POETIC CASTLES IN SPAIN. British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft ... & Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft)

British culture of the Romantic period is distinguished by a protracted and varied interest in things Spanish. The climax in the publication of fictional, and especially poetical, narratives on Spain corresponds with the intense phase of Anglo-Iberian exchanges delimited by the Peninsular War (1808-14), on the one hand, and the Spanish experiment of a constitutional monarchy that lasted from 1820 until 1823, on the other. Although current scholarship has uncovered and reconstructed several foreign maps of British Romanticism - from the Orient to the South Seas - exotic European geographies have not received much attention. Spain, in particular, is one of the most neglected of these 'imaginary' Romantic geographies, even if between the 1800s and the 1820s, and beyond, it was a site of wars and invasions, the object of foreign economic interests relating to its American colonies, and a geopolitical area crucial to the European balance designed by the post-Waterloo Vienna settlement. This study considers the various ways in which Spain figured in Romantic narrative verse, recovering the discursive materials employed in fictional representation, and assessing the relevance of this activity in the context of the dominant themes and preoccupations in contemporary British culture. The texts examined here include medievalizing and chivalric fictions, Orientalist adventures set in Islamic Granada, and modern-day tales of the anti-Napoleonic campaign in the Peninsula. Recovering some of the outstanding works and issues elaborated by British Romanticism through the cultural geography of Spain, this study shows that the Iberian country was an inexhaustible source of imaginative materials for British culture at a time when its imperial boundaries were expanding and its geopolitical influence was increasing in Europe and overseas. Title Page Copyright Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION ‘Not Less Improbable than the Wildest Fictions of Romance’: Narratives of Spain from the Peninsular War to the 1820s War, Revolution and the Debate on Spain Holland House and the Cultural Politics of Iberia Mapping Difference: Romantic Descriptions of Spain Fictions of Spain before 1808 Chivalry, Romance and Spanish Cultural History Reading the Spanish Imaginary CHAPTER ONE Tales of War and National Narratives: The Peninsular War and Myths of the Nation Multiplying the Romantic Nation Spain as Composite National Text in Felicia Hemans’s The Domestic Affections Gothic Epos: British-Romanticism and the Roderick Theme Southey’s Roderick: Re-Constructing the Spanish Nation Dismantling the Nation-Family: Landor’s Count Julian The Nation as Progress Text in Scott’s The Vision of Don Roderick Hemans’s England and Spain and the Ambiguous Politics of the Progress Poem Patriotic Knights and Matadors in Byron’s Childe Harold I CHAPTER TWO Patriots, Heroines and Dons: Models of Subjectivity in the Spanish Text Place and the Romantic Subject The Revolutionary Leader and Nationalist Dilemmas in Landor’s Count Julian The Spanish Patriot as National Character Re-Figuring Spanish Freedom Fighters in the Post-Napoleonic Period Gothic Persecution in the Peninsular War: Mary Leman Grimstone’s Zayda Amazons, Patriotic Heroines and the Maid of Saragossa The Spanish Princess as Domestic Heroine: Constance de Castile and Blanch of Aledo Romance and the Other Identity: Heroic Britons and Spanish Ladies Spain in ottava rima: Byron’s Don Juan and Barry Cornwall’s Diego de Montilla CHAPTER THREE Reconstructing the Spanish Orient: Moorish Spain and the Cross-Cultural Encounter Delimiting Moorish Spain in British Romantic Culture Alcon Malanzore and the Problems of Cultural Intactness Hemans’s The Abencerrage: The Politics of Resistance Simplifying Moorish Polysemy: The Alhambra in George Croly’s Sebastian Moorish Ladies and the Shorter Moorish Tale The Troubadour: Moorish Architecture and the Space of the Feminine The Spanish-Moorish Text as Boundary in Lord Porchester’s The Moor BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX Saglia, a scholar of some sort whose academic affiliations are not noted, charts the various ways in which, between the 1810s and 1820s, Spain figured in British literary culture. Mainly concerned with narrative versions of Spain, specifically metrical tales and verse romances, he traces the contours of the Spanish "imaginary" in British Romanticism, offering a cultural geography of Romantic Spain as a space of war involving not only France and Britain or the Spanish and Moorish armies, but ideological conflicts between public and private; republicanism, nationalism, and imperialism; and competing models of masculinity and femininity. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR Diego Saglia. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 332-348) And Index.