La imagen de Mallorca en la novela del exilio alemán. Torquemadas Schatten de karl Otten, das Trojanische Pferd de Franz Blei y der Schmelztiegel de Marte Brill

Abstract

The following thesis will study the image of Mallorca that is shown in the books from three German speaking writers exiled in the island between 1932 and 1936: Torquemadas Schatten of Karl Otten, Das Trojanische Pferd of Franz Blei and Der Schmelztiegel of Marte Brill. The visions of the island projected in these books join two factors that make them especially interesting. On the one hand, there is their character of witness and, on the other hand, little is known about these writers and the novels here examined have never been studied in depth. The theoretical framework and the fundamental concepts for this study are provided by the field of the comparative imagology. They are described in the first chapter. In the second, third and fourth chapters we proceed with the imagological analysis of the three novels. In each case, we contextualize the novels in both biography and work of its author, focusing on their lived experiences in Mallorca. Subsequently, we study the thematic, structural, aesthetic and narrative attributes building the image of Mallorca shown in the texts. The imagological study reveals the existence of stereotypes and myths inherited from former times. However, the images offered in the text do not merely reproduce imagological models from the past, but at the same time they present some pictures from the living experiences of the authors, many times derived from ideological, social and personal features. Therefore, our goal is also to determine how the approach of these authors to the Majorcan reality was mediated by social, political and psychological drivers.