Gender And Nation In The Spanish Modernist Novel

Offering a fresh, revisionist analysis of Spanish fiction from 1900 to 1940, this study examines the work of both men and women writers and how they practiced differing forms of modernism. As Roberta Johnson notes, Spanish male novelists emphasized technical and verbal innovation in representing the contents of an individual consciousness and thus were more modernist in the usual understanding of the term. Female writers, on the other hand, were less aesthetically innovative but engaged in a social modernism that focused on domestic issues, gender roles, and relations between the sexes. Compared to the more conventional--even reactionary--ways their male counterparts treated such matters, Spanish women's fiction in the first half of the twentieth century was often revolutionary. The book begins by tracing the history of public discourse on gender from the 1890s through the 1930s, a discourse that included the rise of feminism. Each chapter then analyzes works by female and male novelists that address key issues related to gender and nationalism: the concept of intrahistoria, or an essential Spanish soul; modernist uses of figures from the Spanish literary tradition, notably Don Quixote and Don Juan; biological theories of gender prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s; and the growth of an organized feminist movement that coincided with the burgeoning Republican movement. This is the first book dealing with this period of Spanish literature to consider women novelists, such as Maria Martinez Sierra, Carmen de Burgos, and Concha Espina, alongside canonical male novelists, including Miguel de Unamuno, Ramon del Valle-Inclan, and Pio Baroja. With its contrasting conceptions of modernism, Johnson's work provides a compelling new model for bridging the gender divide in the study of Spanish fiction.

Little attention has been paid to Merce Rodoreda (1908-1983) as a modernist writer. This study addresses the relationship of her production with Catalan, Spanish, and European modernism. Foregrounded is Rodoreda's negotiation of the overlapping subjects of gender, class, modes of representation, and national identities. In the first three chapters her pre-Civil War novels Soc una dona honrada?, Un dia de la vida d'un home, and Del que hom no pot fugir are read against key Catalan texts, particularly Eugeni d'Ors', to emphasize debates surrounding modernist aesthetics and models of Catalan national identity. The modernist preoccupation with high versus low literature is developed in Aloma, while El carrer de les Camelies reconfigures the flaneur vis-a-vis the female writer's positioning in the modernist enterprise. The modernist debt to realism and the revindication of early Catalan modernism in the 1970s are examined in Mirall trencat. Christine Arkinstall is a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at The University of Auckland.

This volume brings together cutting-edge research on modern Spanish women as writers, activists, and embodiments of cultural change, and honors Maryellen Bieder's invaluable scholarly contributions. The critical analyses are situated within their specific socio-historical context, and shed new light on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish literature, history, and culture.

Using each chapter to juxtapose works by one female and one male Spanish writer, Gender and Modernity in Spanish Literature: 1789-1920 explores the concept of Spanish modernity. Issues explored include the changing roles of women, the male hysteric, and the mother and Don Juan figure.

This interdisciplinary study argues that the late 19th century Spanish realist novel not only documents, but also forms part of the contemporary nation-formation process. It also shows how women became symbols of anxiety about such a process.

Modernism has long been characterized as more concerned with aesthetics than politics, but Jessica Berman argues that modernist narrative bridges the gap between ethics and politics, connecting ethical attitudes and responsibilities—ideas about what we ought to be and do—to active creation of political relationships and the way we imagine justice. She challenges the divisions usually drawn between "modernist" and "committed" writing, arguing that a continuum of political engagement undergirds modernisms worldwide and that it is strengthened rather than hindered by formal experimentation.

This title explores the rich literary history of Spain which resonates with contemporary debates on transnationalism and cultural diversity. It introduces readers to the ways in which Spanish literature has been read in and outside Spain explaining misconceptions, outlining insights of scholarship and suggesting new readings.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) pitted conservative forces including the army, the Church, the Falange (fascist party), landowners, and industrial capitalists against the Republic, installed in 1931 and supported by intellectuals, the petite bourgeoisie, many campesinos (farm laborers), and the urban proletariat. Provoking heated passions on both sides, the Civil War soon became an international phenomenon that inspired a number of literary works reflecting the impact of the war on foreign and national writers. While the literature of the period has been the subject of scholarship, women's literary production has not been studied as a body of work in the same way that literature by men has been, and its unique features have not been examined. Addressing this lacuna in literary studies, this volume provides fresh perspectives on well-known women writers, as well as less studied ones, whose works take the Spanish Civil War as a theme. The authors represented in this collection reflect a wide range of political positions. Writers such as Maria Zambrano, Mercè Rodoreda, and Josefina Aldecoa were clearly aligned with the Republic, whereas others, including Mercedes Salisachs and Liberata Masoliver, sympathized with the Nationalists. Most, however, are situated in a more ambiguous political space, although the ethics and character portraits that emerge in their works might suggest Republican sympathies. Taken together, the essays are an important contribution to scholarship on literature inspired by this pivotal point in Spanish history.