Memoria y nostalgia del OchocientosIl Gattopardo y Bearn. La transformación de la clase aristocrática italiana y española y su retrato en la literatura del siglo XX

Abstract

This study examines the transformation of the 19th-century Italian and Spanish aristocracy through its literary representation in Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Bearn o la sala de las muñecas by Llorenç Villalonga. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates history, literature, and the history of emotions, this research explores how memory and nostalgia function as mechanisms that humanize the experience of a declining nobility and allow for a critical reinterpretation of its legacy in contemporary Europe. Set in the insular landscapes of Sicily and Mallorca, both novels portray an elite caught between adaptation and resistance to the disappearance of their world, reflecting not only the tensions experienced by their protagonists but also the concerns of their respective authors. From this perspective, literature does not merely depict the dissolution of a social order; it also resignifies it, projecting its echoes onto 20th-century culture and thought. The aim of this study is to incorporate an emotional and intimate perspective into the historical analysis of the European aristocracy, demonstrating how literature preserves mentalities and traditions while enriching historiography by offering subjective and symbolic perspectives on processes of social change. To achieve this, the research follows a comparative methodology, focusing on the narrative and symbolic analysis of both works within their historical and cultural contexts.From the first chapter, which situates Spain and Italy within the historical framework of the 19th century, to the comparative analysis of Il Gattopardo and Bearn in the final section, each part of this study has been designed with the purpose of constructing a broad and nuanced vision of the transformation of the aristocracy and its literary representation. Throughout this analysis, the study explores the conflicts between modernity and tradition, the evolution of the aristocratic imaginary, and the way literature shapes the memory of the past. Thus, these novels establish a space for dialogue between history and fiction, where the past is rewritten through literary imagination. This research revalues Il Gattopardo and Bearn as essential sources for understanding the Mediterranean aristocracy in the cultural imaginary of the 20th century, highlighting how both works explore the existential dimensions of a class marked by melancholy and loss.Ultimately, these texts allow us to reconsider literature as a privileged testimony of history, revealing its role in preserving and resignifying collective memory while projecting into the present the tensions and dilemmas of social and political transitions. Because, in the end, history and literature engage in a constant dialogue, and what truly endures is not so much historical reality itself, but the way we choose to remember and narrate it.