Spanish Femenine novel and the canon

Abstract

The article examines the formation of the concept femenine novel in post-Francoist Spanish narrative
from the double perspective of Spanish and U. S. Hispanism. The study argues that the femenine novel constitutes a "historical genre" defined by particular circumstances that come together towards the end of the seventies (among others, the establishment of feminist theory, the arrival of democracy in Spain or the normalization in the status of women). We are thus dealing neither with a category that can be applied to any period, nor with a specifically femenine discourse expressed in a set of features (autobiography, metafiction, etc.). In the last section the author focuses on the implications that this acceptance of the femenine novel as critical category may have in the future configuration of 20th-century Spanish literary hislory.