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This dissertation is a critical edition of a travel book published by one of nineteenth-century Spain’s most prominent authors. La Alpujarra is the last of the three well-known travel books authored by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, and it is considered his most important. La Alpujarra was first published in 1874, and it was edited by the author himself for its second edition in 1882. The purpose of my dissertation is to compare and contrast both editions. To accomplish this goal, I have documented all the variations in the 1882 edition, using textual notes that appear as endnotes in my critical edition. These variations appear at the end of the text in the section “Aparato crítico.” In addition to textual notes, I have added explicatory notes in the form of footnotes. Some of the explicatory notes are further explained in the complementary notes at the conclusion of the author’s text.
The first part of my dissertation consists of a preliminary study divided into four chapters. The first chapter presents a brief biography of the author, highlighting the most important aspects of his life and his literary career. The second chapter deals with the topic of European travelers and travel books in nineteen-century Spain; and more specifically, in the region known as la Alpujarra, and the city of Granada, the capital of the old Kingdom of Granada, in Andalusia. European romantics favored both sites as the object of their attention, inasmuch as these locales represented the exotic ideal, the stereotypical so-called, “Spanish Orientalism.” The third chapter deals with the creation of the myths and legends based on the history and peculiar geographical features of this region, as portrayed in literary works from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Chapter four offers a literary analysis of La Alpujarra: its structure and literary style; and acknowledges Alarcón’s literary viewpoint, and his perceptions of the region: its landscape, history and people.