Joyce Tolliver PhD

"Sangre y alma: Autoinvenciones nobles e innobles en la España del fin de siglo." Hogares de ficción: Familia, sociedad y nación en la literatura española del siglo XIX. Ed. Ana Rueda.  Ediciones Trea, 2026, pp. 135-156.

In 1881, Galdós publishes La desheredada, in which the working-class protagonist claims that the "voice of her blood" has convinced her that she is actually the daughter of a noblewoman, and is therefore worthy of the name and privileges that come with this true status. Seven years later, the Chinese-Filipino writer Pedro Paterno takes the upper bourgeoisie of Madrid by storm when he presents himself as a Tagalog nobleman, complete with a self-fashioned coat of arms and the self-designated title "Maguinóo," thereby provoking the derision of other filipino intellectuals residing in Madrid. In 1906, Pardo Bazán releases her play "Cuesta abajo," in which a Galician countess confronts the moral and economic collapse of her son and grandson, moving her to revise her notion of "good blood," this time in terms of character. These three cases, two of them fictional and one historical, illustrate the parameters of "nobility" as a Spanish social category based on 19th-century notions of bloodline.

"Empathy for the Devil: Narrative Perspective and Sick Masculinity in Emilia Pardo Bazán's La gota de sangre (1911)." Anales Galdosianos 60 (2025), pp. 89-110.

Pardo Bazán’s La gota de sangre (1911) is routinely referred to as “Spain’s first detective novel,”since the novella’s narrator/protagonist undertakes a murder investigation as a cure for his self-diagnosed “neurasthenia.” When it is read seriously, rather than dismissed as light entertainment, it is nearly always analyzed within the context of the genre of crime fiction. I argue that a richer reading is available when the lens of genre is replaced by a lens of gender. As the narrative progresses, the narrator/protagonist, Selva, reveals his self-absorption, misogyny, and sexual anxieties, culminating in a disturbing suggestion of sexual violence bordering on sadism. In an attempt to understand the remarkable gendering of the narrative dynamics in this novella, I draw on Fritz Breithaupt’s concept of “empathic sadism” and Adam Morton’s“Empathy for the Devil” to examine the implications of the author’s creation of narrative empathy for a repellent male narrator. I suggest that when readers recognize and resist the“empathy with the devil” Pardo Bazán constructs, the detective story becomes a comment on the pathological models of masculinity of post-1898 Spain. What is often portrayed as a light-hearted jaunt is actually among Pardo Bazán’s most serious works.

“Outsiders on the Inside: Mestizaje and the Economics of Colonial Desire in Sinibaldo de Mas and Francisco de Paula Entrala.” Kritika Kultura 37 (2021), pp. 321-340.

Throughout the last twenty-five years of  the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, Spaniards published essays and fiction that echoed  the view that the colonial project was doomed to failure, clearly expressed in Sinibaldo de Mas's 1843 "Informe secreto" ("Secret Report").  Less attention is paid to  nineteenth-century works by peninsulares that mirrored Mas's alternative plan preparing for Philippine "emancipation" and economically incentivizing mestizaje. Among these were the fiction and essays of the self-described "aplatanado" Francisco de Paula Entrala, which suggested that any failure of mestizaje as a normalizing colonial project was due to the shortcomings of the peninsular Spaniards themselves. In Olvidos de Filipinas (Philippines Forgotten) (1881), Entrala's rhetorical shifts simultaneously grant him the authority of an insider to Manila culture and acknowledge his position as colonial outsider; while in "El rostro y el alma" (The Face and the Soul) (1875), he plays with the conventions of Romantic narrative and of costumbrismo to portray mestizaje as the economic salvation of the would-be colonizers and  a "happy ending" to failed Spanish imperialism.

"Mario/Elisa and Marcela: Scandal and Surprise in the 1901 Spanish Press." Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. 45.1 (2020), pp. 46-73.  

This paper, written in collaboration with Sean McDaniel,  analyzes the coverage found in the local and national press of the now-famous marriage of Mario Sánchez Loriga and Marcela Gracia Ibeas in 1901 Galicia--Mario having lived his life up until then as Elisa. We show that the coverage that appeared in the weeks following the event reflected the public’s willingness to question the stability and validity of gender as a category that structured social rights and privileges. We contextualize that questioning within the post-1898 Spanish fin de siglo sense of social instability and reassessment of traditional Spanish cultural institutions. We conclude that today’s framing of the event as a story of two exceptional lesbian women elides both Mario’s self-identification as "hermaphrodite" (in today's terms, trans) and the 1901 public’s recognition of the profound social significance of the successful passing act that the marriage represented.

    Episode 39 of Historias: The Spanish History Podcast, recorded in October 2021, features our conversation with Foster Chamberlin about the so-called "Matrimonio sin hombre" case.