Title
Consuming the Southern Other: Representations of Spain in French Culture and Arts
Document Type
Grant Proposal
Date Accepted
Spring 2007
Project Description/Abstract
I will conduct research for a key portion of my second book, Spectacles of Desire and Geocultural Otherness in Spanish and French Film and Arts. I am exploring the ideological constructions of Spain and “Spanishness” by France in order to illuminate the complex psychocultural role that Spain has played as France’s exotic, primitive “other.” I will trace connections between nineteenth-century and interwar avant-garde French cultural representations of Spain, as culled from archival travel literature, popular media (photography and magazines), writing by eminent authors such as Gautier and Merimée, and Surrealist artists and writers rebelling against a stagnant, failed European politics and artistic tradition. For these artists, Spain and its festivals, landscape, and denizens became a site of aesthetic and existential authenticity within a complex and problematic projection of alluring, dangerous “otherness” onto this Southern geocultural entity. A short article and a book chapter will result from this research.
Recommended Citation
Lev, Leora (2007). Consuming the Southern Other: Representations of Spain in French Culture and Arts. Faculty and Librarian Research Grants (FLRG). Item 61.
https://vc.bridgew.edu/flrg_grant/61