| Taking up as points of meditation certain texts by Unamuno, Galdos, Machado, Baroja, Borges and others, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate that literature be profitably seen as an epistemic structure that participates in the larger cultural discourses relating to identity, representation, and experience. Chapter 1 addresses the modern subject in aesthetics generally, and in modern Spanish literature in particular. The remaining chapters are organized conceptually, using as foil certain Hispanic texts---Galdos's El abuelo, Borges's "La muerte y la brujula", Machado's Soledades, Unamuno's Niebla, Baroja's Juventud, egolatria, and so forth---and placing them in relation to epistemology (CH II), the influence of secularization (CH III), the "excessive" and contradictory nature of reality that any representational gesture encounters (CH IV), and the modern self as object of self-examination, as textually "mirroring" itself (CH V). Drawing on the works of theorists such as Heidegger, Sontag, Hayden White, Bataille and Durkheim. I argue that "modernity as project" has always been in conflict with our experience and consciousness of the modern world, a fact that becomes clear through an exploration of culture as contingent, arbitrary, contradictory and "excessive"---that is, irreducible to project.; My overarching goals have been to underscore the common links between the aforementioned authors, a fact not altogether accepted by Hispanists, and secondly, to explore how these authors go about participating in the much larger discourse of modern experience. I make no claims to provide an exhaustive or representative account of the authors or works addressed; my rather more ambitious endeavor has sought to relate Hispanic and non-Hispanic authors (Poe, Paul Auster), as well as artists (Matisse, Magritte, Picasso) in order to underscore the viability and usefulness of such an approach. By deploying current theories and assumptions dominant in cultural studies, my approach has been to avoid narrower classifications guided by artistic movement, historical period and geographical location; although this study seeks to redress previous lacunae, my chief interest has been in developing a broader approach that shows more tolerance for and insight into these "canonical" authors. |
