La ficción olvidadaLa novela gótica española (1801-1834). Historia, orígenes, teorías

Abstract

The present doctoral thesis focuses on the study of the Spanish gothic novel (1801-1834), being a detailed research on the origins, the development, the main characteristics and the most prominent writers of the gothic novel within the historical, political, social, cultural and aesthetic context of Spain. A heterogeneous, but intendedly complementary methodology will be used in order to carry out this research. This methodology will serve as a means to combine two interrelated chapters: a theoretical-descriptive chapter —State of the Art—, which arose from the analysis of the researches carried out by Miriam López Santos, David Roas, María José Alonso Seoane and Luis Alberto de Cuenca, among others, and another chapter that arose from the reading and the analysis of a corpus of Spanish gothic novels —Field Study—. Thus, we hope to demonstrate that the gothic novel did indeed exist in Spain during the last years of the Old Regime, bringing to light works that have been neglected for nearly two centuries, but we firmly believe that they help us to map the development of the Spanish literature and to understand better the successive works, granting to these predecessors the recognition which until now has been denied to them.