Nuevo Romanticismo and the reception of Russian literature: Integrating dehumanized and social art

This dissertation examines the manner in which Nuevo Romanticismo, a group of politically engaged writers that included Jose Diaz Fernandez, Cesar M. Arconada, and Ramon J. Sender, created a new model of social art through a process of transculturation between Spanish and Soviet letters during the 1920s and 1930s. Given the sociopolitical climate and the politicization of letters taking place during the Second Republic, it should come as no surprise that liberal writers in Spain looked to the Soviet Union for models of politically engaged literature.; While the writers of Nuevo Romanticismo did not insist on politically engaged art, as Soviet cultural circles often did, they did feel that art had the power to play a decisive role in society. This interest in social art coincided with tendencies in Soviet literature, especially archetypal Socialist Realist texts like Gorky's Mother and Gladkov's Cement, which were explicitly tendentious. Spanish narratives adopted and adapted a number of literary tropes typically associated with Pre-Revolutionary Russian literature and (proto-) Socialist Realism, such as the Bildungsroman structure of the protagonist's political awakening, and sacrifice or martyrdom for the political cause. The production novel, which protagonized the epic struggle of the masses to construct socialist society, was another point of convergence.; Some of the convergences between Soviet and Spanish literature during the 1920s and 1930s can be traced to Spanish literary traditions, which laid bridges over which transculturation could take place between Soviet and Spanish narratives.; Spanish writers also rejected some aspects of Soviet social novels because of cultural and historical considerations. The destruction of the nuclear family and Gorky's asceticism, reminiscent of the Catholic priesthood, are tropes that were filtered out by Nuevo Romanticismo. With few exceptions, Spanish writers did not embrace gender equity in the same way as Soviet writers of this period. Another divergence can be seen in the protagonists of Soviet and Spanish novels. (Proto-) Socialist Realist novels most frequently depicted the epic struggle of the masses through a positive proletarian agent, while Spanish narratives most frequently portrayed intellectuals demonstrating solidarity with the masses.; War narratives were also an important point of ideological divergence between Spanish and Soviet narratives.{09}; In contrast with some of the prototypes of Socialist Realism, which valued political content over literary form, Spanish texts required that art be aesthetically pleasing as well as social. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...