Sueños privados, universos sociales y mirada literaria en Últimas tardes con Teresa

This article studies of the social genesis of Juan Marsé’s novel Últimas tardes con Teresa (1966), based on an initial reflection on Marsé’s relationship with critics. The tools of the sociology of literature allow us to enter the ideological unconscious of the work, traversed by the refraction effected in the tradition of the Spanish peninsular literary field at the time of its writing. We have called this «literary gaze» or «refraction». This study deals with the novel that marked Marsé’s consecration as a writer: Últimas tardes con Teresa (Last Evenings with Teresa), although it makes reference to other works. The article explores how the story and its narrative geography reproduce the image in negative of the writer’s social world and, therefore, of the process of Marsé’s incorporation into the avant-garde of the Spanish-Barcelonian literary field of the time, its conflicts and tensions: basically, the belligerent relationship with the critics and the bitter sarcasm about the interweaving of class domination, cultural power and the ideology of commitment. The interweaving of these conflicts—we will argue—distils a salient feature of his literary tone: the simultaneously melancholic and ironic attitude to his class origins and to the declassification implied by his entry into the dominated fractions of the ruling class, or, his consecration as a writer.