Reviews of Books

Abstract

Whilst critical studies of the Galician poetry of Rosaliá de Castro abound, comparatively scant attention has been paid to her Spanish-language prose. This well-compiled edition of essays in Spanish is therefore a much needed addition to scholarship on the iconic Galician writer. Sporting an extract of Castro's original script on the cover, the book has been published under Icaria Editorial's extensive Mujeres y Culturas series and stems from the research project 'Unha análise da obra narrativa de Rosaliá de Castro: fundamentos teóricos e metodolóxicos'. The contributors employ a diverse range of critical perspectives to interrogate the often misread tensions in Castro's various novels and journalistic articles, highlighting her uneasy position within both the Galician and Spanish literary traditions. Readers can appreciate the complexity of a corpus which satirizes stringent social codes, defying both the restrictive norms of conservative Spanish realism and the emerging monolingual Galician nationalism of which the fundamentally European writer was a reluctant figurehead.