Mother & Myth in Spanish Novels
Mother & Myth in Spanish Novels

Author: Sandra J. Schumm

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2011-08-16

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 161148359X

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What if the goddess Athena, who sprang fully-grown from Zeus's head and denied she had a mother, became aware of the compelling existence of her other parent? What if she discovered that her mother, Metis,—first wife of Zeus and 'wiser than all gods and mortal men,' according to Hesiod—was swallowed by her father and continued to impart her wisdom to him from inside his belly? Recent Spanish novels by women parallel this hypothetical situation based on Greek myth by featuring female protagonists who obsessively re-examine the lives of their mothers, seeking to know and understand them. In Mother & Myth in Spanish Novels, Schumm examines six narratives by Spanish authors published since 2000 that focus on a daughter's search to know more about her matriarchal heritage: Carme Riera's La mitad del alma, Luc'a Etxebarria's Un milagro en equilibrio, Rosa Montero's El coraz-n del tOrtaro, Cristina Cerezales's De oca a oca, Mar'a de la Pau Janer's Las mujeres que hay en m', and Soledad Puertolas's Historia de un abrigo. In each of these novels, the protagonist realizes that failure to integrate the loss of her mother into her life results in the inability to define herself. Without valorization of the maternal subject, the legacy of the daughter is at risk—she is also objectified and swallowed— and the whole society suffers. The daughters' attention to their mothers in these novels is as if Athena had finally recognized that her mother, Metis, had been ingested by Zeus. The myth of Metis and Athena becomes a metaphor of the daughter's quest toward wholeness and individuation in these works; she begins to understand that her maternal legacy is a source of wisdom that has been obscured. These novels by Spanish women strengthen the mother's voice, rescue her from anonymity, and rewrite the matriarchal archetype.

Serial Authorship and New Directions in Spanish Female Detective Fiction
Serial Authorship and New Directions in Spanish Female Detective Fiction

Author: Inmaculada Pertusa-Seva

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2024-10-11

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1036411974

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This collection of essays expands our understanding and appreciation of the body of work by established female authors of Spanish crime fiction series by analyzing recent narratives that, in some cases, contribute in novel ways to the ongoing reformulation of the genre and, in others, provide readers with a temporary hiatus from it. The studies offer students and scholars of crime fiction new perspectives on the works of well-known authors, as well as analyses of their often less-known narratives that may not fit within the genre. Readers will engage in an exploration of gender dynamics and sexuality, a variety of psychological and social issues, and the consequences of the indiscriminate consumption of media and abuse of the environment and animals in narratives that exhibit the versatility of these outstanding authors. The volume will appeal to a wide audience of literary and cultural studies critics, as well as crime fiction enthusiasts and newcomers to this popular genre.

Land of Women
Land of Women

Author: María Sánchez

Publisher: Trinity University Press

Published: 2022-05-10

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1595349642

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María Sánchez is obsessed with what she cannot see. As a field veterinarian following in the footsteps of generations before her, she travels the countryside of Spain bearing witness to a life eroding before her eyes—words, practices, and people slipping away because of depopulation, exploitation of natural resources, inadequate environmental policies, and development encroaching on farmland and villages. Sánchez, the first woman in her family to dedicate herself to what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession, rebuffs the bucolic narrative of rural life often written by—and for consumption by—people in cities, describing the multilayered social complexity of people who are proud, resilient, and often misunderstood. Sánchez interweaves family stories of three generations with reflections on science and literature. She focuses especially on the often dismissed and undervalued generations of women who have forgone education and independence to work the land and tend to family. In doing so, she asks difficult questions about gender equity and labor. Part memoir and part rural feminist manifesto, Land of Women acknowledges the sacrifices of Sánchez’s female ancestors who enabled her to become the woman she is. A bestseller in Spain, Land of Women promises to ignite conversations about the treatment and perception of rural communities everywhere.

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

Published: 2015-06-10

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 161148667X

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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.

The Changing Face of Motherhood in Spain
The Changing Face of Motherhood in Spain

Author: Catherine Bourland Ross

Publisher: Bucknell University Press

Published: 2015-12-24

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1611487285

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This book investigates the perceptions of motherhood in Spanish author Lucía Etxebarria’s fiction and offers views of the importance of motherhood in society. Traditional expectations for women as mothers persist despite the fact that they no longer match Spain’s cultural and economic reality. These issues of gender equality and societal perceptions stand out in the novels and screenplays of Etxebarria. Her work at times resists and at times affirms patriarchal constructs associated with traditional Spanish motherhood, and ultimately, I argue, enacts the very complexity of contemporary Spanish motherhood ideals. By showing the tension between the past constructs of the mother and the possible future outcomes of gender equality, Etxebarria’s works navigate the complexity between past and future, illuminating the current and future uncertainties and the ambivalent nature of change. Each chapter views motherhood from a different perspective and focuses on particular works of Etxebarria. Through the depiction of a variety of mother characters, these different perspectives, as showcased in Etxebarria’s narratives, together compose an understanding of Spanish maternal identity.

Spanish Women Writers and Spain's Civil War
Spanish Women Writers and Spain's Civil War

Author: Maryellen Bieder

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 113477723X

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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.

Performing Parenthood
Performing Parenthood

Author: Heather Jerónimo

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2024-07-05

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1487554230

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Performing Parenthood reveals different enactments of motherhood and fatherhood in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spain, showing how the family has adapted, or at times failed to do so, within the context of Spain’s changing socioeconomic reality. Through an examination of examples of non-normative parenthood in contemporary Spanish literature and film – including gay literary father figures, subversive physical touch between mother and child, fathers who cross-dress, lesbian maternal community building, non-biological parenting, and disabled bodies – the book argues that current conceptualizations of parenthood should be amplified to reflect the various existing identities and performances of motherhoods and fatherhoods. Connecting canonical works to recent works, the book establishes a unique dialogue that will expand the conversation about the Spanish family beyond the traditional view, bringing visibility to alternative family models. It argues that parental identities exist on a spectrum, enabling many parental figures to disregard heteronormative standards imposed upon the role and allowing them to experience parenthood in meaningful ways. Bringing visibility to literary and cinematic examples of alternative Spanish families, Performing Parenthood provides a glimpse into an evolving society influenced by national and global changes.

Dark Assemblages
Dark Assemblages

Author: Kay Pritchett

Publisher: Bucknell University Press

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1611486734

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This book examines strategies of transformation (becomings, image-making, and the phantasmagoric) that figure in four stories and a novel by Gothic fiction writer Pilar Pedraza (Spain, 1951). While critics have long associated the Bildungsroman with Gothic fiction, this study takes a close look at the developmental process itself: the means by which a protagonist, young or old, might transcend a deprived status to achieve a complete sense of self. Pedraza's works imply that, regardless of the path followed, a character's ability to think differently is crucial to progress. The fixed image, representative of an inflexible, socially determined mindset, arises as an obstacle to maturation. In "Días de perros," for example, a triangular arrangement of coins in a cigar box elucidates the connection between individual lives and the social order or assemblage. Literary texts, such as this one, serve as collective assemblages of enunciation, capable of exposing fixed images as powerful instruments of control. "Tristes Ayes del Águila Mejicana" discovers fixed images among the icons of Colonial Spain's exequias reales, used in this case to territorialize the evolving identity of indigenous peoples. The territory thatPedraza's fictionbest illuminates is, in reality, the image. When images remain fixed or territorialized, they uncannily infect the assemblages over which they exert influence. Placing emphasis on images that impact women, Pedraza, in "Anfiteatro," for example, deconstructs "cat woman," which, albeit a potentially subversive image in its early manifestations, eventually ceases to empower the feminine, lashing it, rather, to a burdensome stereotype. Territorialized, the feminine must, then, break free from the image in order to discover representations more capable of illuminating present-day challenges. The phrase "dark assemblages," drawn from Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, gestures toward societal stagnation as a decisive factor in individual evolvement. Gothic fiction represents an uneven landscape, in that it tenders the possibility of a social critique yet, equally well, lends itself to the exclusion of specific identities and practices that society brands as anomalous. Pedraza's Gothic fiction is, indeed, subversive, in that it offers readers original perceptions of modern day people and the assemblages, dark or otherwise, to which they belong.

Contemporary Chicana Literature: (Re)Writing the Maternal Script
Contemporary Chicana Literature: (Re)Writing the Maternal Script

Author: Cristina Herrera

Publisher: Cambria Press

Published: 2014-03-28

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1604978759

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Despite the growing literary scholarship on Chicana writers, few, if any, studies have exhaustively explored themes of motherhood, maternity, and mother-daughter relationships in their novels. When discussions of motherhood and mother-daughter relationships do occur in literary scholarship, they tend to mostly be a backdrop to a larger conversation on themes such as identity, space, and sexuality, for example. Mother-daughter relationships have been ignored in much literary criticism, but this book reveals that maternal relationships are crucial to the study of Chicana literature; more precisely, examining maternal relationships provides insight to Chicana writers' rejection of intersecting power structures that otherwise silence Chicanas and women of color. This book advances the field of Chicana literary scholarship through a discussion of Chicana writers' efforts to re-write the script of maternity outside of existing discourses that situate Chicana mothers as silent and passive and the subsequent mother-daughter relationship as a source of tension and angst. Chicana writers are actively engaged in the process of re-writing motherhood that resists the image of the static, disempowered Chicana mother; on the other hand, these same writers engage in broad representations of Chicana mother-daughter relationships that are not merely a source of conflict but also a means in which both mothers and daughters may achieve subjectivity. While some of the texts studied do present often conflicted relationships between mothers and their daughters, the novels do not comfortably accept this script as the rule; rather, the writers included in this study are highly invested in re-writing Chicana motherhood as a source of empowerment even as their works present strained maternal relationships. Chicana writers have challenged the pervasiveness of the problematic virgin/whore binary which has been the motif on which Chicana womanhood/motherhood has been defined, and they resist the construction of maternity on such narrow terms. Many of the novels included in this study actively foreground a conscious resistance to the limiting binaries of motherhood symbolized in the virgin/whore split. The writers critically call for a rethinking of motherhood beyond this scope as a means to explore the empowering possibilities of maternal relationships. This book is an important contribution to the fields of Chicana/Latina and American literary scholarship.

Liminal Fiction at the Edge of the Millennium
Liminal Fiction at the Edge of the Millennium

Author: Jessica A. Folkart

Publisher: Bucknell University Press

Published: 2014-10-08

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1611485800

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Liminal Fiction at the Edge of the Millennium: The Ends of Spanish Identity investigates the predominant perception of liminality—identity situated at a threshold, neither one thing nor another, but simultaneously both and neither—caused by encounters with otherness while negotiating identity in contemporary Spain. Examining how identity and alterity are parleyed through the cultural concerns of historical memory, gender roles, sex, religion, nationalism, and immigration, this study demonstrates how fictional representations of reality converge in a common structure wherein the end is not the end, but rather an edge, a liminal ground. On the border between two identities, the end materializes as an ephemeral limit that delineates and differentiates, yet also adjoins and approximates. In exploring the ends of Spanish fiction—both their structure and their intentionality—Liminal Fiction maps the edge as a constitutive component of narrative and identity in texts by Najat El Hachmi, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Javier Marías, Rosa Montero, and Manuel Rivas. In their representation of identity on the edge, these fictions enact and embody the liminal not as simply a transitional and transient mode but as the structuring principle of identification in contemporary Spain.