Memory, language and trauma in the work of Félix Grande

Abstract

My thesis explores how memory and trauma permeate the work of the poet Félix Grande (Mérida, Spain, 1937). It addresses the question of how his particular understanding of memory is opposed to a rather bleak view of it held by many other Spanish poets of the time. Grande does not yield to a generalized discrediting of memory. On the contrary, memory is the driving force behind his writing, and this thesis constitutes an analysis of its mechanisms. The originality of Grande’s work stems from the ways in which it shares common ground with contemporary research carried out by disciplines that integrate Memory and Trauma Studies. His poetic voice struggles to grasp aspects of memory whose articulation proves traumatic. These elements resist symbolic translation and turn his poetry into a work of constant rumination without closure. Grande’s work illustrates that literature is both inextricably linked to memory, and is well equipped to deal with trauma, as the labour carried out by memory, weaving and un-weaving, especially in its attempts to mourn, is at the heart of his artistic production. Finally, his work instantiates a relationship with language and memory which, while recognising the limits of language to express and of memory to retrieve the past, goes beyond this initial distrust to offer a positive perspective on these faculties, as the means for establishing modes of survival and rethinking our connections to the unknown.