Dialectics of Fragmentation and Unity in the Spanish Serial Novel: María, la hija de un jornalero María, la hija de un jornalero

Abstract

In María, la hija de un jornalero, one of the first mass-oriented Spanish ideological fictions, we find a pervasive and episodically repeated tension between fragmentation and unity, the former as an appalling reality or a risk of total social disintegration, and the latter as a desire and a possible national solution. this textual clash, which echoes one of the fundamental paradoxes of modernity, is omnipresent in the explicit content of the novel of Ayguals de Izco, but not only there. the dialectics of fragmentation and unity is conveyed, as well, in a stealthily eloquent way, through the entire rhetorical apparatus of the text, which, complementarily, impacts in turn the ideological outlook that it is supposed to express.