Networks of Resistance: The Ágora Literary Circle in Post-War Spain.

This project focuses on a literary network active in Madrid in the decades following the Spanish War. Known as Ágora (1955-1973), the group ran a publishing house, a literary journal and a poetry prize and hosted a weekly soirée that attracted some of the most notable dissident writers and intellectuals in post-war Spain. Remarkably, the group was run by a woman, Concha Lagos, in a period when women were generally excluded from public life and relegated to domestic roles. After the Civil War, Franco implemented a policy of autarchy and isolationism. Scholars have often regarded the culture of this period as cut off from both Europe and the rest of the Spanishspeaking world. This project attempts to revise this inward-looking vision of post-war literature by showing how the Ágora circle managed to create a network of writers that extended not only throughout Spain but also beyond its borders, including Latin American, American, European and exiled Spanish authors. The goal of the project is to recuperate the exchanges among these writers and to trace the role of Ágora in creating a space for dissident literature and thought in post-war Spain. More specifically, it will examine how the circle promoted writers excluded from official literary circles (women, dissidents, etc.) and created contacts with foreign writers who helped to disseminate Ágora authors abroad and whose works were in turn translated and published by Ágora in Spain.

Keywords:SPANISH LITERATURE

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies

Project type:Collaboration project