Madrid 1900 : the capital as cradle of literature and culture /

Ugarte examines the various conceptions of Madrid as a physical, political, and social entity, and the ways it influenced the lives and the texts of writers at the turn of the century. The author begins with a lucid and intelligent overview of the theoretical underpinnings of his analysis (the work of Williams, Jameson, Bakhtin, and Benjamin, along with feminist theorists such as Kolodny, Sizemore, and Squier). The first chapter discusses 19th-century Madrid in Larra, Mesonero Romanos, Galdos, and Pardo Bazan. Ugarte then devotes a chapter each to Baroja, Carmen de Burgos, Ginez de la Serna, Valle-Inclan, and Azorin. He highlights voices that denounce Madrid's rigid social organization (especially those of women), although others reject its chaos and uncleanliness, and still others revel in its excesses. What emerges is a multifarious, organic image of the city as a space built on institutionalized discourses, which at the same time allows for bohemia and challenges to the status quo. This work includes the necessary background to engage the general reader, and sophisticated insights that will appeal to specialists in Spanish literature and culture and to feminist critics. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty. G. Pozzi; Grand Valley State University