Estrategias de adaptación de una exiliada: mito e historia en la creación literaria de María Teresa León

Abstract

During her long exile in Buenos Aires and Rome, cities where she lived after the end of the Spanish Civil War, María Teresa León (1903-1988) had to face the chaIlenge of adapting to the great variety of politicaI, sociaI and gender traditions of the host countries. In this context, the complexity of the situations derived from her status as an exiled and foreign woman, and the uncertainty caused by the evolution of world politics prevented her from having a clear horizon of returning back to her country. In this process, which involved an adaptation to contingency, the writer made protagonists of sorne of her works historical figures, who, through time, became symbols of the vaIues the exiles supported. Thus, these myths offer a political ethics based on the defence of justice, freedom, truth, loyalty, legitimacy and respect for diversity. Two of these characters, the Cid Campeador and his wife Jimena, recreated in Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid Campeador (1954) and Doña Jimena Díaz de Vivar, gran señora de todos los deberes (1960), aIlow us to deepen in the suggestive connections between fiction, history and myth.