Breaking Boundaries and Dislocating Muths in Alvaro Cunqueiro's "Función de Romeo e Xulieta, Famosos Namorados" (1956)a Galician Adaptation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet in the 20th Century"

Abstract

Álvaro Cunqueiro's treatment of space is subtler than critics have until very recently believed it to be. Creating a mythical Atlantic realm, where Galicia is placed at the same level as Brittany or Ireland, has proved of great importance to intellectuals, including Cunqueiro, who stand opposed to the cultural domination of the Mediterranean. This is posed in the author's Galician adaptation of the Shakespearean original, Romeo and Juliet, alongside the negation of a common space for communication. In that sense, the present analysis shows that Cunqueiro's adaptation is essential in denouncing cultural repression in peripheral Galicia, though critics have hitherto paid little attention to this and rather have tended to demonise the author's attitude towards evasive literature, and accuse him of an inability to understanding the suffering of the Galician community under Francoism. Criticism should now encourage a second reading of Cunqueiro's Shakespearean adaptations in terms of geographical, cultural, and symbolic location.