Łukasz Smuga - Queer Rebels: Rewriting Literary Traditions in Contemporary Spanish Novels

An enthralling enquiry into queer canonicity through the lens of the writer-as-scribe. Queer Rebels is compulsory reading for anyone interested in Spanish gay writing.

Alfredo Martnez Expsito, University of Melbourne

Queer Rebels by ukasz Smuga is an exciting and accurate portrayal of gay literature in Spain between Francos death and the same-sex partnership laws. With a retrospective on Lorca, the author combines new theses and insights on authors such as Juan Goytisolo, Juan Gil-Albert, Eduardo Mendicutti, lvaro Pombo or Luisg Martn.

Dieter Ingenschay, Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin

A strong, detailed contribution to queer discourses in post-Franco Spanish cultural landscape. Dr Smugas work is an investigation on key tropes in Spanish homosexual writing in the work of canonical authors.

Alberto Mira, Oxford Brookes University

While acknowledging the work of his predecessors, Smuga engages in subtle polemics and speaks in his own voice in every chapter. That beautifully modulated voice, coupled with erudition and sense of composition, makes reading Queer Rebels particularly rewarding.

Dominika Ferens, Uniwersytet Wrocawski

Queer Rebels is a study of gay narrative writings published in Spain at the turn of the 20th century. The book scrutinises the ways in which the literary production of contemporary Spanish gay authors Jos Luis de Juan, Luis G. Martn, Juan Gil-Albert, Juan Goytisolo, Eduardo Mendicutti, Luis Antonio de Villena and lvaro Pombo engages with homophobic and homophile discourses, as well as with the vernacular and international literary legacy.

The first part revolves around the metaphor of a rebellious scribe who queers literary tradition by clandestinely weaving changes into copies of the books he makes. This subversive writing act, named Mazufs gesture after the protagonist of Jos Luis de Juans This Breathing World (1999), is examined in four highly intertextual works by other writers.

The second part of the book explores Luis Antonio de Villena and lvaro Pombo, who in their different ways seek to coin their own definitions of homosexual experience in opposition both to the homophobic discourses of the past and to the homonormative regimes of the commercialised and trivialised gay culture of today. In their novels, Mazufs gesture involves playing a sophisticated queer game with readers and their expectations.

ukasz Smuga (PhD) is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Romance Studies, University of Wrocaw, Poland.

This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly monographs and edited collections, focusing on literatures from Central America, South America and the Iberian Peninsula. Books in the series are characterized by dynamic interventions and innovative approaches to established subjects and ground-breaking criticism on emerging topics in literary studies.

Love Magic and Control in Premodern Iberian Literature
Veronica Menaldi

Female Criminality and Fake News in Early Modern Spanish
Pliegos Sueltos Stacey L. Parker Aronson

Medicine, Power, and the Authoritarian Regime in Hispanic Literature
Oscar A. Prez

Queer Rebels Rewriting Literary Traditions in Contemporary Spanish Novels
ukasz Smuga Translated by Patrycja Poniatowska

Human Rights in Colombian Literature and Cultural Production Embodied Enactments
Edited by Carlos Gardeazbal Bravo and Kevin G. Guerrieri

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Latin-American-and-Iberian-Literature/book-series/RSLAIL

Rewriting Literary Traditions in Contemporary Spanish Novels

ukaszSmuga

Translated by
PatrycjaPoniatowska

First published in English 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 ukasz Smuga

Translated by Patrycja Poniatowska

The right of ukasz Smuga to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Publication partially funded by the Initiative of Excellence - Research University programme (University of Wrocaw, Poland)

This book is part of the research project Memorias de las masculinidades disidentes en Espaa e Hispanoamrica (ref. no. PID2019-106083GB-I00, Ministry of Science and Innovation in Spain).

Published in Polish by Universitas 2016

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 9781032156453 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032211572 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781003245124 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003245124

Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC.

Making its way into the hands of an international readership, Queer Rebels is a latecomer. The book dates back to my PhD dissertation, completed at the University of Wrocaw in 2014 and published by Universitas in 2016. I would like to take this opportunity and thank Universitas for permission to have the Polish book translated into English and made available to the foreign reading public.

The project actually commenced more than ten years ago when, as a PhD candidate, I was collecting materials and marshalling ideas for my book. Thankfully, I could always rely on assistance and advice from many kind and generous people in my quest.

First of all, my heartfelt thank you goes to Professor Beata Baczyska and Professor Justyna Ziarkowska of the University of Wrocaw for the support they offered to my then-budding venture in the autumn of 2009. I owe special gratitude to Professor Ziarkowska for all the encouragement I received from her as the supervisor of my dissertation and for her continued friendship ever since. I am also grateful to Professor Rafael M. Mrida Jimnez of the University of Lleida, who despite his busy schedule always made time to share his knowledge and precious insights with me at this early stage of my career; this has not changed yet, and I hope it never will. A big thank you is due to Josep Turiel, the director of the Biblioteca de Lletres at the University of Barcelona, for his guidance in identifying and retrieving valuable resources. The knowledgeable and helpful library staff at the Faculty of Letters at the Complutense University of Madrid offered me the same assistance when I was doing research for the key parts of my study.

Queer Rebels, a corrected and revised version of that book, would not have appeared in English had it not been for support from the University of Wrocaw. I would like to thank the Faculty of Letters for funding the translation and Professor Beata Baczyska, Head of the Institute of Romance Studies, for giving my project a chance again. I gratefully acknowledge that this book has been published under an Open Access licence owing to a grant awarded by the University of Wrocaw from the Initiative of Excellence Research University programme. I am thrilled to know that the book is freely available to anybody willing to read it.