In 2024, we mark two anniversaries that connect the literature of Spain and Ireland through two great authors. We’ll celebrate this occasion with a lecture by researcher Mónica Galindo (UCD, James Joyce Centre), which will include readings from texts by James Joyce (Les Doherty) and Rosa Chacel (Rocío Gómez).
This year is the centenary of Spain’s first publication regarding the work of James Joyce, which was a review by Antonio Marichalar about the upcoming Spanish translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Even though the translation was officially published in 1926, some writers were fortunate to get an early copy of the novel and explore its contents. One of these writers was Rosa Chacel, who immediately fell in love with James Joyce’s novel and started to experiment with his techniques.
The second anniversary commemorates 30 years since the passing of Rosa Chacel (1898 – 1994), a writer from the Generation of '27 and part of the group of women who participated in the cultural and intellectual milieu of early 20th-century Spain known as Las Sinsombrero. Due to the close relationship between her life and her writings, her literary innovations made her a nonconformist and subversive writer, always concerned about her style and trajectory. One of her main influences was the writings of James Joyce, which made her recognise that her work is part of “el mundo Joyce” (Joyce’s world).
This event introduces the audience to the work of Rosa Chacel and its Joycean connections. After a short presentation about the writer, a reading of extracts will show the audience the similarities and differences between the work of both authors. By the end, the event will be followed by a Q&A section.
Mónica Galindo González (1998, Tarifa) is one of the assistants at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin and a language tutor at University College Dublin. During her Erasmus in Birmingham, she decided to explore Dublin. Her first visit to the James Joyce Centre in 2019 was so inspiring that it gave her the idea to research Joycean traits in the work of Spanish writers for her bachelor’s dissertation. Her passion for James Joyce and the work of Rosa Chacel allowed her to continue this project and bring it to University College Dublin, where she recently submitted a research masters dissertation on the same topic. Mónica has also presented papers in three international conferences in Joyce Studies. In June, she will be presenting a paper at the International Joyce Symposium in Glasglow about the symbol of paralysis in Spain and Ireland.
