"""Con Un Soplo Se Quiebra"": Narrative Approaches to the Problem of Honor in the Short Fiction of Pardo Bazan"

While the concept of honor is one that usually evokes images of dramas from the Golden Age in Spanish literature, it is also a deep vein which has run through the culture of Spain for centuries. Critics who have considered honor as a cultural and not just literary phenomenon often link its predominance in Spanish culture to the issue of social control and, more recently, the gendered form of control imposed by patriarchal social structures. Much of the short fiction of Pardo Bazan focuses on the problem of honor, as her characters struggle to acquire, preserve, or restore it. Pardo Bazan approaches the honor code critically, subverting many of its central components either by graphically portraying their tragic consequences for the individual or by creating fictional characters who refuse to comply with them. The five stories selected for analysis in this study represent a variety of honor-related dilemmas, each of which underscores different aspects of the code. We shall see that despite Pardo Bazan's repeated rejection of the use of fiction for didactic purposes, her short stories nevertheless contain a strong dose of social criticism, much of which revolves around the problems of honor and shame in nineteenth-century Spain.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Spanish

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Lepeley, Cynthia Jean

Contributors dc:contributor

• Tolliver, Joyce

• Women's Studies

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9717300

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86174