Solar Imagery in Three Novels of Concha Espina

Although disfavored by critics in recent years,1 Concha Espina was in the second and third decades of this century ranked among Spain's leading novelists.2 Her novels were translated into, among other languages, English, German, Swedish, French, Italian, and Russian; La esfinge maragata was considered of sufficient importance to be assigned to French students for the agr?gation of 1923 (Boussa gol 149). Concha Espina claimed to have invented a new genre in Spain, the novela intelectual or novel of sentimental and psycholog ical realism (Garc?a de Enterra 298). Her works won major literary awards: La Esfinge maragata (1914) was awarded the Premio Fastenrath, El Jay?n (1919) the Premio Espinosa Cortina, and Altar mayor (1926) the Premio Nacional de Literatura. El metal de los muertos (1920), her tale of the epic struggle of the miners of R?o Tinto against foreign exploitation, has been described as the Spanish Germinal and was highly praised by Unamuno (Fr?a Lagonia 170, 175). Concha Espina was several times proposed for the Nobel Prize. The reasons for the present neglect of her work are in part literary, in part ideological. The plots of her novels frequently approach incoherence and often end inconclusively. Melodramatic extremes of situation and of character reflect the influence of the follet?n. Her characters are stated rather than revealed, and are often excessively idealized and lacking definition. Furthermore, her hot house Symbolist prose often has the effect of a collage and demands an emotional, rather than logical response.3 Above all, her ideology