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Spanish Romanticism and the Gothic

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Abstract

This chapter looks at the Romantic movement, which, like the Gothic, is thought to have never really taken off in Spain. While it is true that Romanticism was not as successful in Spain as it was in other European countries, José de Espronceda’s work, its most obvious exponent, shows a clear Gothic sensibility. I turn to his El estudiante de Salamanca / The Student of Salamanca (1840), a long poem that updates the trope of the (un)dead lover, to explore the imagery and value of this mode for him. I then move on to consider the work of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, whose Gothic legends, published in the late 1850s and early 1860s, have been largely ignored by Gothic Studies and yet constitute a perfect example of Spanish-European folkloric Gothic.

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Aldana Reyes, X. (2017). Spanish Romanticism and the Gothic. In: Spanish Gothic. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-30601-2_4

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