Canarian culture and identity and their representation in the novels of the FFI2014-53962-P corpus

Publication year
2022
Pages
275-296
Comment

This is the English-language version of the same essay in Spanish. Here's the abstract:

This chapter studies the way in which the texts of the corpus compiled for the FFI2014-53962-P project address the representation of Canarian culture and identity. This representation is crucial in the narrative of the novels since in many of them a case is presented for cultures and identities in contact. To facilitate the representation of Canarian culture and identity compared to British culture and identity, the perspective from which the authors write, a series of symbols, both physical and immaterial, are used. These symbols appear in most of the novels and are easily recognized as belonging to the culture of the islands. Through the references to these symbols, which I will describe and illustrate in this chapter, the authors subconsciously reveal their conception of Canarianness, which is in stark contrast to their concept of Britishness.

In her review of the volume, Paloma Fresno Calleja states that:

In Chapter 4, María Jesús Vera Cazorla adopts a more panoramic and, at times, a somewhat descriptive approach to her corpus, exploring how the novels exploit, often in limited or superficial ways, the most recognisable symbols or cultural icons of the islands (Mount Teide, Timanfaya National Park, the Gomeran whistle, or carnival), with surprisingly little variation between novels written in the 1950s and contemporary romances produced at the turn of the twenty-first century. (236)