Escenarios góticos en la novela neorrural española: casas encantadas y pluriverso

Abstract

Abstract

The article proposes a comparative analysis of three recent novels with a rural setting and which are part of the current revitalisation of gothic writing: La forastera (2020) by Olga Merino, Carcoma (2021) by Layla Martínez, and Las herederas (2022) by Aixa de la Cruz. In these novels, the protagonists are young women who leave the city and return to the family home in the village, thus embodying prototypical characters of “neo-rural” novels, as defined by Geneviève Champeau. They are characterised by a close, if sometimes ambivalent, relationship with their grandmother (living or deceased), who is the main vector of family memory and of a peasant life, contemporary or previous to Franco’s dictatorship. The reading hypothesis is based on the close link between Gothic motifs and the questioning of the dominant modern ontology. After describing the rural setting and the specific narrative forms in which it takes shape in each novel, the study will concentrate on two key aspects: the consideration of a living house, on the one hand, and, on the other, a renewed relationship between the living and the dead. The conclusion, in the wake of Emilie Hache’s work, will highlight the way in which the studied novels heighten the paradigm of generation at the expense of that of production, thus bridging the gap between pre-industrial peasant societies and a way of life more in line with the challenges of the current ecosocial crisis.