Ortuoste on Literature, Society, and Law: A Three-Sided Mirror: The Basque Case

Lorena Ortuoste, Independent, is publishing Literature, Society and Law: A Three-Sided Mirror. The Basque Case. How Contemporary Literature Reflects Identity, Conflict and Memory in the 'Spanish' Basque Country: A Tridimensional Mirror in volume 7 of Oñati Socio-Legal Series (2017). Here is the abstract (in English and Spanish).

English Abstract: The aim in this thesis is to show how the Basque-culture identity struggles are reflected within the Basque literature and how their actions, behaviour, traditions, culture, memory, language, etcetera, define them as a community or minority. In order to show the reflection of the law in five chosen novels written in Basque, firstly I will try to explain the link between law and literature, and afterwards, a double analytical construction will take place: on the first hand, a descriptive and historical explanation to provide the audience with the meaning of the three basic concepts which constitute the Basque culture -identity, conflict and memory-, and with a socio-historical context; on the second hand, this analysis will be based on the content analysis of the five novels that have been chosen, and contextualized or in relation to the period that goes from the Civil War (1936-1939) to the post-war and nowadays, with special insistences in the decade of the 1980s and 1990s.

Spanish Abstract: El objetivo de esta tesis es mostrar cómo los conflictos identitarios de la cultura vasca se reflejan en la literatura, y cómo sus acciones, comportamiento, tradiciones, cultura, memoria, lengua, etc., lo definen como comunidad o minoría. Para mostrar la manera en que se refleja lo jurídico en cinco novelas seleccionadas escritas en lengua vasca, primero intentaré explicar la relación entre derecho y literatura, y después, llevaré a cabo una doble construcción analítica: de un lado, una explicación descriptiva e histórica, para proporcionar tanto un significado de los tres conceptos básicos que constituyen la cultura vasca -identidad, conflicto y memoria- como un contexto sociohistórico; y, por otro lado, este análisis se basa en el análisis de contenido de las cinco novelas seleccionadas y contextualizadas en, o en relación con el período entre la Guerra civil (1936-1939) y posguerra, y la actualidad, con especial insistencia en la década de los 80 y los 90.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.