Novels of Alejandro Sawa

ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE BODY THROUGH THE GOTHIC IDIOM IN THREE “RADICAL NATURALIST” NOVELS OF ALEJANDRO SAWA CARLOS PODADERA A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Anglia Ruskin University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Submitted: March 2018 Acknowledgements The Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, and more specifically the Centro de Documentación of its Library kindly allowed me access to the archive of Alejandro Sawa for which I am most grateful. I would like to thank Professor Guido Rings and Dr Milla Tiainen for their support throughout the gestation of this thesis. I would also like to express my deepest debt of gratitude to my partner Kate Hansford whose moral support and patience kept me going through the most bitter assaults of my own “black dog” whilst writing this thesis. i ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ABSTRACT CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE BODY THROUGH THE GOTHIC IDIOM IN THREE “RADICAL NATURALIST” NOVELS OF ALEJANDRO SAWA CARLOS PODADERA March 2018 This thesis considers instances of corporeality in three novels (Crimen legal, Criadero de curas and Noche) by Spanish novelist Alejandro Sawa (1862-1909) from the point of view of anticlerical Gothic aesthetics. Despite the presence of many a literary Gothic element in these novels, these works had traditionally been considered mere by-products of the influence of French naturalist author Emile Zola (1840-1902). This would be due to the “radical naturalist” sobriquet which Sawa himself chose to identify his novels with. However, this thesis contests such considerations of Sawa as a “naturalist” author and focuses instead on the Gothic influences received through French Romanticism, Spanish popular novels of the fin-du-siècle and anti-clerical propaganda, previously unexplored. The exploration of the works considered will be guided by theories such as Julia Kristeva’s concept of “abjection” or affect theory, at the core of which lies a concern with the body and/or the corporeal. In reading Sawa’s oeuvre under a Gothic lens of corporeality, aspects of his work which had been previously unacknowledged come to the forefront. Such aspects are, for example, Sawa’s dependency on the middle-class representational idiom he allegedly so much despised, or the relationship of his novels with the anti-clerical, misogynistic nation-building project of Spain in the late nineteenth century. The image of the Spanish realist canon and the perception and understanding of Zola’s works within the Spanish letters in the last third of the nineteenth century, especially with regards to corporeality, are now more nuanced, as is Sawa’s literary standing. Keywords: Alejandro Sawa; Naturalism; Radical Naturalism; Gothic; Anti-clericalism; Corporeality ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Abstract ii Copyright Declaration v 1. Introduction 1 2. Gothic Aesthetics, Europe and Spain 8 2.2 The Birth of Gothic Aesthetics and the Gothic Revival 14 2.3 Gothic Aesthetics: Spain 28 3. “Radical Naturalism” and Biblioteca del renacimiento literario 37 3.1 The Anticlerical Idiom in “Radical Naturalism” 44 3.2 The Middle Classes Cultural Idiom in “Radical Naturalism” 48 4. Sawa’s Scholarship Reviewed 57 5. Crimen legal: Preliminary remarks 70 5.1 Modern editions and secondary sources 76 5.2 Plot summary 78 5.3 Gothic Abjection and Performativity: Rafaela’s Gothic body 86 5.4 Abject Body Horror and Male Gaze 95 5.5 Concluding Remarks 103 6. Criadero de curas: Preliminary remarks 106 6.1 Modern editions and secondary sources 108 6.2 Plot Summary 113 6.3 Criadero de curas within the anticlerical industry 117 6.4 Manolito: Gothic child/ Gothic character 120 6.5 Anticlerical gendered language 130 6.6 Other Gothic motifs: incarceration 136 6.7 Other Gothic motifs: Gothic spaces and display of violence 142 iii 6.8 Concluding remarks 146 7. Noche: Preliminary Remarks 152 7.1 Modern editions and secondary sources 155 7.2 Plot summary 157 7.3 Noche: Gothic affective novel 161 7.4 Lolita and Paquita: sisterly parallel lives 170 7.5 Evaristo and Nazario: brotherly parallel lives 188 7.6 Paco: a single, ungendered set 198 7.7 Concluding Remarks 200 8. Conclusion 205 Bibliography 214 iv Copyright Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is the product of my own work and that the material contained herein has not been used in any other submission for other academic award(s). This work may be made available for consultation within Anglia Ruskin’s University Library, be lent to other libraries for the purpose of consultation and/or may be photocopied for such purposes. Carlos Podadera on 15 October 2018 v 1. Introduction To most, Alejandro Sawa (1862-1909) is mainly remembered as the real-life inspiration behind Max Estrella, the protagonist character of the play Luces de Bohemia (definitive edition 1924) by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (1866-1936). Yet Sawa has lately been rediscovered as a novelist after years of editorial neglect: in the last decade, all his narrative works – with the exception of his last novel Noche (1888) – have been re-edited at least once, in addition to a compilation of his journalistic pieces (Sawa 2008). There also has been, in parallel to such rediscovery, certain scholarly interest in his oeuvre – albeit very timid – in the form of, for example, introductions to these recently re-published novels and journalistic articles (see Chavarría 2008, Gutiérrez Carbajo 2009 and Correa Ramón 2011 and 2012) or biographical works (Correa Ramón 2008). Studies of Sawa (both old and new) and by extension of the so- called Spanish ‘Radical Naturalists’ with whom Sawa identified, Eduardo López Bago (1855- 1931) and Remigio Vega Armentero (1852-1893) among others, have traditionally focused on the extent of the Radical Naturalists’ allegiance to the naturalistic credo of Emile Zola (1840- 1902), of whom these authors claimed to be the Spanish avant-garde. More specifically in the case of Sawa, biographical works (such as Phillips, 1976 and Correa Ramón, 2008) have focused on firstly, ‘rescuing’ the real persona that is hidden under the popularity of the character he inspired, and secondly, on his literary relationships with the finisecular Spanish bohemia. There are however, certain issues with these approaches. Firstly, the almost exclusive focus on naturalist aesthetics seems a priori a narrow and limiting approach. After all, it was the radical naturalist authors themselves who chose such a label for their works, almost as if “branding” their products/novels1. The choice of such term would have been driven by a given political and/or ideological stance, rather than by an aesthetic one. The knowledge and understanding of the concept in Spain was at best nebulous (see González Herrán, 1989, p. 20 and Pattison, 1965, p. 11), in part because such knowledge would not even come from 1 See in Sawa, 1996 [1885] probable first use of the term “Radical Naturalism” 1 primary sources (see Pattisson, 1965, Chapter 1) and because it was limited and restricted to Zola’s theoretical elaborations – practically the only ones available or known at that time in Spain. Thus, in the eyes of the Spanish intelligentsia of the fin-du-siècle, both the term “Naturalism” and French literary culture at large became intimately associated. Naturalism became then a byword for French imported obscenity among conservative authors (see for example Alarcón, 1900 [1883], p.78 who refers to it as “la mano sucia de la literatura2”). Whereas the Radical Naturalists (allegedly at the other end of the ideological spectrum) were happy to embrace the term as a stance of their furious anti-bourgeoisie feelings, and not so much as symptomatic of a given aesthetic orientation. Studies on Sawa and Radical Naturalism are, necessarily to adopt a new perspective once the actual naturalistic content of their works is questioned. It is worth considering whether, in adopting such a sobriquet for their works, Radical Naturalists might have been misleading their contemporaries and generations of scholars to come – as much as they were misleading themselves. Such “naturalism” cannot then be taken for granted. It should not be assumed that Radical Naturalists were operating under the guidance of Zola’s theories just because that was the image they built and projected of themselves. Such stances are to be approached critically in order to understand whether Zola was in fact such a strong influence and what was understood by zolaesque naturalism in Spain in the 1880s. As is to be inferred from Pardo Bazán and Zola’s exchanges on the issue (see Pardo Bazán 1989 [1883]) there is a possibility that Spanish understanding of naturalism differed from Zola’s theories and/or intentions. Secondly, typecasting Sawa as a bohemian is problematic – as problematic, in fact, as referring to him as a “naturalist” author. The so-called bohemians constituted a largely heterogeneous group of artists and writers (poets, novelists, journalists…) gathered together within a generic term which emphasized not so much a writing school or tendency, but rather 2 Trans: “literature’s dirty hand” 2 a decidedly anti-bourgeois stance and the challenging of bourgeoise conventional values of sobriety and contention. In that sense, Sawa who had already concluded his narrative enterprise and was making a meagre living writing for the papers, would have been more of a symbol of certain carefree lifestyle for the younger generations. In referring to Sawa as a “bohemian” it is such lifestyle, and not so much his literary production, that is evoked – just the same case as “(radical) naturalist”. Despite efforts towards the opposite direction, such labels paradoxically contribute to further identify Sawa with Max Estrella, the anti-bourgeois bohemian par excellence. Hence, my research will firstly, question the extent of Zola’s influence on Sawa, traditionally taken for granted.

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