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From Place to Space: Creating a Utopia in Juan José Millás’s Dos mujeres en Praga (2002)

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Gender in Spanish Urban Spaces

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Abstract

Contemporary Spanish writer Juan José Millás published the award winning Dos mujeres en Praga in 2002. This rich literary text explores the subject of gendered spaces in a unique fashion. In the novel, Madrid becomes superseded when female narrative imagination transforms the space into a fictional Prague. Informed by the writings of de Michele de Certeau, Henri Lefevbre, David Harvey, and Benjamin Fraser, the differentiation of what constitutes place and space in this novel is explored. The manipulation of narrative structures, the utilization of multifocalization, and the use of meta-fictional elements allow for the gradual transition between the real space and fictitious imagined place. Finally, this analysis investigates the concept of an imaginary space of utopia and what role it has in the novel.

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Ketz, V. (2017). From Place to Space: Creating a Utopia in Juan José Millás’s Dos mujeres en Praga (2002). In: DiFrancesco, M., Ochoa, D. (eds) Gender in Spanish Urban Spaces. Hispanic Urban Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47325-3_10

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