SOURCE: Spires, Robert C. “Rebellion against Models: Don Juan and Orestes.” In Beyond the Metafictional Mode: Directions in the Modern Spanish Novel, pp. 58-71. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984.

In the following essay, Spires charts the development of the Spanish metafictional novel in the 1960s.

The so-called “art for art's sake” movement of the 1920s and 1930s came to an abrupt end with the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Although it would be an exaggeration to say that novelistic activity ceased completely during the war years,¹ most of the works emerging from that period are significant for historical rather than artistic reasons. Camilo José Cela's La familia de Pascual Duarte [The Family of Pascual Duarte in the English version], published in 1942 and soon followed by other novels displaying similar techniques, was the first of a new group whose artistic merits enabled them to transcend their historical moment...