This dissertation analyzes the prose works of the “Nova Novorum,” a fiction series created and published by José Ortega y Gasset between 1926 and 1929. This collection included six works by four authors, five of which will be discussed in this dissertation. Pedro Salinas’ Víspera del gozo (1926) inaugurated the series. Benjamín Jarnés published two works: El profesor inútil (1926) and Paula y Paulita (1929). Antonio Espina is also responsible for two works: Pájaro pinto (1927) and Luna de copas (1929). The dissertation is divided into five sections. The first chapter introduces the topic of avant-garde prose during the 1920s in Spain, and the concept of ekphrasis as a methodological approach. Prose authors of the avant-garde were prolific during the first third of the twentieth century in Spain. They produced a new aesthetic sensibility with their experimental narrations. All of the works analyzed are examined through the lens of ekphrasis, which is the verbal representation of visual representation. Chapter Two discusses three relational aspects of ekphrasis: word and image, time and space, and the hermeneutics of ekphrasis. The first section examines the difference between narration and description. The second explores the relationship between time and space and the implications of the fact that a visual object is normally associated with space, while a verbal representation is associated with time. This section examines how authors incorporate spatial techniques into their narrations in ways that are commonly employed by painters. The third section of Chapter Two examines iconology and the hermeneutics of ekphrasis and how the authors use the trope of mimesis not to imitate nature but rather to distort reality. Chapters Three, Four and Five closely examine the images described by each author. This study draws on understanding of ekphrasis from literary studies and art history as well as theories of the literary avant-garde that stems both from Europe and from Spain in particular. Ortega y Gasset’s ideas about the novel and the avant-garde informed the basic assumptions of the authors of the “Nova Novorum,” who often used ekphrasis as a means of avoiding narrative progress. In many cases of ekphrasis found in the “Nova Novorum” collection, the representations of art are deployed in the same way in which the authors utilize metaphor, as a means of digressing from the narrative. These ekphrastic moments allow each author to withdraw from or slow down the narration, providing the author with the opportunity to focus on the use of language itself.

En esta tesis se interpreta a través del prisma conceptual del nihilismo el desarrollo de la literatura española de entreguerras, y el papel central de los escritores en el reconocimiento de desorientación del hombre moderno. Primero se analiza teóricamente el concepto de nihilismo; luego se proporciona una descripción del contexto ideológico-estético de entreguerras, la coyuntura de la literatura de vanguardia y la cuestión de la jovialidad del Arte Nuevo ante una profunda crisis de valores. Posteriormente se atiende diacrónicamente a las interrelaciones del Arte Nuevo con el nihilismo, se analiza el cambio de sensibilidad de la actitud vanguardista en revolucionaria y se presenta el horizonte de las distintas alternativas ideológicas que afectan al escritor: liberalismo, pensamiento religioso y propuestas ideológicas "totales" como son el fascismo y el bolchevismo. Finalmente se estudia la ideología estética del novelista Benjamín Jarnés, cuya evolución ejemplifica la tarea de la práctica artística como modo de resistencia frente al nihilismo. / This research interprets through the concept of nihilism the evolution of the Spanish interwar literature (1918-1936) and the central role of writers in recognizing the essential disorientation of modern man.First there is the analysis of the concept of nihilism. Then it is provided a description of the ideological and aesthetical context of interwar years, and it is discussed the position of avant-garde literature and the question of the joyfulness of the new art before a deep crisis of values. After that, I try to explain the interactions between new literature and nihilism and I analyze the change of sensibility from avant-gardism to revolution, and how writers react to several ideological alternatives: liberalism, religious thought and especially total proposals such as Fascism and Bolchevism. Finally I focus on the aesthetic ideology of the novelist Benjamín Jarnés, whose evolution shows how the artistic praxis posits itself as a mode of resistance to nihilism.

Le roman d’avant-garde espagnol a longtemps souffert d’un discrédit tenace en raison du préjugé de « déshumanisation » auquel il était systématiquement associé. Ce travail de thèse entend démontrer que, loin de donner congé à l’homme, le roman d’avant-garde est hanté par l’expression, la représentation et la mise en écriture du sujet, entendu comme une réalité à la fois romanesque ou actantielle, métaphysique ou existentielle, morale ou politique, dans ses rapports avec le monde qui l’entoure. Afin de rendre compte, au plus près des textes, de l’expression romanesque de l’avant-garde nous avons souhaité combiner une approche thématique ordonnée autour d’une problématique englobante, celle de l’expression du sujet aux prises avec la modernité, avec une perspective diachronique qui tienne compte des modulations et des variations dans le temps et selon les auteurs. Les deux premières parties réévaluent ainsi l’image et le mythe, longtemps incriminés comme facteurs de déréalisation et de déshumanisation, pour mettre à jour un processus de subjectivisation du monde par l’image et d’humanisation du mythe par sa réécriture féconde. « Sujet regardant » dans l’image, puis « sujet regardé » dans le mythe, l’homme est enfin envisagé comme « sujet agissant », engagé dans l’Histoire, dans une troisième partie qui s’attache à rendre compte des dernières évolutions historiques de l’avant-garde, lorsque celle-ci prend le tournant de la réhumanisation, dès l’orée des années 30. / The Spanish Avant-Garde Novel has long suffered from an ongoing disrepute because of the dehumanizing prejudice to which it was systematically associated. This work intends to show that far from being neglectful of man, the avant-garde novel is haunted by the expression, representation and writing of the individual subject, considered here as a plural reality - both novelistic and actantial, metaphysical and existential, moral and political – interconnected with the world. To reflect the novelistic expression of the Avant-Garde, with close textual reading, I have decided to combine a thematic approach, dealing with the individual subject facing modernity, with a diachronic perspective that takes account of modulations and variations in time and of the authors’ individual perspectives. The first two parts reassess Image and Myth, long implicated as factors of derealization and dehumanization, to reveal a process of subjectivization of the world through images and humanization of myths by their fertile rewriting. First considered as an « examining subject » through the displaying of images, then as an « examined subject » through myths, man is finally thought as an « acting subject » in the third part of this work which endeavours to report on and assess the last historical developments of the Avant-Garde, at the turning point of rehumanization in the early 1930s.