Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas

by David R. George, Jr. (Editor), Wan Sonya Tang (Editor)

Overview

This edited volume examines the historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic implications of re-visiting Restoration Spain (1874-1931) in television costume dramas produced since 2000. Contributors analyze, from different theoretical approaches and disciplinary perspectives, the appeal that the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries hold for twenty-first-century Spanish audiences, as well as for international viewers who consume these programs through new media platforms. Themes and issues explored include: the production of televisual heritage, representations of period technologies, evolving constructions of gender, hybridization of television genres, and television as historian. Expanding the scope of inquiry in Spanish media studies, this collection seeks to bring Spain into wider discussions of media and historical representation and visual and material culture in Europe, the Americas, and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030071523
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	01/03/2019
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018
Pages:	269
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

David R. George, Jr. is Senior Lecturer in Spanish at Bates College, USA, focusing on nineteenth and twentieth-century Spanish literature, film, and television. He is co-editor of Historias de la pequeña pantalla. Representaciones históricas en la televisión de la España democrática (2009), and author of annotated editions of texts by Leopoldo Alas and Benito Pérez Galdós.

Wan Sonya Tang is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Boston College, USA. Her research focuses on Spain’s modernization process in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the cultural anxieties generated therein, particularly with regards to gender and class dynamics.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction (David R. George, Jr. and Wan Sonya Tang).- Part I. Producing Heritage.- 2. Fortunata’s Long Shadow: the Restoration as Televisual Heritage in Acacias 38 and El secreto de Puente Viejo (David R. George, Jr.).- 3. Profane Unions: Constructing Heritage from Anarchist-Bourgeois Romances in Ull per ull and Barcelona, ciutat neutral (Elena Cueto Asín).- Part II. Imagining Technologies.- 4. New Technologies and Transmedia Storytelling in Víctor Ros: Captivating Audiences at the Turn of the Century (Mónica Barrientos-Bueno and Ángeles Martínez-García).- 5. From Photography to Forensics: Technology, Modernity, and the Internationalization of Spanish History in Gran Hotel (Wan Sonya Tang).- Part III. Constructing Genders.- 6. Dresses, Cassocks, and Coats: Costuming Restoration Gender Fantasies in La Señora (2008-2010) (Nicholas Wolters).- 7. “Las normas son para romperlas”: Emilia Pardo Bazán, Carmen de Burgos, and the Unruly Women ofSeis hermanas (Linda M. Willem).- Part IV. Restoring the Telenovela.- 8. Bandolera: Limits and Possibilities of Period Telenovelas (Francisca López).- 9. Creating Locally for a Global Audience: Seis hermanas and the Costume Serial Drama as Quality Television (Concepción Cascajosa Virino).- Part V. Sensing the Ending.- 10. Commercializing Nostalgia and Constructing Memory in As leis de Celavella (María Gil Poisa).- 11. “Felices años veinte”? Las chicas del cable and the Iconicity of 1920s Madrid (Leslie J. Harkema).- 12. The End of the Restoration: A Vision from the Early Second Republic in 14 de abril. La República (Iván Gómez García).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Costume drama is a distinctive feature of television production in Spain, which has been consistently (and wrongly) neglected even in Spain itself.​ This book makes an excellent and highly original contribution to media studies, Spanish studies and beyond. Bringing together both established and younger scholars, it charts connections with a wide variety of disciplines and themes that are vital well beyond Spanish television such as history, literature, memory, fashion, nostalgia, and social media.” (Paul Julian Smith, Distinguished Professor, The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA)

Editorial Reviews

This edited volume seeks to fill a gap that still exists in the research on television costume drama. ... The edited volume expands the scope of inquiry within the costume drama genre, which is almost exclusively exemplified by British film productions and therefore involves a broader English-speaking readership in the dialogue about the Restoration and Spanish television series.” (Tatiana Astafeva, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 40 (4), 2020)

From the Publisher