'ANDANDO SE HACE EL CAMINO - DataSpace - Princeton University

Dissertation Abstract
My dissertation examines the fundamental role of the street in the structuring
of the narrative action and in the configuration of the characters’ subjectivities in a
number of Spanish texts from the end of the 19 th and beginning of the 20 th centuries.
Along with the instrumental and expressive functions that urban theory attributes to
the street according to which the street facilitates the travelling between spaces and
the communication between passers-by, this dissertation explores how the presence of
the street in the literary text is not merely coincidental but has a number of
implications that transcend the textual space.
To this end, I will analyze narrative works by Galdós, Baroja, Blasco Ibáñez,
Díaz Fernández, Benavides, and Sender, which have either been neglected or studied
with other concerns in mind. I will explore how the selected works construct a
“Madrid movible” (a changing Madrid) not just in its streets –those “transit-places”
where nothing and nobody is fated to stay, often transformed into a space by the
action of the wanderer—but also in the characters’ movements through these spaces,
at a time when Madrid was undergoing profound social transformations as it struggled
to establish itself as a modern capital. Special attention is paid to the formative role of
the street on marginal subjects—women, anarchists, lower classes, the masses. The
interest in these individuals lies in the fact that not only do they try to survive in a
hostile urban environment, but they also fight to invade, conquer and appropriate the
city. With their movements through the streets, these subjects transgress geographical
limits and develop an awareness of the social, political, and gender-related
constrictions that determine their station in life, as well as their future.
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