Making Sense of the Past Together

Collaborative Remembering in Cry, Mother Spain

Bibliographic Data

ID4375875
AuthorsMats Haraldsen (0000-0001-9385-0909, University of Oslo, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume46
Issue2
Pages303-327
Publication date2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePoetics Today (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/03335372-11677692
OpenAlexW4411477281
LanguageEN
References cited36

What are the relationships linking memory, literature, and the different minds that write and remember in literature? This article explores how recent research on memory within cognitive science can provide us with new ways of understanding these interconnections as they play out in Lydie Salvayre's novel Cry, Mother Spain (Pas Pleurer). First, drawing on work within the study of extended cognition and the reconstructive nature of memory, the article presents the epistemological argument that Salvayre's novel makes up an integral part of a real extended process of remembering. Second, the article explores this process through the perspective of collaborative remembering. Drawing lines between this research and other work on the fluent and interactive nature of memory, the article investigates how the mother and the narrator come together to reconstruct the former's experiences during the Spanish Civil War in their full historical, political, and personal significance. This extended process of remembering spans different minds, texts, and the novel itself. Finally, the article suggests some implications of these findings for the study of literature and memory

Aesthetics · Art · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Collective memory · Epistemology · Memory work · Politics · Sociology · Visual arts · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Memory and Neural Mechanisms · Psychology · Social Representations and Identity

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