This chapter looks at how a number of religious figures negotiated the relationship between politics and religion in nineteenth-century Spain. It focuses on the role played by four representatives of the Catholic clergy who, for various reasons, attempted to make Christianity compatible with liberalism by devising alternatives to the Church's official opposition to budding forms of political freedom. They were Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva; Antonio de Aguayo; Fernando Castro y Pajares and José García Mora. Villanueva became a key figure in the Valencian group in the Cortes of Cadiz, where he made crucial contributions to parliamentary debates relating to religious and ecclesiastical issues. Castro's primary objective was to advocate the introduction of religious tolerance into Spanish legislation. Castro accordingly criticized the Moderate government for upholding religious intolerance and depriving Spain of the beneficial effects derived from religious freedom.

The traditional view of masculinity argues that a 'real man' stands up, faces a fight and never backs down. This chapter shows that Spaniards continued to hold tight to many aspects of the traditional model of rough masculinity based on violence and bravado. It argues that the tension between refined and rough manliness is the defining characteristic of the discourse of masculinity in nineteenth-century Spain. The increasingly common criticism of French-inspired fashions indicates a fear of undecideability that reached a peak in the nineteenth century, asymptom of a growing crisis of masculinity. Bullfighting is quite possibly the most pervasive symbol of Spanish masculinity. The spectre of national emasculation was a common theme expressed by pro-bullfighting writers who warned that the collective masculinity of society was somehow at stake. Middle-class masculinity was depicted as successfully straddling the line between refinement and gruff aggression.

By moving between and across coastlines, wetlands, and islands this final chapter offers ways of navigating the shifting, ecotonal spaces of Spenser’s fictions. The chapter connects the threads of previous readings and explores Spenser’s intertextual blend of genres through the perspective of insularity. In order to think about the manipulation of ‘mental space’ as a tool of propaganda, this chapter considers the role of insularity in the early modern colonial imaginary and offers readings of the irreconcilable perspectives found in ‘Colin Clouts Come Home Againe’, A View of the Present State of Ireland, and the last books of The Faerie Queene. The chapter engages with previous studies of the privileged role played by island spaces in fiction and mapmaking, and draws particular attention to questions of spatial scale. In so doing, it connects insularity to the discussions of totalising cosmographical vision inaugurated in the first chapter, and seeks to foreground the tensions that The Faerie Queene’s ‘Cantos of Mutabilitie’ fail to resolve.

This chapter analyses how early modern works of cosmography and navigation employ literary techniques for didactic purposes and examines the ways in which reading their strategic rhetoric offers a parallel project to reading Spenser’s own fashioning of space and myth. The chapter focuses on self-consciously literary moments found in two works that deal with spaces which are particularly difficult to imagine, namely the cosmos in William Cuningham’s The Cosmographical Glasse (1559) and the sea and shore in Lucas Janzoon Waghenaer’s The Mariners Mirrour (1584; trans. 1588). The chapter establishes the role that spatial motifs and metaphors, including the figure of the labyrinth and the perspective glass, play in questions of interpretative difficulty, and this informs the chapter’s approach to Spenser’s use of allegory, and his interest in error in particular. The contrasting approaches of Cuningham and Waghenaer to their subjects also opens up a debate concerning the relative values of abstraction and experience, and hints at the participation of technical writing in a spatial imaginary shaped by the epic mode. The chapter as a whole uses the presentation of the navigational and cosmographical contextual material to address the generative quality of error in the first book of The Faerie Queene.

This chapter considers the work done by a tidal, hydrographical imagination in Spenser’s writing. The coastal imaginaries of The Faerie Queene’s middle books are read alongside works by John Dee, namely General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (1577), and Sir Walter Ralegh, namely the ‘21th: and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia’. In the readings made by the chapter, which seek to identify the spatial dimensions implicit in what Louis Montrose has described as the ‘Elizabethan political imaginary’, the tideline is considered as an emblematic space, characterised by recurrent images of gain and loss, in which personal desire is put under pressure by nationalistic dreams of empire. The chapter builds on earlier discussions of movement and travail and argues that the middle books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene inhabit a spatial imaginary that is shared with other writers attempting to mythologise Elizabeth I and the realm over which she governs. The chapter takes a renewed interest in questions of poetic and hydrographical form, which looks forward to the subsequent discussions of Ireland as wetland, and islands as privileged locations for the making of competing fictions.

At the heart of this chapter is a reading of Merlin’s glass – a perspectival object that crystallises new perspectives on the speculative poetics of the early modern geographical imagination. The chapter thinks about how to gauge the changing scales of Britomart’s journey by reading her quest alongside the spatial arts of cosmography and chorography, and looks back to the earlier readings of Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glasse and Waghenaer’s Mariners Mirrour. In seeking out the maker of her vision, Spenser’s lady-knight makes the transition from speculative armchair traveller to practical wayfarer, thus drawing together multiple modes of spatial representation in Spenser’s poem. In its discussion of spatial rhetoric, this chapter acts as a bridge between the initial focus of the book on archetypes, expectations, and genres, and the emerging focus of the second half of the study in shifting, but specific, types of environments. In particular, the movement towards Merlin’s cave at Maridunum introduces a coastal setting that both anchors and destabilises Spenser’s fiction-making and offers a vital example of Spenser’s increasingly fraught handling of the relationship between spatial forms and desire.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the nineteenth century is the growth and transformation of literary cultures in emerging modern, capitalist societies. This chapter utilizes the case of Faustina Sáez de Melgar to explore the complexities through the more flexible lens of cultural entrepreneurship. The very concept of intellectual property, which was legally established in Spain in 1847, empowered women writers such as Faustina Sáez to participate in the market of literary culture as officially recognized owners/authors of literary works. After a brief overview of Sáez's beginnings, the chapter analyses in detail the more entrepreneurial side of La Violeta, with special attention to finances and logistics. It then talks about the strategic networking that allowed Sáez to embark on new activities after the demise of her first magazine. The emphasis Sáez gives to certain people and institutions throws a light on her more personal network and allegiances.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with the long view of state formation out of which nineteenth-century Spain emerged. It explains how long-term cultural and societal trends, stemming from the medieval and early-modern periods, remained significant reference points. The book talks about the nineteenth century in a fashion that gives breathing space to the multifaceted nature of lived experience and practices, the coexistence of diverse conceptions of time, place and value. In re-situating nineteenth-century Spain within the wider West, historians of culture, politics and society have begun to bring out some of the unique features of its inflection of wider developments. Ways of being in nineteenth-century Spain are thus living sources for historians far beyond Iberia and well after the year 1900.

This chapter concentrates on a spectrum of writings and practices within popular literature that reflect on good and bad conduct in Spain through the nineteenth century, including some of a type of which Don Estrafalario would almost certainly have disapproved. It highlights a step-change in thinking about right and wrong by referring to the reception of norms of popular literature by Isidora the protagonist of Galdós's novel of 1881, La desheredada. In this novel, consonant with the social and progressive concerns of the late nineteenth century, but informed by scientific advances, the central issue is the possibility of civilization winning out over heredity. In the tradition of the mujer varonil, the assumption of man's clothing bestows freedom of action. It also appears to release the wearer from conventional reticence of action, and Teresa dons masculine clothing.

This chapter explores the potential avenues open as to how future scholars might read, research and write about the press, frequently and unduly regarded as being of secondary importance as an area for investigation. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the press, less severely hampered by issues such as political restrictions, illiteracy, technical backwardness and communication problems, came to play a crucial role in Spanish life. It is notable that nineteenth-century French periodicals often served as models for Spanish publications during this period and a comparison between the two, attempting to elucidate the extent to which there was a specifically Spanish press could be fascinating. Whatever methodology is adopted, as is the case with the press in other European countries, it is clear that the Spanish press is an indispensable vehicle for enhancing the understanding of this period.