"Escritores murcianos actualesla ""Orden del Meteorito"" en el ámbito regional: estudio comparativo, sociológico, temático y estilístico"

Abstract

ABSTRACT In every age, literature is subject to constant change due to social and cultural movements. During the last few years, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of writers from Murcia who have received literary awards and have achieved literary prestige at regional, national and even international level. Their work has appeared in well-known regional and national publishing houses and in some cases it is being translated into other languages, all of which means our local literary authors are achieving visibility abroad. This change in the local literary scene suggests we should ask which features have made possible this awakening of our regional literature, given that today the practice of reading is decreasing as a result of the widespread presence of audiovisual and digital media. At the same time, it is interesting to enquire into the controversial notion of "literary generation", which has been repeatedly questioned by Literary Sociology, and into how feasible it is to apply it to the authors of the Region of Murcia. To achieve this, and as object of study, the departure point of this dissertation is a model of literary creation which has taken place in Molina de Segura (Murcia), known as the "Order of the Meteorite", initially consisting of ten outstanding writers who are promoting cultural life locally with their literary activity. A comparative study of the sociological, thematic and stylistic features of the fiction of these authors is conducted in this dissertation. Their work is also contrasted with classical or canonical works of literature and with other local authors who belong to other areas of the Region of Murcia and who share the same selection criteria: to have obtained prestigious literary awards or to have been nominated for them, to publish their works with national publishers, and to be currently writing. The study comprehends the period between the years 2005 and 2016, i.e. the year of the literary awakening in Murcia and the year in which the research for this dissertation was completed. The initial hypothesis is the idea that belonging to a literary group can be something good and beneficial for authors. To this end, a corpus has been selected, consisting of secondary references on Sociology and Literary Theory and all the narrative works by Murcian writers. The work of each author has been examined to extract the shared literary ideas that can be isolated as representative of this stage of Murcian literature. All this implies a considerable amount of fieldwork that includes interviews with the authors as well as taking part together with them in cultural activities. The dissertation argues that the "Order of the Meteorite" can be considered as a literary group that constitutes an important cultural engine and it should not be neglected but valued and encouraged to make a model of the culture life of the Region of Murcia. Amongst the conclusions of this study is the idea that research on the literature produced in the Region de Murcia today is worthwhile, because given its proximity in space and time, it can be taken as a mirror of our society. At the same time, it can be understood as a way of reading contemporary authors, which is also a way of reading the past.