Bodies of Disorder: Gender and Degeneration in Baroja and Blasco Ibáñez Contributor(s): Murphy, Katharine (Author) |
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ISBN: 1910887307 ISBN-13: 9781910887301 Publisher: Legenda OUR PRICE: $104.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 2017 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - Hispanic American Studies - Literary Criticism | European - Spanish & Portuguese - Literary Criticism | Modern - 20th Century |
LCCN: 2017276282 |
Series: Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures |
Physical Information: 0.5" H x 6.69" W x 9.61" (1.17 lbs) 206 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Hispanic - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Discourses of degeneration (social, political, medical) peaked in the 1890s across Europe, and posited the moral and biological decline, even sterility, of European nations. In early twentieth-century Spain, the novels of P o Baroja and Vicente Blasco Ib ez both assimilated and subverted the cultural myths of degeneration that were fuelled by influential European theorists such as B n dict Morel, Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau. In the light of widespread anxieties about reproduction and national decadence, this interdisciplinary book traces the creative tension between each author's literary representations of the degenerate female body and the consumer agency of women readers. Through its alignment of gender paradigms and degenerationism in Baroja and Blasco Ib ez, Bodies of Disorder offers a challenge to established hierarchies of canonical and popular fiction. Countering Baroja's resounding public disdain for his Valencian contemporary, Katharine Murphy repositions Blasco as markedly closer to the so-called 'Generation of 1898' than hitherto acknowledged. Dr Katharine Murphy is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Exeter. Author of Re-reading P o Baroja and English Literature (2004), she has published widely on Comparative Literature and Spanish Modernism. |