Uncategorized – RMST 202

Thoughts on Carmen Laforet’s “Nada”

In “Nada” Laforet creates a setting where I felt on edge the entire book. Following the orphan protagonist Andrea through the ruins of war struck Barcelona, she navigates a new hostile family dynamic while eager to study. The narration of the story carried a creepy, paranoid, and overall unsettling feeling of post war trauma.

A theme I found that was carried from previous texts so far has been memory. In “Nada” Andrea’s more positive memories of Barcelona come from her childhood spent there. But when she returns …“Everything felt unfamiliar in my imagination; the narrow, worn mosaic steps, lit by an electric light, found no place in my memory” (page 5). The effects of the war seem to disrupt and alter how she sees the city. Like the madeleine cookie in Proust and the family members in “The Shrouded Woman” memories are also triggered but by aspects of the city. For example, on page 10″of the Barcelona in my memory: this sound of the first streetcars”, the painting of her grandparents bring her back to a more pleasant time where she wasn’t trapped in this toxic, almost suffocating, family. It made me wonder how Andrea’s experience in Barcelona would differ if the effects of the war weren’t as prominent.

Looking at the narration style, I noticed that Andrea was mostly uninvolved in the dialogue and was used to further the development of other characters or the plot rather than express her own feelings. For instance from pages 31-34 while her Grandmother and Gloria are engaging in reliving memories and discussion, Andrea is just being talked at. The effect of this is an overwhelming amount of information being thrown at Andrea who we’ve gathered is quite timid and reserved. I think she serves more as a device to carry the story rather than a typical protagonist.

Although it is fiction, I believe this book serves as a great historical account on the mood of the people in Franco’s Spain. Distraught, paranoid, and unable to trust anyone in fear that they’re working for the other side. But Andrea and her family are a fairly wealthy family with servants and a giant mansion so I wonder how this book would differ with a change in social class. It’s hard to ignore the privilege that Andrea’s family has and how it gives them an advantage in the wreck of the war-torn city. I’m curious if any of you have any thoughts about this question on how the social class of the family effects the story.

Overall I enjoyed this book and i’m looking forward to all of your thoughts!

Thoughts on Proust “Combray”

Proust’s Combray reads like an ever flowing stream of consciousness between the lines of sleep and wake. In true modernist fashion, Proust jumps from thought to thought often moving along before assuring the readers understanding. In this way I found it quite challenging to understand at first and felt as if the text dragged on toward the end. However, I really enjoyed the beautiful writing and descriptions in that I felt completely immersed into the world of Combray.

In order to fully capture the thoughts behind the text, I wanted to first understand the significance of the title of this section, Combray. Through his vulnerable words we discover that Combray was the home of his grandparents in which he spend much of his childhood. This is telling as throughout the text he is longing for his childhood in this dreamlike state. It makes me think of how the title of a work usually gives a lot of insight into the work and I wonder if this theme will be consistent throughout the course texts. He seems to use this state as an escape to a better time or as a way of coping with the loss of his childhood, thus making the title quite significant as his safety or comfort net almost. He even explained that through his troubling relationship with his parents he was able to turn to literature (as we are doing in this course as well) to escape reality.

I found Proust’s writing style very captivating and unlike anything I’ve ever read. The dreamlike haze that he is writing from is a universal experience that is hard to capture. That time when you are half awake half asleep often expose your most raw and genuine thoughts which I think Proust captures perfectly. The detail that he uses in describing these visions of childhood (such as the Gothic style architecture, churches, queens and saints) provided great insight and almost transported me into his mind/world. I loved the detail he provided of the architecture as it also gives insight into the time period and place that Proust was living in, truly transporting the reader into a historical era.

Proust encapsulates this idea that memory is what we make of it in the sense that it can be completely fragmented or distorted but we can recreate it through our own thoughts and attachment to certain places. Through Combray Proust idealizes his childhood through much detail and emotion through a dreamlike state.

Week 1 Introduction

Hello!!

My name is Anna Vukota and I’m a second year student majoring in Linguistics and minoring in Spanish. I love listening to music, languages, and reading.

Although I’m taking this course as a requirement, I’ve taken a few Spanish literature courses at UBC and wanted to expand on that through the romance world. Through these courses I was surprised at how immersed I became in the history, culture, and people of Latin America and Spain solely through literature. As a linguistics major, I’m familiar with the history and the structural aspects of romance language family and they have evolved overtime. It will be interesting to look at the languages through literature this time as opposed to through patterns and more logical analysis. I’m also really interested in translated works and how the language effects the ways in which themes are expressed, which will be interesting in this course as all of the texts are translated to English – a Germanic language. The third prompt in the introductory lecture touches on what I’m super interested in which is to examine whether these texts have much in common just because they fall under the same language family. Just because these voices shared the same empire long ago do their stories present commonality?

I’m pretty biased but I’m very excited to read the Spanish texts but also Catalonian. I feel like when it comes to romance languages, Catalan is pushed to the side because of its smaller speaking population and intertwinement with Spain/surrounding nations. It’s such a beautiful language but I don’t know much about the history or the people so I’m interested to read some famous Catalonian works. I’ve also always had a list of “must read” classics I’ve wanted to read but never had the time or energy to dive into such complex and “life changing” texts. I’m hoping that this course will help me check some of those off my list.

The format and structure of this course is really interesting to me but I love the freedom it allows to deep dive and enjoy the readings! It’s really easy to get overwhelmed in literature courses with copious amounts of readings that you aren’t even interested in, so I think the freedom is a great opportunity to get the most out of the course content.

So many questions and curiosities that I hope will be somewhat answered (or not) during this course 🙂 Hope to see you all soon!