Juan Goytisolo and the Politics of Contagion : The Evolution of a Radical Aesthetic in the Later Novels

Juan Goytisolo is arguably Spain's foremost contemporary novelist.

This study examines all of his mature works, from "Senas de identidad" in 1966 to "Las semanas del jardin" published in 1997.

It focuses on the interface between the thematic content of the novels and its formal expression, viewing this as the crucial nexus of the their meaning.From being a politically committed writer of realist fiction, Goytisolo has become one of Spain's most radically experimental writers of complex, self-reflexive novels.

He remains, however, a deeply political writer, committed to an array of social causes, all with the common denominator of combating intolerance, injustice and repression.Goytisolo's writing is, in his own words, a "commitment of myself ... for a transformation of the world". This study dissects the nature of the relationship between writer and reader to show how Goytisolo's continued political commitment is enacted in aesthetic terms through a subversion of the reading process in an attempt to contaminate or infect the reader with his sense of passionate outrage.