Properties of Modernity

by Iarocci, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780826515216
• ISBN10: 0826515215
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-30
• Publisher: Vanderbilt Univ Pr

Summary

Michael Iarocci traces the ways in which Spain went from being central to European history and identity during the early modern period to being marginalized and displaced by England, France, and Germany during the Romantic period. He points out that it has long been an unspoken assumption tainting much of literary criticism that Spain did not have a strong Romantic movement even though Spain itself had come to be viewed by the "new" Europe as the location of all that was romantic. Through a close study of Cadalso, Saavedra, and Larra, Iarocci argues that Spanish writers were intensely concerned with the same issues taken up by more famous Romantics and that the ways in which they address these issues provides us with a richer notion, not only of Spain, but of all of Europe.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: Struggling against the News	ix
From the Narratives of Modernity to Spanish Romanticism	1	(52)
Beginnings without End: Jose Cadalso and the Melancholy of Modernity	53	(46)
Rethinking the Modern in Saavedra's Don Alvaro	99	(40)
Late Larra, or Death as Critique	139	(64)
Afterword	203	(10)
Notes	213	(30)
Works Cited	243	(24)
Index	267