Noonan Defends Dissertation
Congratulations to Philip Noonan for the successful defense of his dissertation, “From Stage to Page: Toward a History of the Literary Lecture in Spain (1900 – 1926)”!
From Philip’s abstract:
“The literary lecture is a subgenre of the traditional academic lecture that combines literary and metaliterary analysis, artistic self-fashioning, and public performance. This study considers the literary lectures of five writers as a sampling of a major transformation in this genre in Spain between 1900 and 1926. Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, José Ortega y Gasset, Federico García Sanchiz, and Federico García Lorca have been chosen for their representation of a range of literary generations, cultural backgrounds, and socio-political beliefs, and for what their innovative practices of lecturing reveal about the mechanics of this reinvented genre. These five case studies demonstrate that the literary lecture is a complex literary genre that exists in a liminal state between the spoken and the written, reality and fiction, and the public persona and the internal self. Furthermore, these changes come at a time when audience composition was beginning to skew heavily toward the rising middle and upper-middle classes, and especially toward women. Ultimately, the transformation of the lecture from 1900-1926 in Spain will be seen as the product of the appropriation of a traditionally academic, essay-like genre for both artistic and educational purposes and for satisfying the desires of middle-class consumer culture.”
Philip will graduate in May 2021 with a PhD in Hispanic Language & Literatures. His advisor for his dissertation was Christopher Maurer.