Because of the variety of his output, many of Valle-Inclan's works have been studied in isolation, or in selective, often arbitrary categories, rather than as pieces of a whole. The aim of this thesis is to consider the elements that provide significant links in his writing between 1889 and 1922, and to demonstrate that works that are apparently unrelated are part of a larger picture. From early articles and short stories, through novels, to the emergence of theatre, the repetition of themes and motifs, of characters and of stylistic devices, reveals an underlying interdependence between works that on the surface appear unconnected or even contradictory. This is especially true of those works that appeared during the first three decades of Valle's literary career, most of which share the common backdrop of Galicia. Despite changes in perspective and moves from one genre to another, there are constants that relate individual works to those that precede and follow, creating a unifying pattern of continuity. Many of these features have been the subject of critical studies on Valle-Inclan, but to date there has been no comprehensive review of the connecting factors within his Galician works. This thesis aims to explore the links that give unity to this period, from the very earliest short stories through to the culmination of Valle's Galician theatre.

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The thesis takes a metacritical VIew of the application of feminist methodology to the fictional writing of Rosa Montero and Esther Tusquets. It places this in the context of current debates concerning the relationship between aesthetics and ideology in readings of literature, drawing on theories of both feminist and democratic aesthetics. Whilst I take the view that the appropriation of the authors' work as feminist is problematic, it is not my concern either to deny its gender-political content or to critique its gender-political stance. Instead, I contend that critical associations between feminism and form have been limiting, relying too strongly on an idiom of subversion, and creating homologies between social and narrative structures. I therefore argue that a different kind of attention to form and language is necessary. Outlining an individual 'aesthetic' for each writer, I aim to describe the 'perceptual values' (Wellek and Warren 1956: 34) according to which political and formal concerns are brought together in the authors' writing. This not only allows for a more nuanced reading of the ways in which politics inhere in their texts, but generates a more democratic understanding of the ways in which gender-political writing inheres in the social and political realm.

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