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Núria Perpinyà Filella

(Lleida, Spain, 1961) is a Spanish novelist and an essayist who works as a professor at the University of Lleida. Her novels that deal with unusual topics are characterized by their intellectual irony, formal rigor and experimentalism. In her books, she defends the philosophy of perspectivism and reflects on the fact that the phenomena have multiple interpretations. Her creative work is written in Catalan, but most of the essays are published in Spanish.

Index

1 Biography

2 Style and themes

3 Novels

4 Theatre

5 Essays: a humanistic relativism

6 Work 6.1 Novels 6.2 Theatre plays 6.3 Essays 7 Received awards

8 References

9 External links

Biography

Núria Perpinyà Filella is born in Lleida, May 25, 1961 and lives in this town until she finishes her degree in Catalan studies in 1984. She gets married and moves to Cáceres, then to London and Madrid. Despite her changes of residence, she works as a professor at the University of Lleida. First, she teaches Catalan literature and then Literary theory and Comparative literature. In 1986, at the age of 25, she publishes her first book: an essay about a Catalan realist poet from the sixties, written in collaboration with Xavier Macià, under the title The poetry of Gabriel Ferrater. This work wins the Essay Prize Josep Vallverdú. In 1989, Perpinyà receives the Extraordinary Prize for her Doctoral Thesis from the University of Barcelona for another research on Ferrater and she becomes one of his main specialists. In 1998, she publishes her first novel, A good mistake, where “is already shown the complexity and the elaboration that will characterize the rest of her novels” (1). In A House to compose (2001), Perpinyà develops a new genre half way between a story and a novel. Mistana (2005), much more fantastic, is awarded a National Critics Prize. In The Privileged (2007), she opts, once more, for a renovation of literary genres with a dramatic novel. In the year 2010, she launches her first theatre play, The Calligraphers.

Style and themes

The work of Núria Perpinyà is a mixture of intellectual reflections and irony. Her style is labelled as “a magmatic writing style” (2), and it is characterized by “a control of the composition, a linguistic precision and originality of the actions”. (3) In each of her books, Perpinyà challenges herself with different experiments: A good mistake is a thriller based on readers’ false suppositions. In A House to compose, she explores a new literary genre: a “fragmented novel” which, even though belonging to a composite novel (4), it provides the novelty of a chain of stories that develop during the reading until they turn into chapters of a novel. This fusion of genres will reappear in The Privileged where the narrative and the dramatic style cohabit side by side.

Regarding the themes, we can point out that Perpinyà dedicates each book to a concrete topic. A Good mistake is a love story in the world of science; A House to compose recreates the world of music and architecture; The Privileged is about art and museums; The Calligraphers about the university; and Mistana deals with the madness. Her last novel, To the vertigo

, the most romantic and pictorial one, means another important twist in her trajectory when she substitutes – at least apparently – the intellectual world for the one of sport.

Novels

The first book of fiction by Perpinyà, A good mistake (1998), relates the life of a young Catalan researcher who moves to London to a university lab in order to work on his thesis. There, the protagonist (Joan Xammar) meets his friends (Aleph Banneker, Jill Jarrell), eminences in the field of science (Dr. Rosemeiller), but also many big disappointments cross his way. The novel is a so-called bilgungsroman, a novel about training in a lab, a thriller and a story about repressed love that during the novel will reveal the protagonist’s homosexuality. In addition, A good mistake explores the tensions of learning between the directors and the students; the race conflicts between an Afro-American and a European, and the border concept of a higher level immigrant. A House to compose (2001), well-accepted by the critics, is a story about a pianist who is looking for a flat. In this novel, Perpinyà “dares to weave a multi-faceted plot”, and “while the protagonist passes through different kinds of housing – a garret, a duplex, an attic – (…) there is a kind of a musical whirlwind in her head”. (5) The book has also an unusual structure: chained stories that end up merging into a novel. The plot, slow and deferred, is the quête of the protagonist, Olivia Kesler, who is “a misanthrope of her art and a female Ulysses”. (6) The novel is a crossword of genres and worlds: music, architecture and literature. A House to compose is a harsh but comical critic to the architectonic dictatorship and suggests a romantic opposition between an artist and the society. The composer Olivia Kesler does not find her creative space in a society that is architectonically hostile to her.

In the third novel by Perpinyà, Mistana (National Critics Prize 2005), the realism is abandoned and the author opts for a fantastic style. The book narrates a story about a meteorologist with mental disorders who falls into misfortune when he arrives to a phantasmal town called Mistana, inhabited by eccentric characters, a town with an everlasting fog. An extreme climatology that evokes her home town, Lleida. The novel is “a tragedy about madness written in crescendo rhythm of delirious verses in prose” that has been labelled as “vertiginous and breathtaking” (7) and as a “hypnotic and radical novel”. (8) As Maria Dasca says, Mistana is “an unbridled fiction, tragic and comic at the same time” with a philosophical fog where “the things lose appearances and a man does not know who he is anymore”. (9) In 2007, The Privileged appears, a comical dramatic novel in which the author reflects on art, adopting a point of view of the guards in a museum. The story narrates a restructuring of an old-fashioned museum situated in a village into an avant-garde museum, the sceptical attitudes of the guards towards the modern art, and the labour conflicts. The plot passes through vicissitudes of the main character, Mr. Serivà, a genuine, tragic and anti-heroic guard. The irony of the book addresses the ignorant audience and the art as a business and political platform. (10) As Ponç Puigdevall says, the novel proofs the effort of the author “to discover new literary territories where the accuracy does not contradict the entertainment”. (11)

In 2013 To the vertigo is published, a story about love between two mountaineers. The protagonists are obsessive idealists that isolate from the society. The plot revolves around loves of a solitary mountain climber, Irena Besikova. The novel suggests two important discussions: the one of passion and feminism. To the vertigo is written in an elegant language. The rhythm combines slowness of a romantic landscape and an accelerated passion. The epistolary style develops in crescendo until it becomes an adventure novel that, in the last chapters, adopts an unexpected metaliterary dimension.

Theatre

The Calligraphers (2010) is a tragicomedy about education in Arts. The plot revolves around the closure of a chair of ancient calligraphy and its substitution for a new degree in criminal calligraphic studies. This modernization of the university provokes tensions between the professors and it reveals jealousy and revenges. The play was launched in Lleida, at Escortxador theatre, December 15, 2010, under the direction of Óscar Sánchez and it was performed by Imma Colomer, Pep Planas, Núria Casado and Ferran Farré.

Essay: a humanistic relativism

Among Perpinyà’s academic researches, it is worth to mention the studies on a Catalan poet of the sixties, Gabriel Ferrater, a friend of Jaime Gil de Biedma and Carlos Barral. An atypical intellectual who had an important influence on the following generations. In her study Gabriel Ferrater: reception and contradiction (1997), Perpinyà analyzes the myth of Ferrater and deconstructs the Catalan criticism. A polemic book “dedicated to all the sceptical readers who realize that, in the literary criticism, nothing completely innocent is ever said”. (12) After some years of abandonment of her essayist facet, Perpinyà reappears in 2008 with “a demythologizing essay” (13) The crypts of criticism: twenty readings of The Odyssey; this book, the first one written in Catalan, offers a wide view on different schools of literary theory. Written in “a casual style” (14), this essay particularly exemplifies the theory with examples from the original text. The defense of humanistic relativism can also be observed in her novels in which a kaleidoscope of different attitudes related to a particular topic often appears. In 2010, Perpinyà wins an International Essay Prize XXI Century of Mexico for her work More than a machine. This essay is about education that extends from the Illustration to the present days, where a creative learning faces a routine one.

Work

Novels

1998: A Good mistake (Barcelona, Empúries)

2001: A House to compose (Barcelona, Empúries)

2005: Mistana (Barcelona, Proa)

2007: The Privileged (Barcelona, Empúries)

2013: To the vertigo (Barcelona, Empúries)

Theatre

2011: The Calligraphers (Barcelona, Empúries)

Essays

1986: The Poetry of Gabriel Ferrater (Barcelona, Edicions 62; with Xavier Macià)

1991: The Theory of bodies, of Gabriel Ferrater (Barcelona, Empúries)

1997: Gabriel Ferrater: Reception and Contradiction (Barcelona, Empúries)

2008: The Crypts of criticism: twenty readings of The Odyssey (Madrid, Gredos)

2010: More than a machine (México, XXI Century)

Received awards

1984: Essay Prize Josep Vallverdú

2005: National Critics Prize

2010: International Prize XXI Century

References

External links

The author on the web Association of writers in the Catalan Language (AELC).

Trailer of the novel To the vertigo on Youtube.

Trailer of the theatre play The Calligraphers on Youtube.

Recordings of the author’s voice at the Music Library of Màrius Torres Chair at the University of Lleida.