The study emphasizes the role of the arts and humanities in the re-plotting of gender and also links cultural production to political circumstances, specifically to the end of the Franco dictatorship and the transitional to a new democracy in Spain. The inclusion of both the visual art of Marina Nnez and art photographs as well as literary authors and dramatists offers views of overarching motifs in the cultural production of Spain.The book includes an historical component, with an analysis of works by major nineteenth and early twentieth-century Spanish poets, including Espronceda, Bcquer, Villaspesas, Lorca, and the pioneer female author Blanca de los Rios. The list of writers from the 1970s forward includes both highly recognized figures, Clara Jans, Mara Victoria Atencia, Eduardo Quiles and an extensive group of important writers less recognized beyond among critics.

It is astonishing how deeply the figure of Ophelia has been woven into the fabric of Spanish literature and the visual arts - from her first appearance in eighteenth-century translations of Hamlet, through depictions by seminal authors such as Espronceda, Bécquer and Lorca, to turn-of-the millennium figurations. This provocative, gendered figure has become what both male and female artists need her to be - is she invisible, a victim, mad, controlled by the masculine gaze, or is she an agent of her own identity? This well-documented study addresses these questions in the context of Iberia, whose poets, novelists and dramatists writing in Spanish, Catalan and Galician, as well as painters and photographers, have brought Shakespeare's heroine to life in new guises. Ophelia performs as an authoritative female author, as new perspectives reflect and authorise the gender diversity that has gained legitimacy in Spanish society since the political Transition.