Joan Ramon Resina
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318337
- eISBN:
- 9781846317880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318337.003.0015
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
In Direcció Lisboa, Josep Pla effects a redistribution of Iberian cultural space. The Civil War had forced him to accept the utopian character of the Iberian federation, and the demise of this ...
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In Direcció Lisboa, Josep Pla effects a redistribution of Iberian cultural space. The Civil War had forced him to accept the utopian character of the Iberian federation, and the demise of this political ideal strengthened the certainty of irreducible otherness. It was no longer against the foil of Catalan modernity, but against the sensual and sensible Portuguese way of life that Castile appeared in the light of its barbaric disruption of the Peninsula's diversity. Pla framed his travels to Portugal with the trope of the itinerary. The approximations and separations in space do double duty for the conjunctions and disjunctions in time, collecting the variegated themes and descriptions of the Other into the discourse of “travel narrative” but also subjecting them to the interpretive conventions of historical discourse. If Pla indulges in a detailed representation of Portuguese difference, in turn Portugal allows him to de-familiarize Spain in an Iberian representation that competes with official history through the objectivity of presence.Less
In Direcció Lisboa, Josep Pla effects a redistribution of Iberian cultural space. The Civil War had forced him to accept the utopian character of the Iberian federation, and the demise of this political ideal strengthened the certainty of irreducible otherness. It was no longer against the foil of Catalan modernity, but against the sensual and sensible Portuguese way of life that Castile appeared in the light of its barbaric disruption of the Peninsula's diversity. Pla framed his travels to Portugal with the trope of the itinerary. The approximations and separations in space do double duty for the conjunctions and disjunctions in time, collecting the variegated themes and descriptions of the Other into the discourse of “travel narrative” but also subjecting them to the interpretive conventions of historical discourse. If Pla indulges in a detailed representation of Portuguese difference, in turn Portugal allows him to de-familiarize Spain in an Iberian representation that competes with official history through the objectivity of presence.
