The autobiography as liberation: the unpublished and unknown Así es by Victorina Durán (1899-1993)

Abstract

The novelty and relevance of the present study are grounded in the discovery of unpublished drafts or unedited pretexts of the first lesbian-themed autobiography in our Spanish literature, written by Victorina Durán and titled Así es (This Is How It Is). Utilizing textual genetics and gynocriticism, all the identified variants will be analyzed, including the sole publication of the text, carried out in 2018. The objective is to interpret the writer’s preferences, comprehend the text’s evolution, and reconstruct the process of its inception, that is, to trace the phases of its composition. The outcome of this philological endeavor provides detailed knowledge of both the work and the actual protago- nists who traverse its pages, protagonists the author attempted to conceal. This discovery opens new possibilities and questions in the study of lesbian literature and cultural studies related to the Silver Age of Spanish literature.