Power and Dissent: Larra and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Spain

An investigation into how Larra (pseudonym Figaro) exposes the power relations that exist between and among individuals and the classes that form ‘society,’ this work provides a close reading in a postmodern vein of the satirical writer’s duly famous articles penned and published mostly between March 1835 and the summer of 1836. Casting light on the development of Larra’s thought on power relations at this critical stage of his political life, this study offers a chronological, step-by-step analysis of the evolution of Larra’s thoughts on power and politics. Inspired by the practices of the new historicists, especially Michel Foucault, Schurlknight presents Larra’s essays as the Romantic’s own subversive discourse opposing the official discourses of truth that attempt to maintain, in the 1830s in Spain, the domination of an elitist minority over the other classes.