Ana María Matute Explained

Ana María Matute
Birth Date:26 July 1925
Birth Place:Barcelona, Spain
Death Place:Barcelona
Resting Place:Cemetery of Montjuïc
Occupation:Writer
Organization:Member of the Real Academia Española
Awards:Cervantes Prize
Module:
Embed:yes
Office:Seat K of the Real Academia Española
Term Start:18 January 1998
Term End:25 June 2014
Predecessor:Carmen Conde
Successor:Federico Corriente

Ana María Matute Ausejo (26 July 1925 – 25 June 2014) was an internationally acclaimed Spanish writer and member of the Real Academia Española.[1] [2] In 1959, she received the Premio Nadal for Primera memoria. The third woman to receive the Cervantes Prize for her literary oeuvre, she is considered one of the foremost novelists of the posguerra, the period immediately following the Spanish Civil War.[3]

Biography

Matute was born on 26 July 1925. At the age of four she almost died from a chronic kidney infection, and was taken to live with her grandparents in Mansilla de la Sierra, a small town in the mountains, for a period of recovery. Matute says that she was profoundly influenced by the villagers whom she met during her time there. This influence can be seen in such works as those published in her 1961 collection Historias de la Artámila (Stories from Artámila), all of which deal with the people that Matute met during her recovery. Settings reminiscent of that town are also often used as settings for her other work.[4]

Matute was ten years old when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, and this internecine conflict is said to have had the greatest impact on Matute's writing. She considered not only "the battles between the two factions, but also the internal aggression within each side".[5]

Following the Nationalist victory in 1939, Francisco Franco established a military dictatorship, which lasted thirty-six years until his death in 1975. Since Matute matured as a writer in this posguerra period under the dictatorship, some of the most recurrent themes in her works are violence, alienation, misery, and especially the loss of innocence.[4] [5] Her work was heavily censored under Franco and she was blacklisted from working as a journalist.[6] At least once she was fined because of her writings.[7]

She published her first story, The Boy Next Door, when she was only 17 years old. Matute was known for her sympathetic treatment of the lives of children and adolescents, their feelings of betrayal and isolation, and their rites of passage. She often interjected such elements as myth, fairy tale, the supernatural, and fantasy into her works.[8] She was outspoken about subjects such as the benefits of emotional suffering, the constant changing of a human being, and how innocence is never completely lost.[9]

Matute was a university professor. She studied at the international school at Hilversum, Netherlands, and traveled to various countries as a lecturer or guest instructor. Her academic work in the United States spanned four decades, beginning as early as 1966 when she spoke at Our Lady of Cincinnati College.[10]

She lectured at the Tatem Arts Center of Hood College in Maryland on 28 April 1969.[10] In 1978, she was a visiting professor at the University of Virginia.[11] She was invited to speak at Brigham Young University in Utah[12] on 12 March 1990, where she gave a lecture on Working the Craft of Translation in Spanish.[13] She was also a guest lecturer at the universities of Oklahoma, Indiana and Virginia.

She was an honorary member of the Hispanic Society of America[14] and a member of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

She won the Premio Nadal in 1958 for the first novel of the trilogy, Los Mercaderes.[7] Her other literary prizes included the Planeta Prize and the Café Gijón Prize.[15]

Death

On 25 June 2014, Matute died of a heart attack at the age of 88,[16] [17] and was laid to rest in the Cemetery of Montjuïc, Barcelona.

External Resources

The Hispanic Division, located at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, has a special recording of Ana María Matute herself reading from her prose work Algunos muchachos. Recorded on 5 May 2000, this Spanish author recorded her reading of this work in Spanish at the Library of Congress. The recording of Matute herself is located in the Archive of Hispanic Literature, which can be located online. Contents include from Algunos muchachos: "Prologue" (2:54); "El rey de los zennos - I" (min. 4:13); II (min 14:21); III (min. 28:31).[18]

Bibliography

Matute's bibliography includes:[19] [20] [21] [22] [23]

Novels

Story collections

Novels and stories for children

Essays

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: Novelist Ana Maria Matute dies at 88. The Washington Post. Reuters. Fiona. Ortiz. 25 June 2014. 26 June 2014.
  2. Web site: Ana Maria Matute, Spanish novelast, dies aged 88. BBC. 25 June 2014. 26 June 2014.
  3. http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/ganara/Cervantes/daria/saltos/elpepicul/20101116elpepicul_1/Tes "Estoy cansada de repetirlo: tengo 85 años, nací en 1925 y no en 1926 como se emperran en decir"
  4. Book: Virgillo, Carmelo. L. Teresa Valdivieso. Edward H. Friedman. Aproximaciones al estudio de la literatura hispanica. McGraw Hill. 2004. 0-07-255846-6.
  5. Book: Ballesteros, Jose. Mark Harpring. Francisca Paredes Mendezson Heinle. 2005. 0-7593-9666-3. Voces de España: AntologÃa Literaria.
  6. Web site: Ana Maria Matute: Obituary, The Independent. Independent.co.uk. 27 June 2014.
  7. Web site: Ana Maria Matute, Novelist, Dies at 88. The New York Times. William. Yardley. 27 July 2014. 4 July 2014.
  8. Web site: Ana Maria Matute (Spanish author). Britannica.com. 26 July 1925. 27 June 2014.
  9. Web site: Members of RAE. Real Academia Espanola. 16 April 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131103084311/http://www.rae.es/rae/gestores/gespub000001.nsf/voTodosporId/A9C3B614985EADD8C1257136007078F7?OpenDocument. 3 November 2013.
  10. News: News in Brief. 21 April 1969. The Morning Herald. Hagerstown, MD . 15. Newspapers.com.
  11. Web site: Visiting Professors (1979-present). 20 August 2015. spanitalport.as.dev.artsci.virginia.edu. University of Virginia. 11 February 2017.
  12. News: AWARD-WINNING SPANISH NOVELIST WILL TALK AT BYU. 9 March 1990. DeseretNews.com. 11 February 2017.
  13. Michael Scott Doyle (1993). "Translating Matute's Algunos Muchachos: Applied Critical Reading and Forms of Fidelity in The Heliotrope Wall and Other Stories".Translation Review. Schulte, Rainer and Dennis Kratz (eds.); ISSN 0737-4836. p. 30.
  14. Web site: Ana María Matute discusses her Life and 'Worlds of Fiction'. Uab.cat. 19 October 2011. 27 June 2014.
  15. Web site: Ana María Matute discusses her Life and 'Worlds of Fiction'. Barcelona. Universitat Autonoma de. www.uab.cat. 11 February 2017.
  16. Web site: Muere la escritora Ana María Matute. ABC. 25 June 2014. Sergi. Doria.
  17. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/ana-maria-matute-author-who-suffered-under-franco-and-was-acclaimed-for-her-lyrical-depictions-of-spanish-life-in-the-civil-war-9566618.html Ana Maria Matute: Author who suffered under Franco and was acclaimed for her lyrical depictions of Spanish life in the Civil War
  18. Web site: Spanish writer Ana María Matute reading from Algunos muchachos. Library of Congress. 2019-03-16.
  19. Web site: Cronología de obras de Ana María Matute – Departamento de Bibliotecas y Documentación del IC. Cervantes.es. August 2016 . 1 June 2018.
  20. Web site: Premios de Ana María Matute – Departamento de Bibliotecas y Documentación del IC. Cervantes.es. August 2016 . 1 June 2018.
  21. Web site: Las colaboraciones en prensa de Ana María Matute (2). La columna "A la mitad del camino" en Destino. Cervantes.es. Antonio Ayuso Pérez. 29 June 2015. 1 June 2018.
  22. Web site: Cuentos infantiles de Ana María Matute. estandarte.com. 25 October 2014. 1 June 2018.
  23. Web site: Ana María Matute. escritoras.com. 25 June 2014. 1 June 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20160116042702/http://escritoras.com/escritoras/Ana-Maria-Matute. 16 January 2016.

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