Memoria, infancia y guerra civil: El mundo narrativo de Ana Marí­a Matute

Abstract

Ana Marí­a Matute has created a tightly closed narrative world where fiction and reality are mixed through a particular style, thoroughly lyric but full of cruelty. This world is largely shaped by the coexistence of the children's innocent gaze with the disenchanted look of the adults. Paraí­so inhabitado (2008), her latest novel, meets most of the topics that make up Matute's own style: Against the historical background of the Spanish Civil War, the central matter is once again related to the clash of the already mentioned conflicting realities. This paper attempts to analyze the intersection between both features: the distantiated look of the children -who shall live in a world of fantasy until his final defeat and subsequent entry in the world of adults, like every children in Matute's work- displaying a 'translucent' view of the Civil War, an appeal to the memory of a grown-up narrator who introduces her childhood?s remembrances almost without any intervention