About the author: Dr. Merino received his PhD from the University of Miami, Coral Gables. His is currently Assistant Professor of Spanish at Northern Illinois University.
2001 0-7734-7712-8 This volume deals with the ideological connotations of Cela’s third novel which was a rewriting of a Spanish picaresque classic from the 16th century, the Lazarillo de Tormes. The study analyzes it as a political apologia, an endorsing textual vehicle for the Spanish fascist movement, the Falange. The study develops a category of interpretation related to the rightist engagé literature of the age, which is still infrequent in Peninsular literary studies. Literature of rewritings palimpsests has seldom been studied in depth in Spanish literary criticism, this work makes use of current theory to expose the political and cultural implications of the rewriting of a classic. It substantiates the controversy that Cela’s early novels generated in the post-war Spanish literary environment. It places the novel in its historical, cultural, social and political context. In Spanish.