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In this thesis I argue that the texts examined allow us to understand sainthood not in theological terms, but as a socially constructed configuration of identity. Reading through Bourdieu and Valis, I explore how the texts represent the characters’ identification with saints as a strategy for distinction, showing how such identification may be used for self-definition, for self-justification, and for the acquisition of prestige. The texts reveal an ambivalent and complex attitude towards sainthood in Spain in this period, with no fixed and agreed definitions. In this context, sainthood becomes a locus for complex negotiations between tradition and modernity. Discourses on sainthood are also used both to express and to question received ideas about femininity and masculinity. I begin by examining the traditional structure and features of sainthood, proposing an innovative framework for understanding the attribution of sainthood in a person’s lifetime, which draws on Bourdieu’s notions of symbolic capital and the search for distinction, to develop the notion of “saintly capital.’ I then describe and analyse discourses of saintlessness from non-fictional religious texts of the period 1870-1915, bringing into play Valis’s work on the centrality of <i>cursileria </i>in modern Spain. I argue that these texts are unselfconsciously <i>cursi</i>, while the novels I look at in the rest of the thesis scrutinise and ironies such discourses of saintly distinction. Turning to the literary texts, I begin by showing how <i>La familia de León Roch</i> dramatises the struggle between different definitions and interpretations of sainthood, in a narrative which apparently privileges more “modern” definitions and yet ultimately ironises all such bids for distinction. <i>La Regenta</i> allows me to explore the way in which one saint (Teresa of Ávila) may become the focus of this struggle for the power to impose a particular interpretation of saintlessness. In the chapter on <i>Nazarin</i> I scrutinise the power of dynamics at work within the discourse of sainthood itself, while also bringing out the text’s emphasis on the constructed nature of this discourse, which is portrayed as a fantasy of distinguished identity. In the final chapter I trace how this fantasy of distinction is played out in <i>Dulce deuño, </i>as the re-telling of the saint’s story becomes an instrument of power and of self-definition.

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This dissertation examines the representation of treachery in three foundation myths of Iberia: Fernán González and the independence of Castile, Bernardo del Carpio, and Sancho II and the siege of Zamora. The project is a diachronic study which considers literary versions of these myths from both medieval and Golden Age Spain, with a view to comparing the representation of treachery across two historical time periods which share a close interest in the presentation of Spanish history, and through different literary versions of the legends, in epic, chronicle and theatre. Chapters 2 and 3 of the dissertation treat versions of these myths from the thirteenth century, in the <i>Estoria de España</i> (1252-84), and the <i>Poema de Fernán Gonz</i><i>ález </i>(c. 1250), whilst chapters 4 and 5 examine the reproduction of these legends in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in the theatre of Golden Age Spain. I examine two plays by Juan de la Cueva, <i>Comedia de la muerta del rey don Sancho, y reto de Çamora, por don Diego Ordóñez,</i> and <i>Comedia de la libertad de España por Bernardo del Carpio</i> (1579-81), and four works by Lope de Vega: <i>El casamiento en la muerte</i> (1595-97), <i>Las mocedades de Bernardo del Carpio </i>(1599-1608), <i>El conde Fernán Gonz</i><i>ález</i> (1606-12) and <i>Las almenas de Toro</i> (1610-19). Broadly understood, the aim of this study is to provide a fuller understanding of the role of treachery in relation to the dynamics of group identity, both in these literary accounts and beyond.

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