Octavia Walton Le Vert: a Southern Belle in Nineteenth-Century Spain

• Pere Gifra Adroher ^[1]
  1. [1] Universitat Pompeu Fabra

     Universitat Pompeu Fabra

     Barcelona, España

     
• Localización: Revista de Filología de la Universidad de La Laguna, ISSN 0212-4130, Nº 38, 2019 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Escritos de viaje estadounidense sobre España/ American travel writting on Spain), págs. 95-109
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.25145/j.refiull.2019.38.006
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Octavia Walton Le Vert: una dama sureña en la España del siglo xix
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen
  • español

    Este artículo analiza los capítulos que Octavia Walton Le Vert dedicó a España en su libro de viajes Souvenirs of Travel (1857). Se inicia con una breve semblanza de la autora y a continuación se examinan los contextos de producción y recepción del libro, seguidos de un resumen de su viaje por España en 1855. Basándose en las consideraciones teóricas de varios críticos e historiadores, el artículo estudia algunas convenciones retóricas, entre ellas el discurso del sentimentalismo, que se utilizan para realizar la representación textual de España y los españoles. Se argumentará que dicha representación manifiesta cuestiones de género y visiones protestantes norteamericanas sobre otredad, clase y nación que sitúan la narración un tanto al margen de la construcción dominante de España como territorio masculinizado que desarrollaron otros viajeros norteamericanos contemporáneos.

  • English

    This paper analyzes the chapters that Octavia Walton Le Vert devoted to Spain in her travel book Souvenirs of Travel (1857). It begins with a brief profile of the writer and then examines the contexts of production and reception of her book, followed by a summary of her journey across Spain in 1855. Using the theoretical contributions made by several critics and historians, the paper explores some rhetorical conventions, including the discourse of sentimentality, employed to accomplish the textual representation of Spain and the Spaniards. It will be argued that her representation of Spain manifests gender concerns and Protestant American views on otherness, class, and nation, setting her account somewhat apart from the dominant construction of Spain as a masculinized domain developed by other antebellum male American travelers.

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