Anne Frank in the ultra-Catholic Franco period: Challenge and exploitation of the American mythification of Het Achterhuis

Fernández-Gil, María Jesús

doi:10.1075/target.18047.fer

Article published In:

Target
Vol. 31:3 (2019) ► pp.420–443

Anne Frank in the ultra-Catholic Franco period

Challenge and exploitation of the American mythification of Het Achterhuis

María Jesús Fernández-Gil | Universidad de Alcalá

This paper examines Spaniards’ responses to the Americanised construction of Anne Frank and her diary. In addition to analysing the context in which the first translation into Castilian Spanish was published, consideration is given to the transformative moves that the original text and the Broadway and Hollywood rewritings of the diary underwent when they were made available in Spain in the second half of the 1950s. Special attention is paid to the discursive reconfiguration of the mythicised view built around the figure of Anne Frank in the United States and to its challenge and exploitation in the ultra-Catholic years of Franco’s regime. In that sense, one of the major driving forces behind this paper is answering the question of whether or not the reception of this text in Francoist Spain was affected by the fact that its author was an adolescent, a Jew, and a woman.

Keywords: Anne Frank, Americanisation, translation, rewriting, Franco regime, reception

Article outline

1.Introduction
2.Mediation and rewriting in Anne Frank’s diary
- 2.1First steps in the construction of a mediated memory of Anne Frank
- 2.2Anne Frank in post-war America
- 2.3Anne Frank in the Spain of the 1950s
3.The reception of Anne Frank’s diary in Franco’s Spain
- 3.1Isabel Iglesias Barba’s translation of The Diary of a Young Girl
- 3.2José Luis Alonso’s translation of Goodrich’s and Hackett’s The Diary of Anne Frank
- 3.3The Spanish dubbing of Stevens’s The Diary of Anne Frank
4.Conclusion
Notes
References

Published online: 10 September 2019

https://doi.org/10.1075/target.18047.fer

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