Towards an autonomous literary space during the exile: María Teresa León through the routes of Doña Jimena Díaz de Vivar (1960) and Las peregrinaciones de Teresa (1950)

Abstract

The work written during the Argentine period by María Teresa León is part of the literay corpus of the republican exile with common characteristics such as the melancholia or the poetic evocations around the ideas of oblivion and memory. However, the insistence of the writer from Burgos on the exile routes of her characters is striking. Beyond the memory of the place of origin or the final destination of the journey, the itinerary itself plays a central role in her literary figurations that connect geographical displacements with those imagined. In this sense, the inclusion of the female perspective stands out, as in the novel Doña Jimena Díaz de Vivar, gran señora de todos los deberes (1960) or in the compilation of stories Las peregrinaciones de Teresa (1950), works that portray the role of exiled women in the host societies, as well as their interaction with their itinerant circumstances. With the purpose of deepening the theme of the exilic journey in a feminine perspective, the following study offers a reflection on these two texts by León written in Argentina focused on the voices of exiled women. The approach that will guide the discussion will be the interrelation of the female characters with the exilic routes under the hypothesis that the questioning of women’s capacity for action in exile leads to the projection of an autonomous literary space open to the creation of alternative paths.