Women in the Spanish Novel Today

Women in the Spanish Novel Today
Author: Kyra A. Kietrys
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786453192

This collection of new essays examines the representation of the female self in recent novels written by Spanish women. The essays explore the myriad ways in which women's struggle with self-definition and self-fulfillment is contemplated in Spain during a time in which democracy has taken hold and women's rights have taken shape. Authors covered include Carmen Martin Gaite, Josefina Aldecoa, Rosa Montero, Dulce Chacon, Clara Sanchez, Lucia Etxebarria, Care Santos, Eugenia Rico, Espido Freire, and others.

Contemporary Spanish Women's Narrative and the Publishing Industry

Contemporary Spanish Women's Narrative and the Publishing Industry
Author: Christine Henseler
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780252028311

As in other countries, the effects of commercialization in Spain are changing the direction of publishing. Arguing that women face a particularly complex situation because the inclusion of their work is still considered a novelty in a male-dominated field, Christine Henseler examines the strategies of Spanish women authors in the face of market forces. In a consumer economy that places books in supermarkets and mega-bookstores and in which novels are promoted and read more for entertainment than for their literary merit, women's books tend to be more highly regarded when they cater to feminist, erotic, or commercial niche markets. Henseler examines the visual creation of the seductive female body inside and outside the texts and the verbal application of this female figure on a narrative level in the works of authors including Paloma Díaz-Mas, Lourdes Ortiz, Cristina Peri Rossi, Esther Tusquets, Almudena Grandes, and Lucía Etxebarría. She looks at novels of seduction, award-winning novels, and novels sold on the basis of an author's prior reputation, as well as advertisements, literary prizes, and reviews. She also draws on interviews with authors to provide insider views of contemporary Spanish publishing. Contemporary Spanish Women's Narrative and the Publishing Industry reveals the ways women writers are reacting -- both textually and promotionally--to the changing demands of the publishing industry and the construction of a literary canon.

Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women

Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women
Author: Sarah Leggott
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2015-06-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 161148667X

Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women analyzes five novels by women writers that present women’s experiences during and after the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship, highlighting the struggles of female protagonists of different ages to confront an unresolved individual and collective past. It discusses the different narrative models and strategies used in these works and the ways in which they engage with their political and historical context, particularly in the light of campaigns for the so-called recovery of historical memory in Spain (the “memory boom”) and in the broader context of memory and trauma studies. The novels that are examined in this book are Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002), Rosa Regàs’s Luna lunera (1999), Josefina Aldecoa’s La fuerza del destino (1997), Carme Riera’s La mitad del alma (2005), and Almudena Grandes’s El corazón helado (2007). These works all highlight the multiple nature of memories and histories and demonstrate the complex ways in which the past impacts on the present. This book also considers the extent to which the memories represented in these five novels are inflected by gender and informed by the gender politics of twentieth-century and contemporary Spain.

Post-war Spanish Women Novelists and the Recuperation of Historical Memory

Post-war Spanish Women Novelists and the Recuperation of Historical Memory
Author: Patricia O'Byrne
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 1855662744

The passing of Spain's Law of Historical Memory (2007) marked the official recognition of the need to confront a violent and painful past. Article 2 makes reference to specific groups who experienced discrimination including religious and ethnic communities; no reference is made to the gender repression endured by women, enforced by a patriarchal regime through its legislation and policies, with the active support of the Church and the Women's Section of the Falange. Revised narratives of the period that have emerged in recent decades have raised issues in relation to the reliability and selectivity of memory, and its ongoing mediation by intervening events. While documentary sources of the period are prejudicial, cotemporaneous post-war testimonial novels provide an invaluable resource in reconstructing the past, particularly the novels of women writers. This book draws on their narrative to reconstruct the female experience of the post-war years and in particular on the writings of novelists whose work has undeservedly been disregarded. Neither the experience of women under Franco nor the narrative of women writers of the period should be forgotten. Patricia O'Byrne lectures in Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature at Dublin City University.

Spanish Women Writers and Spain's Civil War

Spanish Women Writers and Spain's Civil War
Author: Maryellen Bieder
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134777167

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.

Gender and Representation

Gender and Representation
Author: Lou Charnon-Deutsch
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 229
Release: 1990-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9027282455

Applying recent European and Anglo-American feminist scholarship to the problems of gender representation, Charnon-Deutsch challenges the prevailing idea that the 19th-century Spanish novel is woman centered. The author's examination of novels by Valera, Pereda, Alas, and Galdos demonstrates that these works are instead a complex exploration of male identity. Decoding the gender ideology of women's roles, discourse, and representations, Charnon-Deutsch uncovers in the novels multiple configurations of androcentricity as well as voyeuristic tendencies, which she interprets as a means of mastering what is threatening to the male psyche.

Spanish Women Authors of Serial Crime Fiction

Spanish Women Authors of Serial Crime Fiction
Author: Inmaculada Pertusa-Seva
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2020-09-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1527559963

With its focus on recent detective series featuring female investigators, this collection analyzes the authors’ treatment of current social, political and economic problems in Spain and beyond, in addition to exploring interrelations between gender, globalization, the environment and technology. The contributions here reveal the varied ways in which the use of a series allows for a deeper consideration of such issues, in addition to permitting the more extensive development of the protagonist investigator and her reactions to, and methods of, dealing with personal and professional challenges of the twenty-first century. In these stories, the authors employ strategies that break with long-standing conventions, developing crime fiction in unexpected ways, incorporating elements of science fiction, the supernatural, and the historical novel, as well as varied geographical settings (small towns, provincial cities, and rural communities) beyond the urban environment, all of which contributes to the reinvigoration of the genre.

Becoming and Consumption

Becoming and Consumption
Author: Candice L. Bosse
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780739116319

Becoming and Consumption uses the Spanish novels Alivio rapido;Veo, veo; Amor, curiosidad, prozac, y dudas; and Los placeres de Anastasia to explore the relationships between globalization, consumption, and economies of experiences that yield innovative ways to reexamine and recreate female subjectivity. While the four contemporary Spanish female writers_Susana Plane, Silvia Grijalba, Gabriela Bustelo, and Lucia Etxebarria_maintain distinct personal narratives, there exists a commonality among their work. Through consumption, the protagonists of these authors' works navigate a multiplicity of images and codes in their journey of becoming an active female subject, an agent with the potential to enact change and evolve. Bosse provides insight into the feminist philosophy and identity politics found in contemporary Spanish novels.

The Lives of Women

The Lives of Women
Author: Lisa Vollendorf
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780826514813

Recovering voices long relegated to silence, this work deciphers the responses of women to the culture of control in seventeenth-century Spain. It incorporates convent texts, Inquisition cases, biographies, and women's literature to reveal a previously unrecognized boom in women's writing between 1580 and 1700.

Reflection in Sequence

Reflection in Sequence
Author: Sandra J. Schumm
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780838754009

The codes of conduct imposed on females by Spain's dictator Francisco Franco after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) created a stifling environment for women until his death in 1975. Beginning with Carmen Laforet's 1944 Nadal Prize-winning novel Nada, novels by women - many of which explore female identity - began to proliferate in Spain. The works examined in this study - Nada, Primera memoria (1960) by Ana Maria Matute, La placa del Diamant (1962) by Merce Rodoreda, Julia (1969) by Ana Maria Moix, El cuarto de atras (1978) by Carmen Martin Gaite, El amor es un juego solitario (1979) by Esther Tusquets, and Questio d'amor propi (1987) by Carme Riera - feature female protagonists struggling for self-realization and, by extension, for change in a restrictive Spanish society. Schumm's analysis of the seven novels demonstrates how examination of metaphoric tropes and mirror images provides insight into the protagonists' development.