Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda en Sevilla: Ilusiones y cenizas de un periplo literario

Abstract

My treatment of Gómez de Avellaneda is based on the principle that Seville — described in detail in her account of her travels with her cousin, Eloísa — marks a turning point in her literary career between 1838 and 1840: it was then that she became known as a poet through newspaper reports; that she wrote her final novel, Sab; and that her play, Leoncia — though lacking maturity as her first attempt in this genre — was performed successfully. ‘Letters to Cepeda’, about her first and passionate love, are today the most interesting documents of this period from both the autobiographical and metaliterary points of view. In fact, all the works of this period can be read as autobiographical dramas which anticipate her peculiarly female destiny.

After a prolific literary career, Seville becomes the setting for the final stage of her career and for the preparation of her complete works in the late 1860s. By now she is widowed, prematurely aged, and tired. The final Madrid phase is brief, marked by her death and burial in the Sacramental San Martín attended by a small group of mourners. Vanitas vanitatis! In accordance with her last wishes, her remains now rest in Seville’s San Fernando cemetery. This article, focusing on the Seville years of the then increasingly famous writer, is conceived as a tribute on the bicentennial of her birth.

Keywords:

• Seville
• nineteenth-century Romanticism
• woman
• passion
• religiosity