Authors

Francisco Fernández, University of Pennsylvania, PhiladelphiaFollow

The Gothic Genre Beyond Borders: Mathew Lewis’s Influence on José de Espronceda’s El estudiante de Salamanca

Abstract

Once the Gothic crossed the Spanish border, a number of writers were influenced by this genre. This is the case of José de Espronceda in his El estudiante de Salamanca (1840). Influenced by Matthew Lewis’sThe Monk, Espronceda not only uses Gothic conventions when he creates a protagonist haunted by a ghost but also subverts them by reversing the villain-victim relationship for the sake of poetic justice. As a result, the development of the plot is more strongly justified, for the hero’s sins are, after all, what lead him to his tragic end.

Bio Note

Francisco Fernández teaches Spanish literature at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. His area of specialization is nineteenth- , twentieth-and twenty first-century Spanish and Comparative Literature, which have trained him in taking an interdisciplinary approach both in his teaching and in his treatment of literature.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Fernández, Francisco (2008) "The Gothic Genre Beyond Borders: Mathew Lewis’s Influence on José de Espronceda’s El estudiante de Salamanca," The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 2.
DOI: 10.20429/cr.2008.020102
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/thecoastalreview/vol2/iss1/2