Books in the Hispanic Studies: Culture and Ideas series

This book examines the relevance of the concepts of space and place to the work of Jorge Luis Borges. The core of the book is a series of readings of key Borges texts viewed from the perspective of human spatiality. Issues that arise include the dichotomy between 'lived space' and abstract mapping, the relevance of a 'sense of place' to Borges's work, the impact of place on identity, the importance of context to our sense of who we are, the role played by space and place in the exercise of power, and the ways in which certain of Borges's stories invite us to reflect on our 'place in the universe'. In the course of this discussion, crucial questions about the interpretation of the Argentine author's work are addressed and some important issues that have largely been overlooked are considered. The book begins by outlining cross-disciplinary discussions of space and place and their impact on the study of literature and concludes with a theoretical reflection on approaches to the issue of space in Borges, extrapolating points of relevance to the theme of literary spatiality generally.

En todas las áreas, las personas con voluntad de cambio y desarrollo social utilizan las formas artísticas y la creatividad para conmover la esfera pública, atraer la atención, tomar poder sobre los espacios urbanos y generar nuevos lenguajes y voces sociales. El activismo artístico involucra a personalidades creadoras de todas las culturas, se enraíza en ideas políticas esenciales, moviliza ideas de cambio e igualdad social e interesa a las generaciones más jóvenes, en un espíritu que rompe las barreras académicas y las distinciones profesionales. La creatividad activista con frecuencia ha sido percibida como próxima a la categoría del outsider art que engloba el arte producido por no artistas donde el contexto específico sería la protesta política y/o la experimentación social. El artivismo tiene sus raíces en las vanguardias artísticas (dada, futurismo, surrealismo, etc.) y el posterior desarrollo y auge en la década de los años sesenta y setenta del pasado siglo (performance, happening, body art, land art, video art o arte conceptual), que, muchas veces, nace de una especie de desmaterialización del objeto artístico. Este libro se centra en prácticas de creatividad activista de España, Chile, Perú, Reino Unido, Colombia, etc. que tienen que ver con los actuales fenómenos de crisis discursiva, ideológica, política, económica, financiera. Entender el artivismo, un concepto que, nada más pronunciarlo, despierta un amplio abanico de sensaciones.

This book explores European and Argentinean writers' complex relationships with food and wine. It includes examinations of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Honore de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Italo Svevo, Marcel Schwob, James Joyce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Roberto J. Payro and Ezequiel Martinez Estrada.

This collection of essays looks at the most recent work of Juan Goytisolo from a variety of perspectives and critical stances. The contributors, all specialists in the work of the Spanish author, employ theories of intertextuality, postmodernist irony, queer ethics and even the esoteric science of Huru¿sm to uncover the complexities of Goytisolös creative practice, in particular his radical blurring of the generic boundaries between fiction, autobiography and literary criticism. Such challenging of genre conventions is seen as both integral to the author¿s own questioning of his identity as an expression of his radical dissidence and essential to the response his work evokes in the reader. Life and writing, autobiography and ¿ction, constitute the interconnecting poles of Goytisolös artistic universe. The essays included in this volume explore the varying patterns of con¿uence of these twin strands in the writer¿s later work as a whole, but particularly in novels such as Las semanas del jardín (1997) and Carajicomedia (2000). The essays are set in context by a contribution from Juan Goytisolo himself in which he sums up his philosophy of life and writing as a pursuit of ¿non-prötable knowledge¿.

Historical and literary works from the Spanish Golden Age offer a wealth of information about the Spanish view of the conflict in the Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt and the ensuing Eighty Years¿ War (1568-1648). The war in the cold north was to become a fixed component in the lives of the Spaniards of the Golden Age for many years. This book reconstructs the images that the Spanish had of the Netherlands and its inhabitants. These images are inextricably intertwined with the picture that the Spanish constructed of themselves as participants in the conflict. This book follows the developments of these images from the construction of an image of the enemy that reached a climax between 1621 and 1648 and then gradually faded away. Which images and representations circulated the most, and where did they come from? Which rhetoric was used to present them to the public, and in which genres and contexts were they disseminated and preserved? On the basis of a varied collection of sources, war chronicles and plays, as well as pamphlets, poems, historical works and prose writings, the author illustrates the appearance of the Netherlands through Spanish eyes during the course of the Eighty Years¿ War.

This book is an edited volume of eleven specially-commissioned essays by a range of established and emerging UK-based Hispanists, which assess recent developments in the disciplines falling under the umbrella of ¿Iberian Studies¿. These essays, which cover a wide range of time periods and geographical areas, but are united by the common question of what it means to ¿Read Iberiä, offer an invigorating critique of many of the critical assumptions shaping the study of Iberian languages and literatures. This volume offers a timely intervention into the debate about the current repositioning of language/literature disciplines within the UK university. Its intellectual starting point is the need for a committed and incisive re-evaluation of the role of literature and the way we teach and research it. The contributors address this issue from a diverse range of linguistic, cultural and theoretical backgrounds, drawing on both familiar and not-so-familiar texts and authors to question common reference points and critical assumptions. The volume offers not only a new and invigorating space for reimagining Iberian Studies from within, but also ¿ through its commitment to interdisciplinary debate ¿ an opportunity to raise the profile of Iberian Studies outside the community of academic Hispanists.

In the 1580s, almost a century after Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World, England could not make any substantial claim to the rich territories there. Less than a century later, England had not only founded an overseas empire but had also managed to challenge her most powerful rivals in the international arena. But before any material success accompanied English New World enterprises, a major campaign of promotion was launched with the clear objective of persuading Englishmen that intervention in the Americas was not only desirable for the national economy but even paramount for their survival as a new and powerful Protestant nation-state. In this book the author explores the metaphors that dominate England¿s discourse on the New World in her attempt to conceptualize it and make it ready for immediate consumption. The creators of England¿s proto-colonial discourse were forced to make use of their rivals¿ prior experience at the same time they tried to present England as radically different, thus conferring legitimacy to English claims over territories that were already occupied. One of the most outstanding consequences of this ideological contest is the emergence of an English national self not only in opposition to the American natives they try to colonise, but also, and more importantly, in contrast to other nations that had been traditionally considered culturally similar.

From Revolution to Migration

Includes a selection of the papers given during the international conference Patagonia: Myths and Realities, which was organised through the Centre of Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester.

This book focuses on the novel Paradiso of Cuban author José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), and in particular on the protagonist José Cemí. It examines the development of Cemí according to the three distinct phases detailed by Lezama: the ¿placentariö world of family protection, the awakening to the exterior world and the subsequent friendships made, and the eventual encounters with Oppiano Licario. Cemí¿s progression, and his growing ability to interpret and create texts, is analysed as analogous to the reader¿s progression through the novel. In this respect, both the reader and Cemí are obliged to interpret the complex symbolism according to interpretative skills acquired from the text itself. In a similar fashion, the connection between Cemí¿s ¿guide¿ Licario, and the author Lezama is investigated. By exploring these connections between reader and protagonist, author and character, the author of this work suggests a radical and hitherto unexplored approach to the text of Lezama.

This book explores the concept of displacement in the fiction produced by the Chilean writer Isabel Allende between 1982 and 2000. Displacement, understood in the author's analysis to encompass social, geographical, linguistic and cultural phenomena, is argued to play a consistently central role in Allende's fictional output of this period. Close readings of Allende's texts illustrate the abiding importance of displacement and reconcile two apparently contradictory trends in her writing: as the settings of her fiction have become more international, questions of individual identity have gained in importance. This discussion employs displacement as a means of engaging with critical debates both on Allende's individual texts and on her status as an original writer. After examining in detail the seven works of fiction written by Allende during this period, the book concludes with reflections on the general trajectory of her work in this genre.

Questions about dependence and independence are of crucial importance in relation to Latin America, given the region's history and its current situation. This book examines central issues relating to these two notions in the Latin American context, offering twelve different studies of the themes in question.

Shows how the reuse, recycling and development of material becomes one of the hallmarks of Ramon del Valle-Inclan's writing during the first three decades of his literary career, linking one genre with another and blurring the borders between different aesthetics.

A film institute was the first cultural institution to be created by the new Cuban revolutionary government in 1959. One of its aims was to create a new cinema to suit the needs of the Revolution in a climate of transformation and renewal. During the same period, issues of gender equality and gender relations became important as the Revolution attempted to eradicate some of the negative social tendencies of the past. Through the prism of the gender debate, Cuban cinema both reflected and shaped some of the central ideological concerns on the island at this time. This book brings together these two extremely significant aspects of the Cuban revolutionary process by examining issues of gender and gender relations in six Cuban films produced between 1974 and 1990. Using close textual analysis and theoretical insights from feminism and postmodernism, the author argues that the portrayal of aspects of gender relations in Cuban cinema developed along a progressive path, from expressions of the modern to expressions of the postmodern.

A collection of essays developed from the meetings of the 'Poetics of Resistance' network in Leeds (2008) and Santiago de Compostela (2009). It contains contributions from an international group of researchers and cultural producers, who are committed to the activation, promotion and analysis of counter-hegemonic practices.

Benito Perez Galdos (1843-1920) is revered as Spain's greatest nineteenth-century author. Writing in the realist tradition of Dickens, Zola and Balzac, he described life in Madrid with unequalled fidelity. In addition, he was unique among novelists of his time in his knowledge of medicine, revealed in his depictions of mental and physical disease. While critical analyses of his novels abound, this book is the first detailed study of the medicine that appears in his novels and newspaper articles. Galdos acquired his medical knowledge at a time of great changes: anaesthesia and antisepsis were developed, and the germs responsible for many human diseases identified. French medicine was especially influential, though increasing international exchange resulted in new ideas also being adopted from England, Germany and Italy. The author of this study analyses Galdos's network of medical contacts, together with some of the sources available to them. Subjects such as epidemic disease, madness and children's diseases are examined and the light they throw upon the medicine of the time is discussed. The concluding chapter of the book assesses the significance of Galdos's depictions of disease and of doctors.

Jorge Luis Borges was profoundly interested in the ill-defined and shape-shifting traditions of mysticism. However, previous studies of Borges have not focused on the writer's close interest in mysticism and mystical texts, especially in the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). This book examines the relationship between Borges' own recorded mystical experiences and his appraisal of Swedenborg and other mystics. It asks the essential question of whether Borges was a mystic by analysing his writings, including short stories, essays, poems and interviews, alongside scholarly writings on mysticism by figures such as William James. The book locates Borges within the scholarship of mysticism by evaluating his many assertions and suggestions as to what is or is not a mystic and, in so doing, analyses the influence of James and Ralph Waldo Emerson on Borges' reading of Swedenborg and mysticism. The author argues further that Swedenborg constitutes a far richer presence in Borges' work than scholarship has hitherto acknowledged, and assesses the presence of Swedenborg in Borges' aesthetics, ethics and poetics.

This collection of new essays focuses on key questions within the rapidly growing field of Iberian studies. From a comparative European perspective, the essays question the concept of 'Iberian' itself, query its suitability as a starting point for research and consider it in relation to more established concepts and identities.

This book analyses the ideas of memory, truth and justice in the context of the trials for crimes against humanity in Argentina, from the presidency of Raul Alfonsin to current developments under Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Judges, lawyers, historians, journalists and witnesses give a lucid and critical reconstruction of the last 30 years.

Este libro estudia la situacion que guarda actualmente la literatura, el arte y la cultura hispanica en relacion con otras tradiciones culturales y literarias extranjeras. No es solo una puesta al dia de los mas recientes debates de la teoria literaria y las metodologias de analisis, sino tambien ahonda en un periodo poco explorado.

This book provides a critical and context-sensitive reading of corporeality in the narrative fiction of Merce Rodoreda, through the perspectives of art and film theory, feminism, literary criticism, spatial studies, and nationalist theory. The text approaches Rodoreda as a Catalan woman writer whose work engages with and explores formulaic and normative notions of the gendered body in a particular cultural, geographical and political space. The study covers four main areas: corporeality as surface, image and texture; the relationship between the body and space; the idea of the culturally and politically constructed body as limit; and the concept of the abject or open body. The author places Rodoreda's work in dialogue with a range of texts, media, modes of representation and discourses in order to examine how her artistic vision is both integrated with and a mediator of material experience in the twentieth century.

Beyond the Back Room

This book offers a new reading of Miguel de Cervantes¿s play La destrucción de Numancia (c.1583), analysing the work in relation to theories of empire in sixteenth-century Spain, in the context of plays written immediately before the rise in popularity of Lope de Vega and the comedia nueva, and the playwright¿s innovative use of dramatic techniques in this transitional period of Spanish drama. Dramatic writers have always used the stage as a medium through which they could comment on current events involving politics, religion, philosophy, and society; Cervantes was no exception. His discourse concerning imperial expansion in La Numancia has resulted in many conflicting interpretations of the play¿s meaning. This book explores the dramäs thematic and generic ambiguities, as well as Cervantes¿s representation and interpretation of the historical record in the creation of his characters and his portrayal of the fall of Numancia in 133 BC to the Roman army of Scipio Aemilianus. Finally, this study addresses the significance of seemingly intentionally unclear discourse in reference to La Numancia and the turbulent political and religious environment of late sixteenth-century Spain.

Ana Duffy holds a PhD in Latin American Literature from the University of Queensland, Australia. She has worked in various Australian universities as a lecturer and tutor in the fields of Latin American studies and literature, Spanish and, being a writer herself, in creative writing and literary studies.