Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 2019

Publication Title

Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics

Volume

42

Publisher

VISHVANATHA KAVIRAJA INSTITUTE

Abstract

Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy has influenced twenty-first century Spanish noir, especially Dolores Redondo’s Baztán Trilogy and Eva García Sáenz de Urturi’s White City Trilogies. Larsson’s novels put mysoginy and its violent consequences at the center of noir and provided the development of constitutional rights as the solution to the problem. Following the logic of Western literature, all these texts use myths to make sense of modern problems. Pre-Christian mythology is presented as the root of contemporary evil acts. The novels warn their readers that the return to an ahistorical past and magic brings abomination and inordinate pain. In the Spanish case, policewomen from regional police forces, Ertzaintza in the Basque Country, and Policía Foral in Navarre have the mission to defend their communities from themselves. Problems do not come from the outside but from those who want to stop history and modernity. They also come from patriarchy. In both trilogies, Basque and Celtic myths are displayed to represent everything that is wrong with the self-absorption of closed societies. The answer, according to the Spanish trilogies, is in the preservation of Catholicism as a safe mythical status quo sheltered from deconstruction, and the development of the Spanish Constitution. Police work under the rule of the judicial system protects the citizens of these regions and prevents them from self-destructing their territories. It is our hypothesis that pre-Christian mythology is a metaphor of terrorism, a product of the fear of the Spanish Other. The trilogy format allows the three authors to expand in detail their theories.

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