Narrative Workshop with Javier Mije 2019
“Introduction to the art of the narration” is a part of the serie of activities “Granada is Literature” organized by Granada UNESCO City of Literature and Aula de Literatura of the Madraza Palace with the collaboration of Centro Federico García Lorca and Centro Mediterráneo of the University of Granada.
The Workshop
The workshop is destined for all the people who are interested in literature and, particularly, for those who would like to venture into the world of creative writing. A writer is, above all, an expert reader. A reader who learns his trade from the lessons of the great teachers. Following this premise, the workshop relies on a repertoire of literary works, novels, stories and eminent texts of the essay genre where the writers reflect about the literary creation. A further aim of the workshop is to demythologize the creative processes as a fruit of the individual geniality or the artistic talent. The art as a fruit of the meticulous work. In this regard, we will emphasize the importance that have the processes of recreation and rewriting in the search for the formal excellence. Besides, there are some techniques to write a fiction story that can be learned. Techniques that are guaranteed by the historical practices of the fiction writing and have proved to be appropriate in the field of literary communication. We will analyze the different possibilities of the style like persuasion strategies. Write, seduce. How to write an efficient dialogue? The concepts of credibility and originality. The construction of scenes. The importance of the details. The plot and narrative tension. The creation of the characters. The point of view. The manipulation of the time in the story and the novel. The natural language against the excesses of the rhetoric. The Aristotelian idea of the visibility. Or, in short, the language capacity to construct the fiction text understood as a creation of the world which obeys his own rules. Finally, the workshop aims to offer a perspective of the fiction from the anthropological approach. The idea of the literature as an evasion and entertainment, on the one hand, but also as a privileged instrument in the search for the sense of reality.
The Teacher
Javier Mije (Seville, 1969) is a graduate of Literature Theory and Comparative Literature of the University of Seville. His literary debut, El camino de la oruga (Acantilado, 2003), was finalist of the Setenil prize for the best book of stories published this year and received great critical acclaim. En 2010 Acantilado published his second book of stories, El fabuloso mundo de nada, and in 2014 his first novel, La larga noche. The critics said about El camino de la oruga: “His meticulous and somnambulant prose transformes the most specific acts into unreal and expose them, like seen for the first time, in the recondite dimension that only the literature illuminates” (Francisco Solano, El País), “If you have an appreciation for the real literature, read this book immediately” (Jordi Llavina, La Vanguardia). About El fabuloso mundo de nada, the critics said: “Javier Mije really has a brilliant and unique style” (Lluís Satorras, El País). About La larga noche, the critics said: “The writing reaches moments of inspired recreation of situations and especially unconventional phrasing that shows us a writer with a singular accent, very significant” (J. M. Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC).
The Guest Teacher. José Manuel Ruiz
Doctor in Literature Theory and Comparative Literature of the University of Granada. Professor recruited by the University of Granada where he gives classes of Rhetoric and its applications and Introduction to the literary studies in the Comparative Literature degree; Representation of the social and marginal stereotypes in the Audiovisual Communication degree; Theoretical basis of the interartistic and intermedia studies in the master degree of Literary and Theatre Studies. Among his most remarkable publications are Disciplinas (Granada, 2005, Genil essay prize), Daniel Gil. Los mil rostros del libro (2012) and El paisaje heredado: La presencia de Juan Ramón Jiménez en tres poetas de Granada (2008). He has completed research stays at the University of Florence, Aarhus and Harvard and currently he is the director of the Federico García Lorca Chair of University of Granada.
All the workshop sessions will take place in Centro Federico García Lorca. Prize: 60€
For those who are interested, please contact Centro Mediterráneo / Vicerrectorado de Extensión Universitaria / University of Granada / 958 24 29 22 – cemed@ugr.es / centromediterraneo.ugr.es
