Epidemic Expressions: Reading the Cultural Narrative of"Spanish" Flu Discourse in Spain, 1918--19 Öffentlichkeit
Davis, Ryan Alma (2009)
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes "Spanish" flu discourse in Spain (primarily news coverage) in order to trace the cultural narrative produced in response to the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. The meaning ascribed to the epidemic changed as it evolved into a full-fledged crisis, which manifested both empirically and discursively. Empirically speaking, the epidemic threatened the body politic of the Spanish nation. Discursively speaking, it threatened the Spanish nation qua imagined community. As a whole, this study examines the discursive response to this two-fold crisis. In recreating the story of the epidemic, chapter one shows how the initial benignity of the flu, and its diagnosis as such, created expectations that the epidemic would progress in a mundane fashion. It then shows how the press implicitly distinguished between an "epidemic Spain" and a "sanitary Spain" as the epidemic evolved into a crisis. The rhetorical conventions used to represent politicians, physicians, the general population, and the press were aimed at situating each group in relation to these two Spains. In chapter two, I show how the cultural figure of Don Juan, especially in the guise of the soldado de Nápoles, was invoked to explain both the empirical and discursive crises presented by the epidemic. I argue that the Don Juan figure provided a narrative template whereby Spaniards could emplot their experience of the epidemic. Given the psychocultural function of Don Juan in Spanish history, this narrative serves to reinforce Spanish national identity. In chapter three, I use editorial cartoons to show how this identity ultimately proved to be a bourgeois construct delineated according to class, culture and gender, and one that accordingly privileged the elites over the masses, high culture over low culture, and masculine over feminine.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
List of Tables and Figures iii
Introduction: Epidemic Genre(s) and the "Spanish" Flu Narrative 1
Chapter 1: A Tale of Two Spains:
The "Spanish" Flu as Emerging Crisis and the Struggle to Explain and Contain It 28
Chapter 2: Figuring (out) the Epidemic:
Don Juan, the Soldado de Nápoles, and the "Spanish" Flu 102
Chapter 3: Imagining the Epidemic Nation:
Editorial Cartoons and the "Spanish" Flu 152
Conclusion: 1918, Then and Now 200
Figures 203
Works Cited 236
Works Consulted 265
List of Tables and Figures
Table 1. Soldado de Nápoles figure 121
Figure 1. "En el museo de historia natural" 203
Figure 2. "De la epidemia reinante 204
Figure 3. "Duelo a muerte" 205
Figure 4. Untitled 206
Figure 5. "¿Otra vez la gripe?" 207
Figure 6. "Fin de Veraneo" 208
Figure 7. "Del cupo de Instrucción 209
Figure 8. "Última hora" 210
Figure 9. "La enfermedad del día" 211
Figure 10. "La epidemia gripal se extiende" 212
Figure 11. "Importación" 213
Figure 12. "El campanero macabro" 214
Figure 13. "La ofensiva del ‘Soldado de Nápoles" 215
Figure 14. "Cuadro histórico" 216
Figure 15. "Gran mundo" 217
Figure 16. "Consolar al triste" 218
Figure 17. "Instrucciones para combatir la gripe" 219
Figure 18. "Lo de todos los días" 220
Figure 19. Untitled 221
Figure 20. "Una desaprensiva" 222
Figure 21. "¡Hasta la Cibeles!" 223
Figure 22. "La gripe" 224
Figure 23. "Exceso de cortesía 225
Figure 24. ""El último grito" 226
Figure 25. "La epidemia reinante. Lejos de decrecer, aumenta" 227
Figure 26. "La epidemia elegante" 228
Figure 27. "El mal de moda" 229
Figure 28. Untitled 230
Figure 29. Untitled 231
Figure 30. "Camino de armisticio" 232
Figure 31. Untitled 233
Figure 32. "El fútbol trágico" 234
Figure 33. "El microbio fanfarrón" 235
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