The transposition of orality to literary writing in contemporaneity: Sefarad (2001) By Antonio Muñoz Molina

Abstract

Sephardic Jews surviving Nazi persecution in France or Hungary, daughters of Communists exiles during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, ex-combatants from the Blue Division of the German army, exiles from the dictatorships of the former USSR or Latin America, Andalusian migrants based in Madrid, these figures anonymous, “real life” characters, become protagonists of the novel Sefarad (2001), by the writer Spanish Antonio Muñoz Molina (1956). Behaving almost as an oral historian, or as an editor of Latin American testimonio literature, the Andalusian writer transposes the oral memories to him into literary writing relied on random conversations, interviews and testimonials. Sefarad is, therefore, written literature nourished by orality. The purpose of this article is to show the process by which Muñoz Molina transforms oral memory into a source for literary writing and the stylistic resources he employs in this endeavor. In addition, we are interested in discussing which is the purpose of transposing oral testimonies to literary writing and analyzing, through the considerations metaphysical narratives, the author's ethical stance in this dynamics of appropriation and recreation of the oral testimony of the other.