2008 0-7734-5195-1 This study examines the representation, semiotics and power relations inherent in the depiction of the female body in key Modernist short stories by canonical authors from Latin America and Spain at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. The female body is a crucial element in the emergence of modern woman’s subjectivity as evidenced in the tales of Rubén Darío, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Manuel Díaz Rodríguez, Azorín, Miguel de Unamuno and Ramón del Valle-Inclán.