Espana: Mito y realidad en el cancionero de la guerra civil espanola
Description
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) has been treated frequently in literary as well as in historical studies. However, scholarly work on the songs of the Spanish Civil War has lagged behind literary studies. This dissertation examines the songs of the Spanish Civil War and explores the dialectical relationship between history and popular lyrics within a social and literary framework. An understanding of the function of the popular war song contributes to our comprehension of the importance of popular poetry among certain social groups or classes of Spanish society during the 1930's The present work, using as examples some 100 songs, analyzes them according to their context, function, and themes. In each chapter I explore the historical and literary antecedents of the Spanish Civil War song as historical document and as popular literature The first chapter of this study focuses on the interrelationships of literature and popular song in Spain. The primary emphasis is on the place of musical lyrics in the history and development of Spanish poetry. This chapter also analyzes the song's poetic structure and style at the lexico-semantic and linguistic levels and it provides as well an introduction to their ideological content The next four chapters form the body of the thesis. The first two chapters discuss the theme of the two Spains, which Menendez Pidal has identified as 'conservative' and 'progressive,' and which have characterized Spain throughout its history. These chapters explore the ideological bases that inspired both sides, the Republicans and the Nationalists, and their representation within the Civil War song The final two chapters center exclusively on the religious question and on the meaning of death in the war song. These two subjects, with deep roots in Spanish life and literature, are of fundamental importance to the poetry of the song I conclude by suggesting that in the popular song of the Spanish Civil War we see the problematic interaction of two literary discourses, one critical and the other fictional, with both dependant on the historical period in which they developed