El matrimonio de la memoria: Historia y Literatura en El Monarca de las sombras de Javier Cercas

Abstract

With the novel El monarca de las sombras(2017) by Javier Cercas we return to the past through the search of the narrator Cercas to find information about the life of his great-uncle, Manuel Mena, who lost his life in the Spanish civil war (1936-1939) . This study focuses on the two types of narration of this memory within the novel. In it, these types are investigated through the pacts of reading by Lejeune, autofiction and docufiction, and the consequences that this narrative has while portraying the post-memory of the Spanish civil war. This work analyzes the novel through a methodology that focuses on narratology and in this way offers the necessary arguments to show the relationship between the two types of narration. To answer this question, the concepts of auto-, docufiction and post-memory are explained. The conclusion is that there is a relationship between the types of narration in the strategies used, such as the stream of consciousness, the use of intertextuality and the appliance of official documents within the text (docufiction). The consequence of portraying the (post)memory is that a narration like this seems to be more objective in kind and that memory can be seen as Janus (the Roman god with two faces) and therefore a dual memory.