Graham Greene's Journeys in Spain and Portugal
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A01=Carlos Villar Flor
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Author_Carlos Villar Flor
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B06=David Stephen
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Product details
- ISBN 9780192868312
- Weight: 718g
- Dimensions: 165 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 12 Oct 2023
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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In the 1970s and 1980s, Graham Greene adopted the yearly habit of touring Spain and Portugal in the company of his Spanish friend, the priest and university professor Leopoldo Durán. The most outstanding fruit of these trips, almost always in summer, was the inspiration for his major Hispanic novel, Monsignor Quixote (1982), a celebration of friendship above ideological, political, or religious differences, incorporating allusions to Cervantes' famous comic novel within a critical vision of post-Franco Spain.
Graham Greene's Journeys in Spain and Portugal: Travels with My Priest reconstructs each of Greene's trips through the Iberian Peninsula between 1976 and 1989, detailing their preparations, itineraries, anecdotes, companions, topics of conversation, and often surprising repercussions. Carlos Villar Flor outlines the trips' biographical importance and fills numerous gaps of documented information on this final phase of Greene's life. His detailed inquiry into Greene's Iberian adventures with Durán also helps us better to understand the genesis and resonances of Monsignor Quixote, which over time became Greene's favourite of his own novels, and the subsequent television adaptation.
The book also addresses incidents and aspects that, for one reason or another, never emerged in Durán's own account of their travels together, Graham Greene: Friend and Brother (1994). These include the possible motivations for Greene's first visit to Spain, related to his role as an informant for MI6; the mysterious visits to an old English lady located in Sintra; the writer's attempts in the early 1980s to establish links with Spanish socialists; or the fascinating story of a Spanish nobleman's suspicious proposal to create a Greene Foundation.
Ultimately, Greene's trips to Spain and Portugal appear as more layered and intriguing than Durán's account suggests, whilst Durán himself emerges aptly as a complex and quixotic figure--as much the protagonist of this book as Greene.
Carlos Villar Flor teaches English Literature at the University of La Rioja, with a particular interest in twentieth-century British and Irish novelists. His scholarly works include critical editions and Spanish translations of several Evelyn Waugh novels, a monograph on Waugh's characterization strategies (1997), a study of the literary impact in Britain of the Jacobean route (2006, with M.L. Lazaro), and a review of various written accounts of the Irish Brigade who fought in the Spanish Civil War (2021)
David Stephen studied modern languages at Cambridge. He retired from the United Nations in 2004 and now lives in Norfolk.
