Eloísa está debajo de un almendro, de Enrique Jardiel Poncela, y la crítica a la censura y la represión franquistas

Abstract

Eloísa está debajo de un almendro (1940) by Enrique Jardiel Poncela, the first important drama premiered after the Spanish Civil War, reflects its historical context in many ways.  Funny and fast-paced, it presents the antics of the Briones family, who have gone crazy because of suppressing any mention of a family member’s murder by another.  The work lends itself to analysis through literary theories including Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of counterdiscourse related to the Franco regime’s rhetoric of the family, and the rhetoric of silence, which critiques censorship. Jardiel Poncela called his theater “inverosimile” [unlikely], relating it to European theater of the absurd.  Because it includes a murder, its use of frustrated detective conventions offers a further critique of injustices of the postwar. A careful analysis through several critical lenses helps students of Spanish as a second language understand Jardiel Poncela’s critique of the Franco dictatorship and the devastating effects of censorship and violence on any society.