Mobility and fusion in the literary field: the maverick poetry of Dolors Miquel

Abstract

With the aim of exploring the correlations between sociological and aesthetic areas, this article examines the mobility of poet Dolors Miquel in the Catalan literary field, where she has occupied positions ranging from the poetics of orality to ruralism, and where her work has been printed in the commercial press as well as underground publications. This paper ties that mobility in with practices of fusion such as the parodical discourse and camp, based on the hypothesis that in literatures affected by subordination, as is the case of Catalan literature, the partial overlapping of the spheres of general and restricted consumption is conducive to the emergence of dual languages. The satire, the revision of tradition, and the purposely 'low-cost' tone that characterise Miquel's poetry can be read as discourses formed by the combination of popularised stagings and elitist knowledge. Although this combination compromises the distinction between select minority and mass public audiences, it offers new answers to a question posed in the Catalan literature from the 1960s on and which continues to apply today: the question as to the space to be occupied by popular literature.