Framing the Nation: The Family as a Model for Nation Building in the Nineteenth-century Spanish American Novel
Open Access
Author:
Loder, Bonnie
Graduate Program:
Spanish
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
March 05, 2015
Committee Members:
Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor Mary Elizabeth Barnard, Committee Member Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Member Guadalupe Martí Peña, Committee Member Fernando Operé, Special Member
Keywords:
Nation building Family Nineteenth-Century Spanish America
Abstract:
In this dissertation, I explore how novelistic representations of the family, family ties, and domestic spaces provided a framework through which nineteenth-century Spanish American writers mapped out their visions for the nations when these were politically, culturally, and geographically divided. By examining seven novels from Argentina, Peru, and Cuba between the years 1839 and 1889, I analyze how the literary representation of the family and domestic spaces allowed writers to unite readers and incorporate them into what Benedict Anderson has termed an “imagined” national community. At the same time, the literary representation of the family and domestic spaces also provided fertile sites for dialogues regarding the political order, social hierarchy, and gender in the new nation and was capable of accommodating different visions for the newly-emerging national communites. By examining the families presented in nineteenth-century Spanish American novels, their structure, and the way they interact with the fictional society developed in the novel, I compare, as well as contrast, the way that nineteenth-century writers from Argentina, Peru, and Cuba writers envisioned the nation through the family.
