|
Search the site
|
|
Casey Butterfield (Comparative Literature Major)
"Transcending Language: Carme Riera and
Post-Franco Catalan Literature"
Sponsor: Professor Emilie Bergmann, Spanish and Portuguese
Project Description
Casey will examine the situation of Catalan women writers in the first generation following the death of Franco through close literary analysis of author Carme Riera's body of work and further study of her cultural reception in Spain as a feminist author using a minority language. The completed analysis will constitute her Senior Honors Thesis in the Comparative Literature major. Since little of Riera's work has been translated into English, Casey will also translate several of her short stories to offer a sampling of Riera's views and method to non-Catalan scholars. This summer, Casey will travel to Mallorca to study the Balearic dialect of Catalan that Riera uses in her work, and will conduct archival research on Riera in Barcelona at the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya.
Scholar's Photo
Scholar's Journal
6/19/01
Now that I’m reading Dins el darrer blau, in Spanish, a plan for my thesis is finally beginning to take shape in my head.
I’ve been dutifully following my project plan these last two days, out of guilt – speak as much Catalan as possible, find a tutor, follow up on conversation partners, KEEP CALLING PEOPLE – but my thesis still felt unfocused. My project plan title, Transcending Language, kept sticking in my head. And today I’m really starting to understand what I want it to mean, how it ties into my own experience:
(And here I am so inspired that I begin to write in Catalan; I will translate it for the sake of any and all readers of this journal) Dins el darrer blau is a novel with a theme that Carme Riera has never experienced (She’s not a Jew! She’s only Majorcan!) other than through the research she herself conducted prior to beginning the work.
6/22/01
A majority of Riera’s novels and short stories are all quite fictional, yet their literary self-consciousness and attention to theory makes them seem like almost autobiographical representations of Riera’s academic self. When writing about her, therefore, do I want to take a novelistic route that parallels her own path, as in writing about myself researching her writing about other researchers writing about authors? Or do I want to take a more analytical route, such as an analysis of that first thought? I’d rather take the novelistic route. It just seems like the perfect way to tie all of my findings about her career trajectory together.
6/24/01
6:35pm
The excellent things about cafe Ca’n Joan de s’Aigo:
- It’s five minutes from my apartment
- They play classical music, or none at all
- "Desde l’any 1700"
- Les ensaimades de crema
- Crazy green chandeliers
- The old-fashioned Mallorcan waiters
- The old-fashioned Mallorcan waiters, who are also extremely friendly
- It’s so CHEAP!
- You can stay forever and write
6/25/01
From the Diario de Mallorca: "The temperature yesterday exceeded the June record for the last twenty years by five degrees." Lucky me...on Saturday I could taste the air when I went outside. With each breath I was taking this tangible column of air in, like breathing in steam from a plate of food. You can make your throat feel it if you do it right, lifting up the uvula or some such thing. This is not California hot. Not even Florida hot, although it is terribly humid. No, this is HELL hot. I’m currently wearing a soaking wet shirt that had been "drying" on my stone windowsill since this morning. I may now smell like a moldy old wine cellar, but at least I am a bit cooler.
On to more comfortable things – I’m enrolled at the air-conditioned Centre d’Autoaprenentatge de Català, to which I trot off each day with my computer to type out all the complicated grammar norms one whould expect of such an antique language. Every rule of Catalan has an exception, and for many sounds there ar eno absolute rules, the explanation of which always ends in an enthusiastic exhortation by the author to read and write as much Catalan as you can, because THERE’S REALLY NO OTHER WAY.
7/1/01 Field trip to Deià, Riera’s birthplace
Got here at 1. Bus ran aground five minutes before we got into town. Now at Las Palmeras [restaurant]. Everyone inside is speaking Catalan, which is a nice non-tourist change.
Got here and sat on a shady stone (beige, like everything here) bench first to get rid of the nerves from the crash. Didn’t know what to do (Ca’n Rasca? Donde???), so I climbed up the hill to Hostal Miramar and asked. They knew – thirty ears ago. I go down again, past Sa Vinya, wondering if I’m near Carme Riera’s house (no.7 in particular gives me pause because of the font of bouganvilla next to the door, the cheery tile number by the gate).
I follow the signs to the other town center at the top of a small hill. I was experiencing the most amazing sentiments today (the cemetery, alone, the cool dry air of the church, its thick white walls keeping out the heat much better than the Esglèsia Montsió where I stumbled into yesterday in Palma, intrigued by the red Persian carpet and the thick, opaque embroidered curtains – a wedding, obvious now) and walking on the old wall in front of La Seu and stumbling around the more interesting, crumbling parts of town.
7/6/01 Conference on Catalan Women’s Literature, London
I met her! I met Carme Riera! And she’s so tiny! I felt as if I was looking down on her when we were introduced. All the young lecturers (and Carme) tell me that I speak Catalan very well.
I’m terrible w/ first impressions, and this was no exception. I couldn’t even tell her what I was working on – Emilie had to make me do it later when she forcibly introduced me to her again, saying "Estic molt orgullosa de ella," which made me sort of embarrassed, but for which I was also very grateful.
I’ve met great people here and I’m trying to take advantage of the networking as much as I can (I’ve also been taking notes on the presentations made). I want remember this evening, inside at dinner and outside at the bar after the rain and kind Maria Barbal and tiny Carme Riera, the Carme Riera, stifling a yawn at 10 o’clock at the table.
9/18/01
Have turned in my thesis proposal to Comp Lit authorities and will begin writing as soon as this Fulbright madness is over (9/24). The final plan is a tripartite thesis, in creative nonfiction form: an analytical paper on Riera’s preference for writing about young women doing research abroad (finished in December), my translations of her work illustrating this theme, and journal entries from throughout my project, the last of which will provide a narrative frame for the final presentation. Ask me in February how well I’m sticking to this.
|
