Los memorialistas o de los héroes contemporáneos

Abstract

This paper analyses the memoirs of two Spanish authors, Juan Luis Panero and Josefina Aldecoa, witnesses of the Spanish Civil War and/or of the following Francoist repression, focusing on the technique they make use of in order to create their self-portrait. The study of these literary works will show the use of the same pattern that are a characteristic of the hero’s journey. More specifically, we study the affinity between memoirists’ personal recall of the past and the stages through which a myth is usually organized, starting with the initial call to go on adventure, the road of trials he must get over and, finally, the hero’s return to his ordinary world with the treasure he gained. In this way, it will be possible to understand fully not only how an ordinary life is converted into myth, but also the reason why these mythemes revitalise themselves in the contemporary memoirs.