Vinciane Trancart – Andrew Britton Fellow
(…At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, the question of national identity was posed with great acuity in Spain. During this pivotal period, the guitar was repeatedly claimed or criticized as “the national instrument” in the press in Madrid and Andalusia, so that the term seems to refer to a mere platitude. However, its exact content appears ambiguous, since it permeated the imagination without ever being made clear. In my PhD, I try to demonstrate that the guitar is not a simple cliché that caricatures reality. It rather proves to be a paradoxical symbol of an identity that is still under debate: the instrument is a national symbol which enables us to observe that the Spanish identity is problematic. It is not limited to be a stereotypical image of the country…)
The Guitar and Banal nationalism during the Restoration in Spain
