Romancero Books with the support of the Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs of the Spanish Embassy in London presents the Festival of Queer Spanish Literature in London - FQSLL
Lecture about the book Hidden Path / Oculto Sender by author Elena Fortún with Professor Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles and Professor Jeffrey Zamostny
Hidden Path/Oculto Sendero
Set in early twentieth-century Spain, Hidden Path is a lyrical coming-of-age novel told from the perspective of a woman painter who struggles to find her way with art and with the women she loved. The novel is narrated in the first-person, following María Luisa as she reflects on her life from the turn of the twentieth century through the outset of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939). She recalls growing from an imaginative tomboy into a docile wife and mother before claiming her independence as a portrait painter in Madrid’s bohemian and queer circles. Along the way, she introduces us to a lively cast of characters who both hinder and encourage her efforts to blaze her own path. The poetic and sensuous language of María Luisa’s private reveries comingles with agile dialogue as the protagonist leads us through her life.
Best known in Spain as a writer of children’s literature, Elena Fortún left this manuscript unpublished at the time of her death in 1952, as its semi-autobiographical content risked provoking homophobic backlash under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The first Spanish edition appeared in 2016 and was hailed as Fortún’s adult masterpiece, a previously unknown complement to her children’s saga Celia and Her World. This edition, with Jeffrey Zamostny’s sensitive and nuanced translation, marks the novel’s first time appearing in any language aside from Spanish; it is also the first of Fortún’s works to appear in English. With an insightful foreword by scholar Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles, this volume will be an influential contribution to women’s studies, LGBT histories, and Spanish literature and culture.
Hidden Path is published by published by Swan Isle Press (Chicago, IL).
Oculto Sendero is published by Renacimiento Editorial.
Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles
Professor Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles has published extensively in the fields of Gender Studies and Hispanism on both sides of the Atlantic. Her books, Autoras inciertas (2008), He de tener libertad (2010) (http://www.laopiniondemalaga.es/cultura-espectaculos/2011/06/08/isabel-oyarzabal-mujer-ejemplar/428424.html) and Artistas y precursoras (2013) (http://www.m-arteyculturavisual.com/2014/01/12/las-roesset-esas-perfectas-desconocidas/) have all won awards from the Spanish Ministry of Education (Dirección General del Libro y Bibliotecas).
Her most recent books are El regreso de las modernas (2018) (https://www.lacajabooks.com/book-author/capdevilla/), and the much-awaited critical anthologies Corcel de fuego (2020) ( Corcel de fuego - Lucía Sánchez Saornil - Ediciones Torremozas), Colofón de luz (2022) (Colofón de luz - Nuria Parés (torremozas.com) and Cartas a mí misma (2022) (Cartas a mí misma - Carmen Castellote (torremozas.com))
She directs the audiovisual project CartasVivas, www.cartasvivas.org and co-directs the collection Biblioteca Elena Fortún, Editorial Renacimiento, https://www.editorialrenacimiento.com/autores/270__fortun-elena. She has completed extensive critical editions for, among others, Celia madrecita, Celia institutriz, two of the most important titles of Fortún's famous Celia series. She is also the author of the extensive critical edition of Fortun's unpublished novels Oculto sendero and El pensionado de Santa Casilda. For more information on this revival of Spain's most famous children's author, see http://www.elcultural.com/revista/letras/Oculto-sendero/38817, http://edaddeplata.org/edaddeplata/Actividades/actos/acto.jsp?rsection=Actividades&acto=6458. Please click here for information into the English version of this best-seller, published in USA by Swan Isle, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/H/bo68982878.html
Jeffrey Zamostny
Jeffrey Zamostny is Professor of Spanish and Director of the Office Undergraduate Research at the University of West Georgia (Carrollton, Georgia, USA). His research examines gender, sexuality, celebrity, and fandom in the literature and culture of early twentieth-century Spain. He is co-editor with Susan Larson of Kiosk Literature of Silver Age Spain: Modernity and Mass Culture (Bristol: Intellect, 2017) and with Dolores Romero López of Towards the Digital Cultural History of the Other Silver Age Spain (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022). Many of his publications focus on queer creators such as Antonio de Hoyos y Vinent, Jacinto Benavente, Tórtola Valencia, or Álvaro Retana and his female heteronym Claudina Regnier. He translated into English the novel Oculto sendero/Hidden Path by Elena Fortún (Swan Isle Press, 2021).
Elena Fortún
Elena Fortún (pen name of Encarnación Aragoneses Urquijo, Madrid, 1886-1952) is the author of the twenty-volume saga Celia and Her World (1929-1951), and her work created a link between pre- and post-Civil War generations of Spanish women writers.
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Event in English
Copies of the books Hidden Path and Oculto Sendero will be available for purchasing after the lecture.
Check out our Festival's website for more events
https://bit.ly/FLQEL22