La Mujer ante el Espejo: Un Motivo Literario y Artístico

“In sum, Professor López Martínez’s study is a capacious volume that will be of benefit not only to students of the Spanish novel of the nineteenth-century, but to those of Hispanic Poetry, Comparative Literature, and Cinema Studies as well. Her erudition, coupled with a keen eye for detail and an elegant prose style in Spanish, provide for an enriching, stimulating revitalization of a motif that has fascinated artists for centuries.” – Prof. Wesley J. Weaver III, SUNY at Cortland

“Here the image of the beauty before the mirror is studied as it appears in the narrative by European writers such as Brontë, Galdós, Alarcón, or Valera. Special attention is directed to several important works of Valera in Spanish letters such as Juanita la Larga, Pepita Jiménez, Doña Luz, and Genio y figura. . . . the most significant aspect of the work is the varied, well chosen group of literary texts, the majority of which are analyzed stylistically. . . . The text is extraordinarily original due to the fact that it represents the first monograph on the image of the woman before the mirror, carried our, additionally from a supranational perspective that tallows it to be of use to readers from several backgrounds and cultures.” – Ascensción Rivas Hernández, University of Salamanca

“. . . masterfully leads us through the multiple twists and turns of a fascinating topic, that of the feminine gaze in the mirror, which has been a particularly fertile one throughout literary and artistic history. . . . a provocative and enriching reflection concerning the feminine condition during the last two centuries, a reflection that forcefully illuminates no only her present situation but also that of her counterpart.’ - Prof. Pablo Zambrano Carballo, University of Huelva

In this work the author traces the variations on artistic treatments of the motif immortalized in The Rokeby Venus by Spanish painter Diego de Velázquez. An exhaustive analysis of European and North American narratives—with a special emphasis on nineteenth-century novelist Juan Valera—and also poetry, painting and cinematography. The resulting observations and conclusions will prove beneficial to scholars in the fields of literature, the arts, Women’s Studies, and Gender Studies.

Agradecimientos
Foreword by Wesley J. Weaver III
Introducción: Consideraciones teóricas y metodológicas
1. Proyección narrativa del motivo de la mujer ante el espejo
2. Mujer y espejo en la obra de Juan Valera
3. Espejos y narrativa reciente. Atención especial a las narradoras
4. Modulaciones líricas del motivo
5. La escena especular en los dominios interartísticos
Conclusiones
Obras citadas
Índice