Nova Narrative Gauge: Galician Literature Trends and Authors

Nova Narrative Gauge Characteristics

The Nova Narrative Gauge (NNG) incorporates assimilation techniques and a series of fundamentally innovative processes utilized in the universal narrative of the 20th century. Writers of this group began their work in the late 1950s and 1960s. These heterogeneous authors share common traits: influence from foreign writers starting in the 1930s (such as Faulkner and Kafka), publishing their first works in the 1950s and 1960s, and involving technical renovations where their works remit to a cultural conflict.

Reflection on Alienating Society and the Francoist Dictatorship

The works reflect an alienating society and the insecurity of the Francoist dictatorship, transmitting a cultural disquiet, the recreation of values, myths, and legends. These authors feature antisentimentalism, reflection on social problems, a predominance of urban novelistic spaces, a psychological perspective, and the recurrent application of the absurd.

Processes of Formal Renewal

New narrative techniques emerge: linear time ceases to be objective and passes to be subjective, while narrow spaces become suffocating. The influence of cinema, painting, and comics is clearly perceptible.

Destruction of the Omniscient Narrator

There is a shift to multiple perspectives on life. Characters often become anti-heroes, insignificant in their conflicts, and appear objectified and reified.

Key Authors and Works

Gonzalo Rodríguez Mourullo (1935)

Memoria de Tains (1956): Eight stories that take the shape of letters, presenting fragments of the history of a ruined and destroyed city. The characters appear moved by a tragic destiny that plunges them into anguish.

Camilo Gonser (1931)

Tims Face Square (1980): Set in the streets of New York, where the narrator-protagonist and another character (Olga) move through phantom spaces, heightening the narrator's attitude until he pushes his occasional companion. The final chapter resembles a dream with a false protective impression.

María Xosé Queizán (1939)

A Orixe do Non-Buraco (1965): An objectivist biographical novel focusing on a failed emigrant who returns to Galicia and ultimately dies.

Xoana Torres (1931)

Goodbye, Mary (1970): Addresses the problem of family integration from a rural to an urban world, following migration to Vigo in Galicia during the 1960s. It features two domains: the internal world of the protagonist's mind and the external world of conflict and drama.

Xosé Luis Méndez Ferrín (1938)

First Narrative Cycle: Rejection of traditional customs and classic realism with a thematic innovation driven by a desire for change:

• Percival e outras tormentas (1958): Stories characterized by a climate of terror, mystery, and a mixture of elements from the mythical world of Celtic legend.
• O cego e as antas (1961): Stories developed in an urban environment populated by marginalized characters. The ants serve as symbols of an alienating society.
• Arrabalde do Norte (1964): The first novel, following an objectivist technique, where an anonymous character is presented with an objective and imprecise focus.

Second Narrative Cycle:

• Retorno a Tagen Ata (1972): An allegorical work explaining the emergence of revolutionary Galician nationalism of the 1970s.
• Elipsis e outras sombras (1974): Offers a terrifying vision of institutional violence against rebellious youth.
• Antón e os inocentes (1976): Second novel, urban environment, describing young people of the 1950s youth, the loss of innocence in reality, and the confrontation with evil and injustice.
• Crónica de nós (1980): Stories dealing with the world of guerrillas in the 1940s and academic Compostela.

Third Narrative Cycle:

• Amor de Artur (1982): Recreating Breton narratives and Arthurian myths.
• Arnoia, Arnoia (1985).
• Bretaña, Esmeralda (1987): Gives life to the return of exile and political repression.
• Arraiana (1991): Thematic stories with a varied environment in the space of the "Raia".
• No ventre do silencio (1999): Social and ideological portrait of Compostela in the 1950s.

Characteristics of Méndez Ferrín's Work

Themes include violence, mystery, the recreation of characters and environments from Celtic Britain and legends, the exploration of the absurd, human life anguish, individual and institutional violence, and the development of a unique mythical world.

Carlos Casares Mouriño (1941 - 2002)

First Stage of Narrative Production: Formal renewal with works reflecting common denominators in Galician society under Franco, employing themes and narrative devices of great modernity:

• Vento ferido (1967): Featuring stories by teenagers marked by the presence of violence, fatalism, and frustrated human relationships.
• Cambio en tres (1969).
• Xoguete para un tempo (1975): Recounts the life, adventures, and experiences of the protagonist, Elijah, from childhood to maturity, while binding to the postwar Francoist period.