Autobiografía y Exilio en la Segunda República Española: María Zambrano, María Teresa León y Concha Méndez

Abstract

My dissertation focuses on the life-writing produced by three authors from the first half of the XX century in Spain. These autobiographical texts were written by women who were part of the cultural and political scene of pre-civil war Madrid, and who lived in exile, mainly in Latin America countries - Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. Each of these authors start the reconstruction of the past in three distinct ideological projects: philosophic in the case of María Zambrano (1904-1991); leftist political thought in the case of María Teresa León (1903-1988); and feminist in the case of Concha Méndez (1998-1986). An interdisciplinary theoretical framework forms the basis for my analysis of these texts. This includes the ideas of Sidonie Smith, Sylvia Molloy, and Beatriz Sarlo, and premises of Mikhail Bakhtin, specifically the relationship between the author and the characters in artistic production, and the representation of space and time, as understood under the concept of chronotope. Reading these autobiographies under those theoretical principles allows me to elaborate some ideas about what was it like to be a woman, writer, and intellectual in the same historical and political time period. At the same time, it promotes a discussion about the appropriation strategies and the resistance possibilities against the hegemonic discourses of the era, mainly those related to literary creation as well as gender representation.