Morsamor. Juan Valera before the Spanish fantasy genre

Abstract

In this article, I will analyze how the last novel by Juan Valera, Morsamor (1899), relates to the nationalization program of the fantastic that took place in Spain in the Nineteenth Century. To begin with, I will trace this interest in the fantastic novel to the publication in 1860 of a series of articles in response to Cándido Nocedal’s admission speech to the Royal Academy against the genre that same year. Next, I will exhibit the continuity of these early ideas of the writer in Morsamor’s prologue, which served as an attack against intellectual sectors that were positioned against the use of the supernatural in novelesque fiction. I will pay special attention to the way in which Juan Valera connected with previous treatments of don Juan Manuel’s enxiemplum XI («El deán de Santiago»), especially vis-à-vis José María Blanco White’s pioneering theorization on the hispanization of the genre (1824) and the drama El desengaño en un sueño by the Duke of Rivas (1844). Finally, I will offer a summary reflection on the possible historical place that belongs to Morsamor as a transition novel between nineteeth-century concerns of the fantastic peninsular nationalism of the Nineteenth Century and later trends in the Hispanic context.