Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures & Languages

Advisor

Alejandro Alonso Nogueira

Advisor

Nuria Morgado

Committee Members

Nuria Morgado

Silvia Dapía

José Ramón González

Subject Categories

Curriculum and Instruction | European History | Intellectual History | Modern Literature

Keywords

Bourdieu, Intellectual History, Literary Historiograpgy, Reflective Sociology, Literary Theory

Abstract

This doctoral thesis offers an original and valuable contribution to the study of the genealogy of the literary canon between 1939 and 1968. During Francisco Franco´s dictatorship, Spanish Universities underwent a series of important changes in its academic and management configuration and in the way Spanish elites envisioned Higher Education inside the regime. This research focuses in the role that Spanish scholars, inside Hispanic and Modern Language Departments, played in this renegotiation of a new and crucial sociopolitical mission for College Education. By focusing on the period between 1939 and 1968, a moment of sociopolitical instability and conservative literary and philosophical production, we aim to contribute to the ongoing debate about the role that Humanities, within Higher Education, played and can play helping the young to carry out their roles as responsible and responsive citizens. This thesis try to provide first, a reasoned explanation of the historical appearance of the Hispanic Languages departments inside the Spanish University; second, a sociological and historical analysis of the most relevant scholars in these departments, taking care of their position, their tensions and contradictions within the academic field; and third, a critical analysis of literary and philosophical theories (Stylistics, Intuitionism and Neoscholasticism) that the academic and university elites used to understand and teach the poetry of Romanticism and Spanish Baroque: San Juan de la Cruz, Francisco de Quevedo, Lope Vega and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze how the philosophical and literary discourses taught by these scholars could affect the development of a critical and reflective thinking among their students, and perhaps ours.

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