Descripción:
This book dismantles key misconceptions about the Spanish Romantic period, such as its supposed timidity and conservativism, or exceptional hostility to Victor Hugo. Instead, it stresses the strength of Liberal and Progressive ideas, and the presence of innovative literary writers. It does so through a parallel examination of political and literary thought. The study concludes with an analysis of important experimental works by Espronceda, Alvaraz, and Ros, and includes the first major account of the highly inventive poet and theorist of fragmentation, Ovejas.


TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface......xi
Acknowledgements......xv
Introduction......1
A Note on Bibliographical and Related Matters......7

Part 1: Revolution and its Aftermath ......9

1. Maux du siècle: The Moderate Liberal Party; The Heart of Darkness; The Neo-Platonic Journey; The Problem with Multiplicity and the Dawn of ‘48; The Spanish Dimension ......11

2. On a Point of Principles: Introduction; Continuity in Ideas – The Figure of the Common Man; Against Eclecticism; Revolutionary Rhetoric; The Surging Principle of Liberty; The Rival Model of History; The Integration of Spirit and Matter; Socialism and the Attempt to Organize Things; An Hypothesis and Possible Evaluation ......47

3. A Spanish Hope; A Spanish Tragedy: Reaffirming the Enlightenment; A Uniquely Spanish Problem; The Problem with National Identity; The Problem with the People; Is Nationalism at Fault?; Larra in Context ......95

Part 2: Liberalism and Literary Rebirth ......115

4. Spain Revisited: Freedom or Madness; Durán and Self-direction; Donoso, Historiography and the Aesthetic; Exile, Nostalgia, and Spanish Historicism ......117

5. Brave New World: Freedom and Rebirth; The New Order; Freedom and Nature; Ethics and Romanticism ......155

6. Social and Artistic Disintegration: The Critics’ Fears; God the Liberator; Augustinian Confessions; Gil y Carrasco and Universal Sympathy; Eclectic Aesthetics ......173

7. Spain Reborn: The Progressive Nation; Rebirth and the Spanish Imagination; The Eclectics, The Mystics, and the Quixote; The Political and the Literary ......206

Part 3: An Experimental Literature ......223

8. Sueños de la razón: Espronceda and Friends; Miguel de los Santos Alvarez; Ros de Olano; Ildefonso Ovejas and Contemporary Thought; Ovejas’s Theory of the Imagination ......225

9. ‘But I Have Bad Dreams’: El estudiante de Salamanca;The State of the Question; Rebellion and Irony; Ideological Significance; Literary Tradition; The Role of the Imagination: The Significance of the Aesthetic ......253

10. Miguel do los Santos Alvarez and the Object of Laughter: The Bearable Lightness of Being; The Limits of Laughter ......285

11. Delirium and Disordered Prose in Antonio Ros de Olano: Los niños expósitos [The Foundlings]; Celos [Jealousy]; La noche de máscaras [The Night of the Masquerade]; Towards an Assessment and Conclusion ......301

12. Fragments and Images: Ildefonso Ovejas’s ‘Ensueños de una virgen’: Mysteries of the Poem; The Wash of Allusion; The Flow of Structure; Evocative Meaning ......333

Conclusion ......349

Appendices: ......357
I - Some Useful Dates, II - Brief Glossary of Terms; III - ‘Ensueños de una virgen’ (1845) by Ildefonso Ovejas;

Bibliography: ......365
Spanish Periodicals and Newspapers of the Romantic Period; Primary and Secondary Texts

Index ......397