Interiors and Narrative (eBook)

The Spatial Poetics of Machado de Assis, Eca de Queiros, and Leopoldo Alas

Estela Vieira (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012
261 Seiten
Bucknell University Press (Verlag)
978-1-61148-433-5 (ISBN)

Infos

This comparative study is the first to bring together three of the most important writers of the Luso-Hispanic nineteenth century: Machado de Assis, Eça de Queirós, and Leopoldo Alas. It offers new readings of their well-known masterpieces, while uncovering a novel literary and political significance of the interior space in realist fiction.

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Interiors and Narrative shows how crucial interiors are for our understanding of the nature of narrative. A growing cultural fascination with interior dwelling so prevalent in the late nineteenth century parallels an intensification of the rhetorical function interior architecture plays in the development of fiction. The existential dimension of dwelling becomes so intimately tied to the novelistic project that fiction surfaces as a way of inhabiting the world. This study illustrates this through a comparative reading of three realist masterpieces of the Luso-Hispanic nineteenth century: Machado de Assis's Quincas Borba (1891), Ea de Queiros's The Maias (1888), and Leopoldo Alas's La Regenta (18841885). The first full-length study to juxtapose the renowned writers, Interiors and Narrative analyzes the authors' spatial poetics while offering new readings of their work. The book explores the important links between interiors and narrative by explaining how rooms, furnishings, and homes function as metaphors for the writing of the narrative, reflecting on the complex relation between private dwellings and human interiority, and arguing that the interior design of rooms becomes a language that gives furnishings and decorative objects a narrative life of their own. The story of homes and furnishings in these narratives creates a semiotic language that both readers and characters rely on in order to make sense of fiction and reality.

Autor

Estela Vieira is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University Bloomington.

Inhalt

ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Interiors and Narrative The Novel’s Sense of the Interior The Novelist’s Sense of the Interior Part One: Furnishing the Novel The Threshold: The Ins and Outs of Quincas Borba Movables and Immovables: The Legend of The Maias The Corners of the World: Inside La Regenta Part Two: Interiors and Interiority Inside the Minds and Hearts of Machado’s Characters Eça’s Interior Decorators Memory and Movement: Ana’s and Fermín’s Interiors Part Three: The Discourse of Interiors Machado’s Minimalism and the Meaning of Things The Narrative Life of Eça’s Furnishings The Dramatic Effect of Clarín’s Interior Architecture Epilogue: From Voltaire’s Garden to Galdós’s Rooms Works Cited About the Author

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.12.2012
• Reihe/Serie: Interiors and Narrative
• Zusatzinfo: 6 Illustrations including: - 6 Halftones, Black & White including Black & White Photographs.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Anthologien
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Hausbau / Einrichten / Renovieren
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Romanistik
• Schlagworte: 19th-century studies • Latin American literature • Latin American Studies • Literary Studies • Luso-Hispanic Literature • Luso-Hispanic Studies Literature
• ISBN-10: 1-61148-433-2 / 1611484332
• ISBN-13: 978-1-61148-433-5 / 9781611484335