La ‘idea de la familia’ como configuración
Saúl ante Samuel de Juan Benet
abstract
Spanish writer Juan Benet defines Saúl ante Samuel (1980), a work conversing with the genre of the family novel as a national allegory, as a literary-theoretical text that presents ‘exclusively literary substance’. How does this relate to the overarching literary genre? The link between the text as a theoretical essay and as a family novel is provided by the conception of ‘an idea as a constellation of stars’, that Walter Benjamin presents in the prologue to The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928). With the help of Walter Benjamin’s conceptualization, it is shown to what extent the constellations of this literary family provide a historical-philosophical idea of the history of Spain.
Keywords: Constellation • Juan Benet • Walter Benjamin • Epistemo-critical prologue • Family