Modern Literatures in Spain

by Labanyi, Jo; Delgado, Luisa Elena; Buffery, Helena; Hooper, Kirsty; Olaziregi, Mari Jose

• ISBN13: 9780745634968
• ISBN10: 0745634966
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-01-24
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

Jo Labanyi and Luisa Elena Delgado provide the first cultural history of modern literatures in Spain. With contributors Helena Buffery, Kirsty Hooper, and Mari Jose Olaziregi, they showcase the country’s cultural richness and complexity by working across its four major literary cultures – Castilian, Catalan, Galician, and Basque – from the eighteenth century to the present.

Engaging critically with the concept of the “national”, Modern Literatures in Spain traces the uneven institutionalization of Spain’s diverse literatures in a context of Castilian literary hegemony, as well as examining diasporic and exile writing . The thematically organized chapters explore literary constructions of subjectivity, gender, and sexuality; urban and rural imaginaries; intersections between high and popular culture; and the formation of a public sphere. Throughout, readings are attentive to the multiple ways in which literature serves as a barometer of cultural responses to historical change.

An introduction to major cultural debates as well as an original analysis of key texts, this book is essential  reading for students and scholars with an interest in the literatures and cultures of Spain.

Author Biography

Jo Labanyi is Professor of Spanish at New York University, having previously held chairs at the University of London (where she directed the Institute of Romance Studies from 1997-2002) and University of Southampton. She is founding editor of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. Her research interests are in 19th- and 20th-century Spanish cultural history, including literature, film, visual culture, popular culture, gender, and memory.
Luisa Elena Delgado is Professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also has appointments with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory as well as Gender and Women’s Studies. Her research interests are in 19th- and 20th-century Spanish literature and cultural history, with particular emphasis on issues of class and gender representation and cultural national identity. She is a member of the editorial collective of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies.
Helena Buffery is Lecturer in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at University College Cork.
Kirsty Hooper is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Warwick.
Mari Jose Olaziregi is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies at the Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Modernity and the Singular Nation (1700-1840s)

2 From Sensibility to Desire: The Construction of the Modern Subject (1730s-1880s)

3 The Rise of the Public Sphere and the Professionalization of the Writer (1730s-1890s)

4 Countering Castilian: From Retrenchment to the Renaissance of Peripheral National Literatures (1710s-1890s)

5 The Uses of the Past: Writing the Nation (1760s-1890s)

6 Popular Culture: Exclusion and Appropriation (1760s-1930s)

7 Urban Modernity and the Provincial: Changing Concepts of Time and Space (1830s-1930s)

8 The Nation Called into Question (1890s-1920s)

9 Writers and Political Commitment (1930s-1960s)

10 Spain beyond Spain: Exile and Diaspora (1939-1980s)

11 Catalan, Galician, and Basque Literatures: Recovery and Institutionalization (1960s-1990s)

12 Rewriting Gender and Sexuality (1970s-2020)

13 Memory and Forgetting (1970s-2020)

14 Normalization, Crisis, and the Search for New Paradigms (1975-2021)



Works Cited

Index