La novela histórica de Antonio Prieto

Abstract

Antonio Prieto has pursued a versatile career as a professor, critic and novelist. Even though all these activities are extremely coherent, it is for his novels that he is most celebrated. Antonio Prieto holds a singular position within contemporary narrative fiction in Spain, as he remains on the margins of popular groups and currents. This independence, however, has made him be a target of discrimination on the part of both the critics and the modern literary historiography. Prieto’s novels have been mostly appreciated and received in the university context –the space that has best preserved the humanistic knowledge throughout the time and the axis around which the author’s poetics revolves. His poetics is built outside of the «realist» predilections that prevail in post-war Spanish novel, which is also another reason that could explain why he has been excluded of the codes established by literary criticism. Prieto’s key topic in his critical production ―the permanence of the written word throughout the time― coincides with that of his narrative fiction. It is this one that ultimately prevails, since as a narrator, he leaves mark on the chain of tradition. In fact, «writers do not actually solve their problems in their literary work, but rather those problems are dissolved in it, and with the pass of time it must remain as a piece of literary work, as successive texts where they dissolve what must exist in word-format» (my translation)...