Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, Fall 2026

My project examines dissonant literary tropes that defy the official image of success that Spain and Portugal tried to depict through official platforms and discourses. More specifically, I focus on finding dissonant images regarding the depiction of families as a literary trope that diverts from the Catholic ideal family that was imposed by official discourses. This family was marked by its patriarchal nature, and forced women into a passive role of obedience, motherhood and household labor, while conceived the father as a leader who was a parallel to God and the nation’s god, the dictator—Franco and Salazar. For example, references to the difficult lives of orphans or widows during the first years of the dictatorships is one family trope that appears repeatedly in literary works. The Catholic family, as a social pillar of both Franco’s and Salazar’s dictatorships, was undeniably problematized in these literary works that have widows or orphans as protagonists. For example, I put into dialogue literary works such as Os armários vazios (1966) by Maria Judite de Carvalho, Cinco horas con Mario (1966) by Miguel Delibes, and La plaça del diamant (1962) by Mercè Rodoreda, which have widows as protagonists and depict a dissonant womanhood that exists with no male figure and even rejects motherhood at times.