ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on The Christian Epics (Los epopeyas cristianos, TS : Please link all unlinked citations to the respective references in the bibliography.1877) and The Christian Epic Poets (Los poetas épicos Cristianos, c. 1882) by the Spanish woman of letters Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851–1921). The collections of essays chronicle important ways that Spanish elites, including at least one woman, engaged with the genre and Milton within their specific religious and social contexts. Especially in the latter work, Pardo Bazán asserts the liveliness of the author–reader relationship, enhanced by access to author biographies. On the one hand, Pardo Bazán highly values the epic genre, including Milton’s Paradise Lost, at a time when its popularity was waning. On the other hand, she acknowledges the lack of universality of Paradise Lost based on her close readings, comparisons to other works in the evolving canon of world literature, and selections from the literary criticism of the transnational republic of letters in which she situates herself and Spanish letters.
