La oscura historia de la prima Montse by Marsé: a poetics of narration at the service of social portraiture

Abstract

Throughout this article, we see how in La oscura historia de la prima Montse Juan Marsé generates a writing project whose aim is to represent, with a clear critical intent, Barcelona’s post-war social milieus. In order to achieve this goal, the author develops a highly personal narrative poetics rooted in the art of storytelling which reflects the relations that Marsé’s literature establishes with the culture and history in which it is inscribed. Thus, we observe how language makes clear the separation between the social classes of the time. On the other hand, we highlight the importance of orality, which intrudes into novelistic writing both to show the importance of what is told in the safeguarding of memory, and to teach the multifaceted nature of memorial processes. Finally, we consider how the author plays with specific rhetorical and stylistic procedures in order to reinforce the symbolic scope of his novelistic discourse and the transcendence of his fiction.