Crisis and Modernity in the Spanish Fin De Siecle

3 units

This course will focus on the literature and culture of the Spanish fin de siècle, a moment of social, political, and cultural crisis marked by both domestic instability and imperial loss abroad, even as the nation was making its uncertain and uneven entry into modernity. We will explore the impact that this crisis had on literary and cultural representations at the turn of the century, as well the cultural debates that it generated on the problem of Spanish national identity. Taking as a point of departure a statement made in a novel by the nineteenth-century realist Benito Pérez Galdós, that the late nineteenth century was a moment that saw the disappearance of classes, groups and categories, we will examine how the general crisis of category in the fin-de-siècle transformed perceptions of identity--such as class, gender, sexuality, race, and nationality--and gave rise to new aesthetic forms and preoccupations that heralded a modern(ist) sensibility. Materials to be examined will include works by both canonical writers and artists, as well as popular cultural representations, on both sides of the century line.