Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access theses, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this thesis through interlibrary loan.
Theses that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.
Access Type
Open Access
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
Hispanic Literatures & Linguistics
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2007
Month Degree Awarded
May
Keywords
memory, mourning, hauntologie, collective unconscious, synchronicity, individuation, therapy
Abstract
According to Jung, the individuation process is a spiritual transformation through which the individual attains the maturity of his personality. This process requires the incorporation of subconscious material to the conscious life. The unconscious, though personal, is according to the famous psychologist full of images and archetypes that conform what Jung called the “collective unconscious”, which transcends the personal and expands inter-culturally through time and space. This is the perspective used in the present study of Soldados de Salamina (2001), a novel by the Spanish writer Javier Cercas. The hero of this story that combines fiction and reality travels from the present time into the past of his country, the Spanish Civil war, with the purpose of understanding. This immersion in time parallels another one in his psyche through which he deepens into the collective unconscious of the Spanish people. As a result, we have the vital, spiritual and psychological voyage of a man that stars the narration from a chaotic state to finally emerge innerly renovated and mature. By virtue of this transformation, we witness the hero’s process of individuation. Soldados de Salamina returns to the mystery of the ix unconscious and becomes the narration of a voyage of a human being from his deepest psyche, both as a universal and a particular man, towards his conscience. Comprehension is ultimately the engine of a novel that revisits the Spanish past in order to heal inner wounds.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/2836764
First Advisor
Barbara Zecchi
Second Advisor
Julio Vélez-Sainz