Tornar a mirar la terra

Abstract

The rurality of the 21st century is a landscape rapidly transformed, radically put under pressure and used as an industrial or service product. In this territory, the traditional and idealised representations of landscape cannot be held. In the Catalan narrative of the first decades of the 21st century, some new prose-works that are placed in the rural place have appeared. They do not just locate themselves there, but take the rural place as a subject and a creative form to express a new imaginary. In this article, we analyse this new representation through a selection of seven texts and authors (Edgar Illas, Vicenç Pagès, Adrià Pujol, Marta Rojals, Toni Sala, Francesc Serés i Joan Todó); we characterise the landscapes like landscapes of the in between, and we describe a structural and basic element on them: the «I-place». The analysis allows us to talk about the landscapes of contemporary rurality like «landscapes of restlessness» and give them new qualities and possibilities.

Keywords

• catalan narrative
• rural world
• rural landscapes
• landscapes of the in between
• I-place
• landscapes of restlessness