Abstract or Keywords
Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco was nineteenth-century Spain's most prominent serial novelist. Ayguals de Izco was a committed liberal, and he used his literary works to spread his political ideology. From 1846-1848, Ayguals published El Tigre del Haestrazgo, the story of the infamous Carlist general Ramon Cabrera. Cabrera was responsible for the death of Ayguals's brother in the First Carlist War. After the war, Carlist historiographers published a biography that portrayed Cabrera as a noble military hero. Ayguals was infuriated by this exaltation of his brother's executor and decided to publish his own account of Cabrera's exploits. This essay analyzes how Ayguals creates a Gothic childhood for Cabrera to discredit both the hagiography of the General and the Carlist movement. Ayguals uses Gothic archetypes to characterize young Cabrera and contrast him with values of Spain's middle classes. Ayguals uses the signs of Gothic literature to incite a negative emotional response in his readers that would lead his readers to reject Carlist ideology.