El despertar de los que duermen: Juan Gómez Bárcena y la nueva narrativa española postcrisis

Abstract

In this article I analyze a short-stories fiction collection titled Los que duermen, written by Juan Gómez Bárcena in 2012. In my analysis I connect some elements of his narrative shown here with those underlined by the author in the Prologue for Bajo reinta (2013), a compilation of short stories written by your writers in their 20’s. As editor, Gómez Bárcena gives to his readers an accurate description on Contemporary Spanish Literature’s current trends. He portraits the state of the art after the financial crisis of 2008. In Los que duermen, Gómez Bárcena takes the language as the main tool to define the human being and to explore its nature in connection with History, Philosophy, and Myths. As a result, he develops optional endings to traditional mythological stories, and offers the reader disturbing reflections on human evolution, through the use of uchronia, the microhistory, and the reflection on the decay of the linguistic sign.