El arte popular en la narrativa de Emilia Pardo Bazán: peleles, monigotes y otros remedos = Popular art in the narrative of Emilia Pardo Bazán: puppets, marionettes and other imitations

The study begins with an introduction presenting the results of previous research on the presence and mention of simulacra of the human body – such as automata and dolls – in the narrative works of Emilia Pardo Bazán, together with a survey of short stories by contemporary writers, with the aim of identifying the influence of the fantastic on her work and possible variations deriving from authorial gender. It then proceeds to an in-depth analysis of literary images of objects such as pelele, monigote, and fantoche, among others. These artifacts refer to popular culture: their imitation of the human figure is crude, they are characterized by being the product of the reuse of old materials, and they are generally employed in a disparaging manner to refer to male characters or deformed beings. An analysis of the density of their use in the corpus of short stories, novellas, and some novels by the author highlights their recurrence in narratives that address two circumscribed thematic axes, from which literary and ideological constants are examined: motherhood and fatherhood in the face of the child’s imperfection, and the protagonists’ reactions of fascination or rejection toward objects that high culture dismisses as vulgar, obscene, or outdated.