffer several decades of authoritarian regimes. The analysis is carried out in the light of the theoretical premises formulated by Birgit Neumann on the characteristics of the prose of memory, which this researcher considers universal. A comparative study of the two novels allows us to observe that, although it is possible to identify common features of a general nature, the solutions chosen by the writers differ considerably. The differences are observed at the level of the narrative model, at the level of techniques that question the veracity of the story, and also when the novelists introduce various temporal planes.

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