Crime and Culture in Modern Spain

The death of absolutist King Fernando VII in 1833 constituted the end of Spain’s Antiguo Régimen, and ushered in the arrival of a constitutional monarchy. The country soon furnished itself with the requisite trappings of modernity, including a liberal juridical system intended to turn subjects into citizens and replace the Black Legend of the obscurantist, Catholic empire with the image of a modern state organized around the rule of law. Inspired by a literature emerging in Europe and the United States as the symbolic counterpart of this turn to ideals of order and reason, Spanish writers tried their hand at appropriating its conventions throughout a century of domestic political turmoil stretching from the First and Second Republics (1868-74 and 1932-36) to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-75) and the transition to democracy soon after his death. In their own crime and detection novels, Spanish authors probed the contours of the nation’s uneven political and cultural evolution. Class readings and discussion are conducted in Spanish.