Abstract

Focusing on El pasaje, the last of Adolfo Couve's childhood-devoted nouvelles to have been published, we investigate the way his narrative uses the figure of little kings or dethroned princes to represent an abolished social order. We read these little bodies (tropes) through long-standing traditions of images of courtly childhood (taken from fashion, painting, and literature). Finally we propose that in the miniaturist writing of El pasaje we begin to lose sight of childhood as it is absorbed by seaside landscape, which seems to announce the turn Couve's narrative would take in the years to come.