ABSTRACT

This chapter is concerned with one form of expression—narration—as a communication of personal and collective identity, and the possible effects of this narration on the listener or reader. It examines the way in which the act of narration by individuals affects the collective memory and, therefore, changes general perceptions about the national identity. In the cases of Juan Marse and Montserrat Roig, the link between individual narration of personal history and the collective interpretation of national history is made explicit. One of the most powerful explorations of storytelling in Spanish literary history must be Si te dicen que cai by Juan Marse. The influence of a person's life-story on the way he or she receives other people's life-stories is a constant theme of Lopera quotidiana. John D. Barbour's model of the operation of the conscience during the construction of an autobiography rests on the premiss that truthfulness is the ultimate goal of most autobiographers.