Inviting o mal d'ollo: Lyrical Hospitality and the Event of the Hospital in Rosalía de Castro's El primer loco (1881).
Rosalía de Castro's final novel, El primer loco , appeared alongside public debates regarding Galicia's first psychiatric hospital. It relates the titular character's failed romantic adventures and reveals the growing severity of his mental illness preceding his institutionalization. The mentally il...
| Published in: | Hispanic Review Vol. 94; no. 3; pp. 441 - 463 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Literary Criticism |
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Summer2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=195931620&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 195931620 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00182176 HIR jtl: Hispanic Review issn: 00182176 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Summer2026 vid: 94 iid: 3 pid: 4636 pub: University of Pennsylvania Press artinfo: ui: 195931620 10.1353/hir.2026.a997067 ppf: 441 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 357KB tig: atl: Inviting o mal d'ollo: Lyrical Hospitality and the Event of the Hospital in Rosalía de Castro's El primer loco (1881). aug: au: Campbell, David affil: University of Michigan su: El primer loco (Book) De Castro, Rosalía Psychiatric aides Hospitality Entertaining Narrators 19th century (Literary period) sug: subj: El primer loco (Book) De Castro, Rosalía Psychiatric aides Hospitality Entertaining Narrators 19th century (Literary period) keyword: David Campbell Derrida Foucault Gaze Historicity Lyric Nineteenth Century Psychiatry Rosalía de Castro ab: Rosalía de Castro's final novel, El primer loco , appeared alongside public debates regarding Galicia's first psychiatric hospital. It relates the titular character's failed romantic adventures and reveals the growing severity of his mental illness preceding his institutionalization. The mentally ill protagonist narrates the story, which introduces disproportion within the narrative frame. Besides dismantling the basis for the narrative construction of psychiatric truth, her text also invites a reading that undermines the text's own reliability. Much like the mal d'ollo suspected of causing the narrator's mental decline, the reader's eye is forced to confront the lyrical temporality of a fractured narrative. Informed by Derridean conceptualization of hospitality, this article examines the lyrical operations through which the narrative exhibits a poetics of mental illness. The author draws from spiritualist traditions to produce an intimacy with mental illness and address the epistemic violence of late-nineteenth-century psychiatric interventions defined by dynamics of scrutiny and abandonment. Rosalía de Castro's later literary output occurred alongside public debates regarding Galicia's first psychiatric hospital in Conxo. Her final novel, El primer loco , relates the titular character's failed romances and the progression of his mental illness preceding his institutionalization. The mentally ill protagonist narrates, which introduces instances of disproportion. As it dismantles the basis for the narrative construction of psychiatric truth, her text also invites a reading that undermines the text's own reliability. Much like the mal d'ollo suspected of causing the narrator's mental decline, the reader's eye is forced to confront the lyrical temporality of a fractured narrative. Informed by Derridean conceptualization of hospitality, I examine the lyrical operations through which the narrative exhibits a poetics of mental illness. The author draws from spiritualist traditions to produce an intimacy with mental illness and address the epistemic violence of late-nineteenth-century psychiatric interventions defined by dynamics of scrutiny and abandonment. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Literary Criticism src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Hispanic Review is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Hispanic Review holder: University of Pennsylvania Press dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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