The Modernist Generation of 1898: Failures of Modernity in the Historical Imagination of Unamuno, Valle-Inclan, and Baroja
Open Access
- Author:
- Gregori Selles, Eduardo
- Graduate Program:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- July 21, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Matthew J Marr, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Matthew J Marr, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Nicolas L Fernandez Medina, Committee Member
Maria Rosa Truglio, Committee Member
Gonzalo Rubio, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Valle-Inclan
Unamuno
Failure
Carlism
generation of 1898
modernism
turn-of-the-century
Baroja - Abstract:
- This dissertation project begins with a coincidence and a question. The coincidence is the fact that the three greatest writers of the Spanish fin de siglo wrote historical narratives on the same event (the second Carlist war of 1872-1876). Moreover, these novels were written in the short time span between 1897, when Unamuno published his first novel, Paz en la guerra, and 1909, when Valle-Inclán finished his trilogy of La guerra carlista and Pío Baroja’s Zalacaín el aventurero appeared in bookstores. Surprisingly, each delved into a past confrontation which, at first sight, might seem completely alien to the tensions and dynamics of the authors’ own time. The question, obviously enough, is why. My dissertation contends that Unamuno, Valle-Inclán, and Baroja’s novels on the second Carlist war articulate a critique of their contemporary society through an interpretation of this historical event. This conflict meant for them the problematization of the tensions between tradition and modernity that also plagued them at the turn of the century. In addition, their view on this historical time was mediated by an intense feeling of failure. Unamuno, Valle-Inclán, and Baroja revisited Carlism because this movement had a metonymical relationship with the failure of the Liberal revolution of 1868 and, consequently, with the failure of Spanish modernity itself. Furthermore, their take on the historical novel was mediated by the parodic use of the epic, thus reinforcing the notion of failure at a structural level. Through the subversion of the epic, these writers related to a past which was constantly mythified by the official historical and political discourse. In sum, this dissertation opens up the field of Edad de plata (1900-1936) through the study of an underanalyzed literary corpus, locating in the historical imagination of the Spanish turn-of-the-century an investigative field to analyze the origins of Spain’s conflicted relationship with modernization, and the inherent tensions that the experience of modernity entailed.