“More Torture than Literature”: The 175 Censorship Files and the Reception of Samuel Beckett in Francoist Spain (1950s–1978)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2595-8127.v28i1p31-48Schlagwörter:
Samuel Beckett, Censorship, Francoist Spain, Reception, Stage censorshipAbstract
This article explores the impact of Francoist censorship on the reception of Samuel Beckett during the second half of twentieth-century Spain. The issue has been partially addressed by several works, which focused on stage censorship but left the reception of Beckett’s fiction unexplored, thus offering a necessary but incomplete overview. Through an analysis of 175 censorship files concerning the staging of Beckett’s plays and the publication of his drama and fiction, this study offers a wider scope. It reveals how the Spanish state’s ideological and moral apparatus limited Beckett’s exposure in the public sphere, particularly on the stage, while paradoxically allowing greater tolerance in book-form translations. Although censorship of Beckett’s work was not unique to Spain, the findings prove that the delayed and sometimes distorted Spanish reception of Beckett was not due to the alleged obscurity of his works, but to a cultural policy aimed at controlling meaning, morality, and access to dissident aesthetics.
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