ИСТИНА

‘Giving birth to the past’ and other functions of post-1812 Spanish historical imagination can be meaningfully studied through the texts of the Spanish exile in London (1823-1834). The paper is particularly focused two historical epics written in exile – ‘Pelayo’ by José de Espronceda and ‘Florinda’ by duque de Rivas. Both deal with the collapse of the gothic kingdom in VIII AD that happened under the Arabic invasion, but was closely linked to the legend about don Julian’s treason and the unlawful love of king Roderick and Florinda, don Julian’s daughter. Thus a key point of the national past has a historical as well as an important personal dimension which can be meaningfully read through Bakhtinian analytical tools of the chronotope and biographical/historical/natural time. The paper will proceed to explore how future leaders of Spanish Romanticism imagine Spain as a historical and mythical space responding to the pressures of exile – a peculiar human condition which encourages a new perspective on national history as the basis for both individual and collective identity.