Postsecular Portals: Cover Illustrations and Contemporary Spanish Narratives

Abstract

This article proposes an intermedial approach to the symbolic configuration of the postsecular, focusing on the intersection between the literary text (novel-as-text) and the visual text of the cover illustration (novel-as-book). Given the existence of a postsecular literature within the Spanish context, we are interested in delving into the analysis of how the images illustrating such publications interact, on the one hand, with the concept of the postsecular itself in forming an autonomous image, and on the other, with the text, establishing a relationship of mutual interpretation. This analysis reveals the role of these visual representations as portals to the complex dialogue between religious themes and contemporary narratives, and between these and the visual culture of the period. This study emphasizes three narrative works published in Spain from the late 20th century to the present, which have a particular place in reflection on the religious in the contemporary postsecular times: Miguel Delibes’s El hereje (1998), Rafael Chirbes’s Crematorio (2007), and Rafael Argullol’s Pasión del dios que quiso ser hombre (2014).