Historical Range in the Narrative of Carlos Casares. Twentieth-Century Galicia and the Role of Intellectuals

Abstract

The present contribution focuses on the “central arch” of Carlos Casares’ narrative, a narrative cycle which opens with the novel Xoguetes para un tempo prohibido and completes with the trilogy formed by Ilustrísima, Os mortos daquel verán and Deus sentado nun sillón azul. A thematic approach is adopted here by looking at this part of his work through the lens of the History of Ideas with the aim of showing, first, that this narrative cycle offers a particular reading of one moment in recent Galician history –a moment including roughly the two first thirds of the twentieth century– and, second, that the opinion of Carlos Casares on the role of the intellectual in the modern world and his perception about his own position as an intellectual are both encapsulated in that particular reading.