Galicia, A Sentimental Nation

Galicia, a non-state nation in north-west Spain, has often been portrayed as a sentimental nation, a misty land of poets and legends. This book offers the first study of this trope as a feminizing, colonial stereotype that has marked Galician cultural history since the late nineteenth century. Through a close reading of the main texts of Galician literary history, the author shows how this trope has helped sustain the unequal power relation between Galicia and the Spanish State. As a consequence, questions of masculinity, morality and respectability have played an essential role in Galicia's national construction, thereby enforcing a masculine definition and limiting the role of women. This book argues for a revision of the main texts of Galician cultural nationalism through a gender and postcolonial perspective, showing that contemporary portrayals of Galician history are dependent on the politically debilitating trope of Galician sentimentality.

""Galicia, a Sentimental Nation" places Galician literary culture for the first time at the heart of critical debate about the enduring reverberations of colonial structures and repertoires. Miguelez-Carballeira does not just tell us but shows us in stark and persuasive details that the relationship between Galicia and Spain since the nineteenth century cannot be understood without sustained feminist and postcolonial critique. A tour de force."--Kirsty Hooper, University of Warwick