Reciprocal Gazes on the Iberian/British Other

(Cultural Decline as "Raw Material" for Narrative Excellence)

Lancaster University, 3rd July 2004, 10.30am to 4pm

The authors Lucia Graves and Matthew Tree (both of British extraction but immersed in Spanish/Catalan culture) each have their own unique perspectives on their native and adoptive homelands, which are essential factors in their published writings about their own lived experiences of personal and 'national' periods of crisis. George Orwell and John Langdon-Davies, the subjects of the paper by Miquel Berga, chronicled one such period, the Spanish Civil War, from their own point of view as outsiders who nevertheless had strong personal and political connections to the events they describe.

Some of the questions addressed in this colloquium included:

• Issues of historical and pesonal 'truth': exploring the motivations behind the writing of memoirs;
• Transferences and mutual influences between the writing of fiction and non-fiction;
• Relationships between memoirs and other 'non-fiction' genres such as journalism etc;
• The nature of the 'reciprocal gaze' on British and Spanish/Catalan history and identities by writers who are fully immersed in all of these cultures;
• Education, class and ideology as factors in the works under discussion.

Each contributor gave an individual paper in the morning session, while the afternoon was dedicated to a round table discussion.