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The influence of Hollywood Movies and Marsé's novels - Based on Caligrafía de los sueños (2011)

김광희 1

1한국외국어대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Juan Marsé was born in 1933 in Barcelona. Being the son of a City cleaner,he was able to watch, from a very early age, all the films he desired, as manytimes as he wished. This privilege meant a great help in future years, whenhaving to develop the plots and characters of his works. In his last (latest) novel, Caligrafía de los sueños, published in 2011, as hehas done in his previous works he uses a cinematographic frame again. Theexplicit references to Hollywood's Golden Age -such as John Ford's Stagecoachand Cecil B. DeMiller's The Plainsman- bring very specific and vivid imagesto the reader's mind, leading to clear physical and psychological associations. The aim is achieved: the reader's attention is caught immediately. However,characters, plot and cinematographic structures are actually distracting mirages. They make the reader expect a predictable ending which, in fact, will be verydifferent. Therefore, the surprised reader must step back, in order to approachthe main topics of the novel from a certain distance. Doing so, he's followingthe Theory of the Distancing Effect. He becomes aware of the need of a newperspective on social problems that he had considered as familiar justo a fewmoments before. Thus, he is getting prepared for a more objective interpretation,such as the futility of war and the ideological differences that led to the(Spanich) Civil War and all its devastationg effects.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.