The Pirate Pathway: The Trajectory of the Pirate Figure in Peninsular Spanish Literature from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century

This work delves into the world of Peninsular Spanish fictional pirate literature that has, up until now, been rolled in with other types of nautical narratives. The Pirate character, a being that does not assimilate well into the traditional and current character types, breaks the mold and demonstrates very particular characteristics that set him apart from the rest of fictional characters. Beginning in the early nineteenth-century, piratethemed literature stepped further away from non-fiction and entered the realm of fiction, thereby creating a new character not seen before. As early as 1832, Spanish authors entered in to the pirate genre, closely behind English-language authors such as Lord Byron and Walter Scott who had begun producing multiple texts with piratical themes in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Although he follows the English-language example, Ramón López Soler created a break-out pirate figure that ultimately made Spanish Pirate figures unique from their English counterparts. This new figure, what I term the Pirate Paladin, became the first of many subgroups of the Pirate figure thereby creating a new sub-section of fictional protagonists. Over the years, the Pirate has taken many forms to become in the typology that I propose the Pirate Pariah (best demonstrated through José de Espronceda's "Canción del pirata" [c. 1835], the Pirate of Pop, and the Pirate Phantom. Each type of Pirate is discussed separately in four chapters. The final chapter of this work uses texts that address the life of Benito Soto, the famed Spanish pirate considered to be the last of the pirates of the Golden Ages of Piracy. Using four fictional texts, I perform a case study of Benito Soto and show how each of the four Pirate figures are brought together to create, collectively, a mosaic of the real-life pirate.

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