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Propuestas para (re)construir una nación explores how Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851–1921) imagines and engenders the Spanish nation in her theatrical production staged and/or published between 1898 and 1909. In the aftermath of Spain's colonial losses, when Spain's male authors, in a growing mood of collective introspection, directed their attention to the homeland, Pardo Bazán generated a series of theatrical proposals to revitalize the nation. In her plays, she manifests her ideas about Spain's fin de siècle crisis, reflects on Spain's place in the international arena (emphasizing the nation's civilizing mission), critiques the intoxicating power of the so-called golden legend (Spain's glorious past), and sees the origin of the nation's hardship in the lack of education of its inhabitants and in the inequality between men and women. Pardo Bazán's vision of Spain is forward looking,and she imagines a future in which new social configurations will be possible. Instead of locating her plays in an ancestral Castile, she situates several ofher works in her native Galicia. For the author, Spain's regional issues are inseparable from the country's national issues and these can all be traced back to the woman question. The playwright appeals to the spectators/readers' reasonand emotions in order to let them think and feel that the problems the nation faces can all be attributed to the Spanish men. For Pardo Bazán, Spain's potential for national regeneration resides in the inner strength of women. In cross-fire with the main male players in the literary field of her time, Pardo Bazán offers her critique of national decadence in plays that cleverly subvert a broad range of by then outdated theatrical conventions, and that introduce the public to new currents of theatrical innovation (Ibsen, Maeterlinck, d'Annunzio). Propuestas offers a new perspective on the participation of female authors in the contentious debate about the Spanish nation. Pardo Bazán's theater is an overlooked area in the author's extensive creative production, and Propuestas challenges the so often repeated topic of the backwardness of the Spanish stage and the alleged lack of innovation during the fin de siècle.

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‘Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921) is without a doubt the most prolific and influential woman writer of late-nineteenth-century Spain,’ write the editors of this volume. Her writings – novels, novella, short stories, essays, plays, travel writing, cookbooks – cover topics from science and technology to fashion and gender equality. In a literary style characterized by brilliance, they contend with the critical issues of her time and are compelling to teach today. Part 1, ‘Materials’, provides biographical and critical resources, an overview of Pardo Bazán’s vast oeuvre, and a literary-historical timeline. It also reviews secondary sources, editions and translated, and digital resources. The essays in part 2, ‘Approaches’, explore Pardo-Bazán’s engagement with contemporary literary movements, feminism and gender, nation and the late Spanish empire, Spanish and Galician identities, and nineteenth-century scientific and medical discourses. Film adaptations and translations of her works are also addressed. Instructors of courses on world literature, nineteenth-century literature, gender studies and Spanish-language courses will find the volume invaluable.

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