Author Bio

Michael Iarocci is Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley and the author of Enrique Gil y la genealoga de la lrica moderna.

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Main Description

Michael Iarocci traces the ways in which Spain went from being central to European history and identity during the early modern period to being marginalized and displaced by England, France, and Germany during the Romantic period. He points out that it has long been an unspoken assumption tainting much of literary criticism that Spain did not have a strong Romantic movement even though Spain itself had come to be viewed by the "new" Europe as the location of all that was romantic.

Through a close study of Cadalso, Saavedra, and Larra, Iarocci argues that Spanish writers were intensely concerned with the same issues taken up by more famous Romantics and that the ways in which they address these issues provides us with a richer notion, not only of Spain, but of all of Europe.

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Reviews

This is a brilliant book, which changes the paradigm for thinking about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish cultural production in general, and Spanish Romantic literature in particular.
--Iberoamericana

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This book is the most original and groundbreaking contribution to its field in many decades, not simply because it provides wonderfully novel and complex readings, but especially because it could thoroughly reconfigure the field of Spanish romanticism, and its appreciation in a European context. Polemical and passionate, and bound to generate ardent controversy, this book will become an indispensable contribution to the understanding of Spanish romanticism.
-- Angel Loureiro, Professor of Spanish, Princeton University

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The breadth and depth of new knowledge that this project conveys are, in my view, unparalleled to date in 19th century studies.
--Harriet Turner, Director of International Affairs, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

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