Empires of Fiction: Coloniality in the Literatures of the Nineteenth-Century Iberian Empires after the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

This dissertation reassesses the literatures of the nineteenth-century Iberian empires after the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, as the persistence of Spanish and Portuguese coloniality tends to be misinterpreted within their respective literatures as a result of their omission from the dominant historiographical narratives of Modern Europe. This project shifts the focus of literary analysis away from Eurocentric debates that compare Spain and Portugal to the rest of the Modern European empires, and instead compares their reinvigorated engagement with the Antilles and Africa after the significant colonial losses incurred early in the century. As such, this study calls for the analysis of colonial/hybrid texts in conjunction with the rereading of metropolitan works to elucidate the persistence of coloniality and its relevance previously unexplored within the cultures and literatures of the nineteenth-century peninsular metropolises, while also emphasizing the imperial discourses and colonial practices that not only articulated but also served to perpetuate the power dynamics of coloniality along the century.The examination of the nineteenth-century Iberian literatures by way of an archive that reflects the reach of their empires reveals the documentation of imperial ideologies and practices largely erased from the popular imperial narratives of Spain and Portugal, as well as those of the larger Modern Atlantic world: namely, the persistence of slavery and its illegal trade, the harsh realities of historically idealized miscegenation, the role of colonial subjects as protagonists in decolonization, as well as the continuing role of Iberian migration and slavery within the nineteenth-century imperial Atlantic. On the other hand, the study of the Spanish and Portuguese empires through a comparative perspective highlights the important differences between the two enterprises, offering more productive readings of their literatures as a receptacle for the particular expressions of coloniality and its resistance that led to decolonization for Spain while allowing for Portugal’s persistence in Africa well into the twentieth century, as well as the respective imperial and national myths that persist to this day as a result. More generally, refocusing the discussion of nineteenth-century imperial Iberia and widening the scope of its literatures reflects the goals of the emerging field of Iberian Studies, which aims to transcend the national boundaries imposed by the separation of academic disciplines to instead move towards inter- and transdisciplinary scholarship reflective of Iberia’s diverse cultural legacies.