Releasing Nationalistic Tensions: Humour and Politics in Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s El hombre de mi vida and Carme Riera’s Con ojos americanos

• Autores: Ernest Carranza
• Localización: Bulletin of Contemporary Hispanic Studies, ISSN-e 2516-8037, ISSN 2516-8029, Vol. 1, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 111-131
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The increasing tension between Catalan and Spanish nationalisms since the 2000s has caused the topic to be the object of exploration in novels written by Catalan authors, either of Catalan or Spanish expression. While the dominant trend has been to depict nationalistic confrontations and the Catalan political scenario in a serious way, some authors have chosen humour to address the complexities of these issues. Two examples of this approach are Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s El hombre de mi vida (2000) and Carme Riera’s Con ojos americanos (2009). This paper argues that both works use humour in order to overcome the limitations of serious discourse for dealing with ideologically charged topics such as nationalism, while contributing to the release of political tensions. The work employs Michael Mulkay’s theory of humour (1988), as well as the relief and the incongruity theories, as the framework for analysing how the seriousness of nationalism is reversed through comic amusement.