| Summary: | Following Mikhail Bakhtin, this dissertation studies the novel in the late Middle Ages, one of "those eras when the novel becomes the dominant genre" (Dialogic 5). It analyses a body of works written between c.1300 and 1513, namely "Libro del caballero Zifar", "Amadis de Gaula", "Siervo litre de amor", and "Cárcel de amor". The analysis adopts dialectical and historical materialism as its critical method. The theoretical framework of the dissertation is Norbert Elias' "The Civilizing Process", and it examines the pacification of Spanish medieval society through the development of individual forms of restraint in codes, such as the code of courtly love, which is the central theme of these novels. In addition to Elias' theory of the civilizing process, it employs Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adomo's concept of instrumental reason, Simone de Beauvoir"s concept of the woman as "the other" in Western civilization, and Pierre Bourdieu's study of social distinction. The dissertation concentrates on two interrelated subjects. First, it interprets this corpus against the background of a process of social, economic and political transformation, in which a highly hierarchical social structure was weakened and finally changed into one in which evaluations and personal identifications were no longer made according to the principle of caste as in the feudal system, but according to what would eventually become the value-system of the modem, bourgeois era. Taking into account Elias' theory of state formation, it analyses the resistances to the revolutionary role of the bourgeois class, as the authors of this new genre attempt to adjust their works to an emerging absolutist monarchy. The second subject is the rise of the novel as formal and substantial novelty. This new genre is focused on the emergent category of the individual as its main character and main addressee. The dissertation analyses the novels of chivalry and sentimental novels in contrast to the medieval Spanish epic. In the latter, the hero embodies the values of feudal society. In the novel, however, tales of the hero's exploits evolve around his individual concern: his love for a woman. === Arts, Faculty of === French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of === Graduate
|
|---|
