Nuria Monfort’s Voice. Mediatized Performance as a Bridge Between Daniel Sempere and Julián Carax in Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of The Wind

Abstract

This research analyzes Nuria Monfort's handwritten testimony in Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind, examining how it operates as a mediatized performance to articulate the bond between Daniel Sempere and Julián Carax. From a qualitative, hermeneutic, and analytical-critical methodological perspective, this study shifts away from traditional structuralist approaches toward a phenomenological and performative framework. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Philip Auslander, Diana Taylor, and Hans Robert Jauss, it addresses the tension between the written medium and the live experience of the narrative. The results suggest that the manuscript exceeds the function of an explanatory or documentary device; the handwriting preserves the affective impulse of the voice (a liveness effect), transforming the printed archive into an embodied repertoire that is sensorially reactivated by the internal reader. Furthermore, this mediation alters Daniel Sempere's horizon of expectations by endowing him with the necessary awareness to break the tragic repetition of historical trauma. This study concludes that Nuria Monfort's mediatized voice constitutes a counter-archive of resistance and a relational performative space where absent bodies find their ethical and narrative relevance through reception.