Subscribing identities. The serial novel in the development of novel and nation: Spain and Mexico from the 1840s to the 1860s

This dissertation examines the serial novel as the predominant form of narrative fiction in Spain and Mexico from the 1840s to the 1860s, in order to show how serial novels function dissemination of national models on both sides of the Atlantic. The serial novel served as a fundamental tool in the early phases of nation building in Spain and Mexico, and the work of serial novelists paved the way for the success of later socioaesthetic programs by authors such as Benito Perez Galdos and Ignacio Altamirano, would canonized as' the fathers of the modern "national novels" of Spain and Mexico, respectively. Serial novels written in Spain and Mexico during the decades from the 1840s to the 1860s promoted a series of ideas about what the nation could and should look like, while specific features related to its form cemented its appeal to a broader base of readers and thus made it particularly suitable for these content-based projects: namely, its use at the hands of a group of intellectual elites who were interested in the construction of a national consciousness. Its success came d as instruments for the construction and later at---and was dependent upon---a very particular historic juncture towards the mid-point of the nineteenth century, when rising literacy rates, a trend towards migration to urban centers, a gradual weakening of unofficial censorship and the increasing secularization of society converged to create a climate propitious to the nation-building project. This project on the part of serial novelists has been overlooked due to consistent concerns about the literariness of such novels. Reading these novels as a corpus, we can see that important national concerns were addressed in their pages, at the same time as their authors attempted to establish national literary models in an era in which "possessing" a national literature was paramount to existing as a nation.