Overview

Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921), the most important female author of Spain’s nineteenth century, was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, critical articles, chronicles of modern life, and plays. Active in the age of Catholic social teaching inaugurated by Pope Leo XIII, Pardo Bazán imagined religion as an underpinning for personal and social organization. She addressed the individual experience of faith and culture, and focused on the tension between individualism and the social aspects of religious practice. As a talented literary artist herself, Pardo Bazán was no stranger to the challenges faced by gifted, privileged members of society, particularly in the form of temptations offered by modernity and its widespread encouragement of self-seeking. She wrote repeatedly about the change of heart that may be experienced by intellectually and materially advantaged individuals, and shared details of her own spiritual journey, arguing that once the creative person redefines herself as Franciscan instrument, she is able to contribute through her art and actions to the realization of a personalist society rich in sacramentality. Whole Faith: The Catholic Ideal of Emilia Pardo Bazán, then, is an analysis of how this early feminist put her unique talents to work for her nation, and blended into the worshipping body of Spain by creating for her compatriots a sacramental vision that enriched and commemorated their daily lives.

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In a tour de force, Denise DuPont has brought to life Emilia Pardo Bazan's frequently underestimated Catholicism through rigorous research, perceptive readings, and an engaging prose style. Whole Faith convincingly places religion at the center of Emilia Pardo Bazan's being, challenging the widespread ad hominem attacks on her beliefs and practices in her own day--and misperceptions of her Catholicism in ours. Through close examination of Pardo Bazan's vast output of essays DuPont astutely molds a coherent vision of the author's life, writings, and religion that profoundly affects our understanding of one of Spain's most distinguished women authors. Her book nails the portrait of a 'writer whose vocation was the expression of faith in art' and who saw her artistic vocation as 'steady work in service to others.' --Maryellen Bieder, Indiana University, Bloomington Constitutes a remarkable and groundbreaking approach to the works and thought of the complex Spanish nineteenth- century writer Emilia Pardo Bazan. DuPont brilliantly argues how Pardo Bazan's embrace of a Franciscan cosmovision of inclusiveness and tolerance is at the basis of her envisioning of the role of the arts in society (as a Eucharistic contribution of the individual toward the community) and her plea for gender equality. DuPont pointedly marks the choosing of charitable St. Francis over rationalist Tolstoy in Pardo's approach to religion and in her writing. Thanks to this carefully crafted and documented study, Emilia Pardo Bazan's last three novels and many of her essays and short stories are further illuminated by the understanding of her personal, utterly modern, and feminist understanding of the Catholic faith. --Carmen Pereira-Muro, Texas Tech University Whole Faith forms a significant and interesting contribution to the study of Spanish Catholicism at the turn of the century and contributes significantly to the Pardo Bazan scholarship by analyzing how the author's explicitly Catholic spirituality paved the way for her later spiritually based social liberalism. --Joyce Tolliver, University of Illinois-Urbana

Author Information

Denise DuPont is professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Literature at Southern Methodist University

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