Género y Nación en la Narrativa Vasca durante la Guerra Civil Española (1936-1939)

This dissertation examines the connection between gender and nationalism as represented in narrative texts written by Basque authors during the Spanish Civil War by comparing works created by authors who subscribed to one of the three major political factions that played an important role during the 1936-39 war in the Basque Country: Insurgents, Republicans and Basque nationalists. In analyzing both the texts and the illustrations included in many of these novels, the goal is to focus on the literary and visual representations of the nation at a time of crisis, and especially on the type of gender roles that are mobilized in the national construction. Analysis reveals that despite the fact that these works are ostensibly aligned with very different political ideologies, they shared a similar traditional conception of both femininity and masculinity. However, the work also demonstrates that all these novels, regardless of their author's declared ideological positions, show interesting contradictions and fractures in their purportedly homogeneous constructions of conservative gender roles. (Author)