Cartographier l'Espagne, ausculter le combat. La guerre civile espagnole dans la littérature européenne (France, Italie, Royaume-Uni)

The purpose of this research is to discover through the analysis of some novels written between 1945 and 1975 how the Spanish Civil War was represented by European writers. The goal is to find a shared imagery in the texts, taking as starting point the literary production of three countries in particular: France, Italy, United Kingdom. After a follow-up on the literary reception and response to the traumatic Spanish event by the European literature, the second phase of the project involves a careful analysis of the spaces that are represented in the novels: the aim of this analysis is to understand their role and their meaning in the narrative dynamic. After reviewing interior and exterior spaces, putting in evidence their interconnections and significations in relation to the Spanish Civil War, a sort of geography of the spatial representations proposed by the three literatures has been created: this geographical map shows how space description can be useful to describe the civil conflict in a very original way. The last phase of the project focuses on a particular image of the war: the illness seems in fact to be a recurring image in the majority of European novels as a metaphor of the Spanish Civil War. This metaphor reproduces medically the contrasts and the tensions that have emerged from the spatial analysis. In addition to being a particularly effective image, the illness seems to entertain a very close and unexpected relationship with violence.