Showing papers in "Hispanic Review in 2004"

Lope de Vega's Auto sacramental de la circuncisión y sangría de Cristo: A focal Point of Anti-Semitism in Seventeenth-Century Spain

Abstract: The relationship between playwrights and Jewishness or a potential converso status has been the subject of numerous studies inspired by Americo Castro's work on the Jewish caste in medieval and Imperial Spanish society. Seventeenth-century Spanish playwrights might have observed Jewish customs openly such as Miguel de Barrios, they might have done so secretly, changing their name various times to escape Inquisitorial pursuit such as Antonio Enriquez Gomez, they may have had family names that were associated with Judaism and Judaizing such as Felipe Godinez, or they might have had a possible distant family connection to Jews such as is the case with the most prolific and well-known of all the Spanish playwrights, Lope de Vega, whose play is the object of this study.1 The purpose of this article is to move away from these Castro-inspired, historically-based studies and to examine Judaism and anti-Semitism in Spanish drama from this period through a Lacanian perspective. This perspective opens up a way of reading the ambivalent purity of blood attitude of seventeenth-century dramatists that at once vilify Jews, attempting to expel the Jewish memory from the Spanish territory, and also embrace that memory, including it as an essential part of the territory's history.Some critics of English drama have adopted a similar psychoanalytic approach in their theorization of anti-Semitism. In "The Merchant of Venice: 'Modern' Anti-Semitism and the Veil of Allegory" by Lisa Freinkel and "Jewish Invader and the Soul of Sate: The Merchant of Venice and Science Fiction Movies" by Eric S. Mallin, both authors recognize the need to understand the legacy of anti-Semitism in socio-psychoanalytic terms; they base their discussion on the Lacanian Slavoj Zizek's understanding of a paranoid system, one in which we can not distinguish the enemy Jew from the rest of us. Zizek asserts that when we discuss anti-Semitism we should not ask the essentializing question, "are Jews really like that?" Instead, he suggests that hostility against Jews forms part of the anti-Semite's own bad conscience, if you will: "The anti-Semitic idea of Jew has nothing to with Jews: the ideological figure of a Jew is a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system" (qtd. in Mallin 150).In the examination of anti-Semitism, the discourse of circumcision is the most powerful and useful area of focus in revealing the workings of this ideological system. In two articles, Julia Reinhard Lupton has used a Lacanian reading of circumcision in order to define modern racism, focusing on the notions of separation and jouissance.2 While Reinhard Lupton's reading has limitations, as I point out in the two concluding paragraphs of this article, her perspectives on circumcision shed light on the ambiguous treatment of Jews in the Spanish dramatic context. For Lacan ("Signification"), separation is the passage for the infant from the Imaginary stage to the Symbolic, from a pre-Symbolic state with no language to one of the proper name, the Name-of-the-Father while jouissance suggests a remembering of the Imaginary stage in which the entire world is the infant, as no distinction exists between the subject and object. One of the images that Lacan uses to talk about this fundamental threshold moment of trauma for the infant is through the ceremony of circumcision, an act that entails a simultaneous physical cut and symbolic suture. Lacan reads circumcision as a practice in which the male offspring's foreskin is removed-he is violently cut off, "castrated" by the Father-but he is also joined to the Father, since he is granted a name making him part of the masculine genealogy and history of his people. Lacan would read a happy contradiction in Biblical passages on the nature of circumcision such as when the Book of Genesis suggests that without the cutting, one is cut off: "Every male among you shall be circumcised, generation after generation . . . An uncircumcised male, everyone who has not had the flesh of his foreskin circumcised, he shall be cut off from his kin" (17: 13-14). …

Cuéntame Cómo Pasó O la Revisión Televisiva De la Historia Española Reciente

Abstract: Este trabajo analiza un episodic de la serie televisiva Cuentame como paso (2001) titulado "Caballero y mutilado", que transcurre durante la nochebuena de 1969. En el, observe dos modos de intertextualidad que apelan a elementos afectivos y cognitivos en los espectadores del ano 2000 (Corner 81). En primer lugar, las alusiones a las peliculas Placido (Garcia Berlanga 1961) y El cochecito (Ferreri 1960) establecen un significativo dialogo con el neorrealismo espanol. El segundo campo referencial funciona a modo de prolepsis, pues consta de conceptos asociados con el regimen democratico instaurado en 1977. Me propongo examinar estos dos marcos temporales para determinar el caracter de la aportacion de la television estatal a las actuales tendencias revisionistas de la transicion a la democracia. El episodic elegido epitomiza perfectamente la vision de la serie en su conjunto acerca de los ultimos anos del franquismo.1Antes de comenzar el analisis, es necesario presenter la serie en el contexto de la programacion televisiva reciente. Cuentame, una de las producciones nacionales de mas exito en la historia de la television, ha alcanzado niveles record de audiencia con mas de siete millones de espectadores. Tanto el equipo tecnico como los actores ban recibido numerosos galardones por parte de organizaciones de espectadores y asociaciones de profesionales de la television, segun se desprende del Informe Anual de Cumplimiento de la Funcion de Servicio Publico 2002. Los premios otorgados por la Academia de las Ciencias y las Arles de Television en los tres ultimos anos han situado los niveles de audiencia de TVE1 por delante de las cadenas privadas.Este exito sirve de reconocimiento a la produccion espanola de ficcion televisiva popular. Como explica Mario Garcia de Castro, a partir de mediados de los noventa se produjo un aumento significative de las series de produccion propia, que se emiten en horarios de maxima audiencia (110). Entre las mas populares se encuentran Pepa y Pepe (TVE1), Medico defamilia (Tele 5), Farmada de guardia (Antena 3) y Periodistas (Tele 5). Estos programas sustituyeron a los de nacionalidad norteamericana, que habian sido los preferidos del publico hasta principios de la decada. El formato de las series incluye, entre otras, las siguientes caracteristicas: "vocacion familiar, intergeneracional e interclasista, el ambito urbano y el tratamiento poco conflictivo de cuestiones sociales" (113). Aunque todas ellas se encuentran en Cuentame, la ultima caracteristica va a ser de capital importancia para mi argumentacion. Debido a que la serie transcurre a finales de la decada de los 60, un momento de grandes cambios sociales, politicos y economicos, asi como de intensa actividad clandestina contra el regimen de Francisco Franco, el tratamiento tan "poco conflictivo" de este momento historico tan turbulente no puede pasarnos inadvertido. La ausencia de graves conflictos sociales que caracteriza este genero televisivo es precisamente el mensaje que sus productores quieren transmitir acerca de los anos finales de la dictadura. El tremendo exito de la serie se explica por su emision en prime time asi como su caracter intergeneracional, que esta presente tanto en el contenido como la audiencia a la que va dirigida. En 2001, existe una generacion de espanoles que sabe poco de la guerra y la dictadura, que desconoce los ultimos anos del franquisme representados en Cuentame. Por ello a los jovenes les interesa la serie por la epoca en la que sus padres tenian la misma edad, epoca silenciada por el polemico "pacto del olvido" durante la transicion democratica.2Cuentame como paso narra los avatares de una familia clase trabajadora, los Alcantara, a finales de los sesenta. Sus episodios son comentados por la voz en off de Carlos, el menor de tres hijos, desde su perspectiva de adulto en la actualidad. Este recurso tecnico indica de forma explicita que el periodo historico interesa no exclusivamente por si mismo, sino tambien por su evaluacion desde el presente de los televidentes. …

Body talk: space, communication, and corporeality in Lucía Etxebarria's "Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes"

Abstract: Awarded the Premio Nadal in 1998, Lucia Etxebarria's Beatrix y los cuerpos celestes has won great attention for its graphic portrayal of the vices and the vagaries of Spain's "Generation X."1 Indeed, in many ways this novel epitomizes the characteristics of the fiction of the young writers of the 1990s, as outlined by critics such as Toni Dorca and Jose Maria Izquierdo. Among the more salient traits are the following: 1) a Spanish narrator-protagonist retrospectively telling of his or her survival in the city; 2) a fragmented, disordered, and often repetitive narration; 3) the use of metafiction, with its self-aware emphasis on the process of writing, and the use of literature as a therapeutic escape from hostile reality; 4) an emphasis on the oral, colloquial language of the youth culture displayed in plenteous dialogues or introspective monologues; 5) abundant references to mass popular culture, with the particularly strong influence of AngloAmerican culture; and 6) the preeminence of visual cultural stimuli, especially television, to the extent that it is difficult to distinguish between the virtual and the real. In her insightful analysis of Jose Angel Manas's Historias del Kronen, the prototypical novel of this generation, Nina Molinaro pinpoints the drive of addiction and the "care-less" attitude of these characters as the markers of ontological angst within an empty space of alienation:We are asked to witness nothing less than the fault line of ontology, or the ontological shift known in popular discourse as addiction, which literary critic Avital Ronell has suggestively called "Being-on-drugs." ... Beneath the ideology of realism, which enacts a careful description of many of the endemic social problems currently confronting post-transition Spain, Historias del Kronen calls forth an acute vision of a much deeper crisis, a crisis in Being that displays through the literary performance of addiction. (293)This youthful culture-in-crisis is the product of a hypermodern Spain, where spatial boundaries of identity clash between the global context, Europe, the nation, and a plethora of regions; where individuals are bombarded by an excess of information and simultaneously suspended in a lack of communication; and where bodies are separated from one another by a "tunel de relatividad" (Etxebarria 14) that they themselves create in order to impose distance.2Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes certainly repeats the discourse of the writers of the 1990s, projecting stagnant cityscapes beset by drugs and blighted by indifference, yet the novel simultaneously seeks to generate an alternate way of relating within this realm.3 With the metaphor of space, seen as both outer space and as relations of places and bodies, Etxebarria captures the sense of internal individual exile and alienation from an unbounded external world. The bodies that populate these spaces are represented as detached and self-involved, marred by voluntary acts of surgery, scars, and starvation as the individuals strive to incorporate a subjective ideal of youthful, thin, and independent beauty. Consequently, all the spaces in this text house bodies in pain, where physical pain becomes an expression of or a diversion from psychological pain. In a novel that struggles to find meaning beyond the annihilation and alienation of the postmodern world, Etxebarria explores the potential of discourse to divulge the various perspectives implicit in relations of subjectivity. Ultimately the narrating protagonist, Beatriz, becomes a body that talks as she struggles to create cohesive intimacy, surmount spatial chasms, and adjust her perspective to comprehend the other bodies that drift within her atmosphere.Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes is the first-person account of a twenty-two year old Spaniard who recalls her crisis-driven childhood and teenage years when the intermittent violence and indifference of her parents, together with the general pressures of adolescence, drove her to focus all her emotions and energies on Monica, an older, worldly, and rebellious classmate who became her best and only friend. …

Sor Juana: La Comparacion Y la Hiperbole

Abstract: Sor Juana: la comparacion y la hiperbole. By Margo Glantz. Mexico: CONACULTA, 2000. 255 pages.This book is a compilation of essays written by Margo Glantz, and is divided into three sections. The first part is a reconsideration of the biography of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and it follows the project proposed by the French collection entitled Par soi meme, using literary texts as the foundation to revisit the main events of the Mexican nun's life. This is the strongest section of the book, and it includes three essays. The first essay explores how Sor Juana attained the knowledge and fame that made her such an important figure in New Spain. Glantz identifies an important subtext in Sor Juana's representation of her acquisition of knowledge: the control and discipline of the body. Sor Juana not only controlled what she ate, but she also cut her hair, and was willing to hide her body and her gender to pursue her epistemological concerns. The corporal dimension of knowledge is a central motif in the three essays of this section, entitled "Saberes y placeres." The second essay revisits a well-known aspect of Sor Juana's life-her years in New Spain's viceroyal court-to trace the incorporation of this early phase of her life into her later writings on theology, religion, and secular topics. Courtly and sacred topics coexist and are translated into Sor juana's works; her conflictive relationship with her confessor, Antonio Nunez de Miranda, sometimes becomes a competition for visibility and fame within the viceroyal court. The last essay of this section focuses on Sor juana's double discourse that praises submission in courtly and religious settings, while she also celebrates rational knowledge as a worthy pursuit that dignifies human independence without infringing on the social and political boundaries surrounding appropriate behavior.The second part of the book studies Sor Juana's religious discourse in her villancicos. Glantz begins this section with an essay entitled "?Hay generos menores?," and she takes advantage of the double meaning of the word "genero" in Spanish (genre/gender) to question the function and existence of minor genres as well as a minority gender. This essay studies the villancicos written by Sor juana, and continues with the analysis of high and low symbols in these texts to praise the role of the Virgin Mary as a divine and human mediator. Glantz also addresses the popular nature of the villancicos as a pedagogical strategy linked to evangelization that was used by Sor Juana to give voice to racial and social minorities in New Spain in theological and epistemological debates. The next essay studies specifically the villancicos dedicated to San Bernardo's temple to identify some of the same topics already studied in Sor Juana's most popular texts. Glantz's main goal in this section of the book is to highlight the importance of Sor juana's villancicos by questioning the general tendency to study her religious and secular works separately.The last section of the book, entitled "Enanos y gigantes," analyzes the final crisis of Sor Juana and tries to place in context her conflictive relationship with religious hierarchies and official institutions. …

Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879-1931

Abstract: PORTER, SUSIE S. Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879-1931. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2003. 250 pages.At the turn of the twenty-first century attention to the feminicides in Ciudad Juarez has reinforced an increased attention to the presumed connection between working-class women's bodies and assumptions about underclass morality. Much of the contemporary discussion is heavily moralistic, in a stereotyped, racialized, middle-class fashion that has not changed appreciably in the last one hundred years. Because so many of the young women who have disappeared in that border city were maquila workers, once again public discourse is full of questions about the breakdown of traditional family values when women are on their own as wage earners, about whether underclass women have any claim to sympathy (i.e. good girls from good families), or whether they are complicitous in their own victimization (i.e. sexually available women from dysfunctional or irregular families). The activism around gender violence is so fraught partly because-secreto a voces-working women themselves are often imagined as a site of violence and a threat to the integrity of the family and the nation. Susie Porter's new book helps remind us of the long history to these social upheavals in her study of underclass working women in Mexico City at the turn of the last century, when rapid economic expansion and urban industrialization brought a significant percentage of women into the wage-labor market.Porter is a labor historian, and her book is drawn from her analysis of archival materials including censuses, newspapers, and government documents, as well as a generous sprinkling of letters and petitions of working-class women to government officials and factory managers. Her methodology is loosely based on a feminist appropriation of the concepts of Jurgen Habermas on the public sphere, and she is particularly interested in focusing on the intersection of women's participation in the labor market and the discourse around female honor. At the last turn of the century (as, alas, at our turn of the century as well!) there was/is a slippage in discussions of the working woman that worried about her potential chameleonlike ability to move between the roles of obrera and prostitute. Discourse inevitably seemed (and still seems) to ground itself in concern about protecting the reproductive potential of the good woman and exorcizing the unfortunate population explosion among the less worthy, in the service of the national self-imaginary. The bottom line: in all her discussions, Porter comes back to the effects of a rhetoric of middle-class morality upon women from the lower classes. Gender, says Porter, "functioned as a marker of class distinctions. [T]he term respectability identified an occupation as middle class" (xv). Since they cannot hope for middle-class income or lifestyle, the only way to legitimate themselves as workers, it seems, is for Mexican women to shoehorn themselves into a middle-class conception of virtue.Unlike most historians, Porter does not focus on the Mexican Revolution as the pivotal point of her analysis. While she does recognize that the revolutionary rhetoric did open up a space to speak of the working woman in less moralistic ways, she emphasizes that the process of industrialization itself, much more than the Revolution, is the instrumental factor in bringing about changes in the women's daily lives. Here she points to two main factors: first, the discourse of honor and morality continued to inflect discussions of the rights of working women in a more-or-less continuous fashion throughout the Porfiriato and well into the postRevolutionary period; second, while revolutionary rhetoric allowed women a space to reformulate their demands, the benefits associated with the Revolution are not unique to Mexico, and in fact similar legislation was enacted throughout the Americas in this time period. …

Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America

Abstract: GEIST, ANTHONY L., AND JOSE B. MONLEON, eds. Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America. Hispanic Issues 19. New York: Garland, 1999. 320 pages.Underlying this timely and unusually coherent anthology of essays on Modernism in Spain and Latin America is the idea that, precisely, there is something to be gained by considering the phenomenon in both cultural milieux simultaneously, since both areas have been on the periphery of an economic and cultural modernity that they have felt to be a distant, metropolitan reality. But in a cogent introduction, the editors argue furthermore for upending the center/periphery model altogether by proposing that the periphery was always central to the cultural project of modernity. One only has to think about the cast of characters that is traditionally associated with Continental Modernism-Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Picasso, among others-to notice their eccentricity with respect to Europe. But we must also keep in mind the fetishization and aesthetic commodification of an "exotic" periphery that was such an integral part of the Modernist program, even if it was carried out at times by individuals belonging, in fact, to those secondary economic and cultural zones.The critical paradigm invoked here is derived from Jameson's conception of Modernism as the style that arises to address the reality of a capitalism that has expanded to incorporate the rest of the world into its economic orbit as a colonial periphery. In this view, the realization that the health and prosperity of the metropolitan system now rest paradoxically in a realm literally outside itself creates an anxiety that is "resolved" through the invention of a cultural modality that affirms the centrality of the modern experience-an experience privative to the metropolitan circles that posited it. Modernism would then be a kind of compensatory mechanism that would seek to erase or write off the dependence that increasingly would characterize the colonial and neo-colonial metropolitan experience. Similar ideas have been proposed by Ernesto Laclau in his recent consideration of Enlightenment rationality as a strategy that required the simultaneous positing of an unenlightened periphery in order to come into being, a periphery that can-and will-therefore come back to haunt the hegemonic enlightened program from within.As a whole, the essays assembled in this collection constitute attempts to engage in this revisionist critical project, clearly outlined in the introduction by Geist and Monleon. By and large, the articles reveal the astounding uniformity of the cultural manifestations of the modernist phenomenon produced throughout the world. This uniformity is, of course, itself a symptom that the underlying foundation of the phenomenon indeed had the cosmopolitan dimensions adduced by Jameson, Geist, and Monleon. In other words, the movement's uniformity and concern with universale bespeaks its compensatory function of assuaging anxieties arisen from a world-historical metropolitan perspective. …

Fantasías irÓnicas e ironías fantasticas: sobre Amado Nervo y el lenguaje modernista

Abstract: Aunque paradojico a primera vista, resulta claro que tanto la narrativa fantastica como las expresiones ironicas descansan sobre una dualidad en la que uno de los polos es, precisamente, la lectura literal o referencial del enunciado. En las ficciones fantasticas, como ya recordo Todorov y luego matizo Barrenechea, no caben las lecturas absolutamente liricas ni tampoco las alegoricas, en el sentido tradicional de ambos terminos. El empleo mimetico y representacional del lenguaje resulta necesario para la sintaxis de la narracion, pues sin el es imposible generar la cotidianeidad de un mundo en el que se pueda insertar el acontecimiento extraordinario que confiera a esos relatos Nao e bastante nao ser cego

Masculinidad, imperio y modernidad en Cartas de relaciÓn de Hernán Cortés

Abstract: En este ensayo me interesa analizar la relacion entre masculinidad y empresa imperial vinculada a la figura que Hernan Cortes construye de si mismo en las Cartas de relacion. Parto de la suposicion de que la empresa imperial en el Caribe y posteriormente en el territorio azteca ofrece un nuevo espacio para la subjetividad y agencia de Cortes, asociada a la modernidad. Lejos de la sociedad espanola, de la corona y de las normas y jerarquias sociales que limitan la movilidad social a sectores de la baja nobleza, la empresa imperial en el Nuevo Mundo ofrece a Cortes un escenario en el que constantemente tiene que enfrentar la diferencia que representa este nuevo entorno e imponer fronteras sociales, etnicas, culturales, sexuales y simbolicas como estrategias fundamentales para su empresa de conquista. La propia internacion de Cortes y de los espanoles en el territorio mexica posterior a su llegada a Veracruz, exige dar significacion a los nuevos espacios y a los nativos que va encontrando en su marcha hacia Tenochtitlan. En tal proceso y por medio de diversas operaciones de diferenciacion, la figura de Cortes y sus atributos politicos, militares e intelectuales sobresalen al construir nuevos limites y ordenar el espacio, y al procesar rapidamente informacion para sus propositos de conquista; pero, sobre todo, en las Cartas, de relacion Cortes va inscribiendo sistematicamente una masculinidad superior a otros hombres y a otras culturas. Este escenario de guerra y de conquista en los inicios del siglo XVI nos permite ver a la masculinidad como una construccion de poder, ligada a la modernidad. La nocion de modernidad que elabora Marshall Berman me permite considerar la escritura de las cartas de Cortes como un proceso dialectico entre un yo y el Nuevo Mundo, por medio del cual Cortes se transforma en sujeto y objeto de la empresa imperial (modernizacion), cuyo fin es imponer su autoridad y control del presente y del futuro.1 Como indica Berman, la experiencia de la modernidad comprende cinco siglos de procesos economicos, descubrimientos cientificos, movimientos sociales y demograficos, emergencia de naciones, y visiones e ideas que define como un proceso dialectico de modernizacion y modernismo. Berman ubica la primera fase de la modernidad entre 1500 y 1790, esto es, cuando se empiezan a experimentar formas de autoconciencia y de subjetividad que iran estableciendo una nueva sensibilidad y aspectos de una vida moderna en espacios urbanos, si bien las condiciones sociales y materiales dominantes son todavia medievales. La subjetividad y masculinidad de Cortes aparecen intimamente ligadas al exito de la empresa de conquista y de colonizacion. Su propia persona y masculinidad, como veremos, representan una metonimia del imperio.Segun indica Beatriz Pastor, la historia del descubrimiento y de la Conquista de America se construye a traves de la ausencia, omision y silenciamiento de los otros (122-24). Este proceso historico, como tantos otros, no puede ser narrado por una sola voz. No obstante, las narraciones de este periodo se caracterizan por la supresion del dialogo, el silenciamiento de los interlocutores alternativos y de la disidencia, la marginalidad de los agentes sociales y, en muchos casos, la invencion estrategica del habla del otro como mecanismo de subordinacion. En las Cartas de Relacion una sola voz asume el monopolio de la palabra, emergiendo como la voz de la autoridad. La narracion de las acciones entre espanoles e indios aparece articulada mediante una constante necesidad de proyectar su significado mas alla de los hechos e integrarlos a una superesiructura racional que proporcione una totalidad coherente. En las cartas de Cortes, indica Pastor, no se trata simplemente de hacer un inventario y compilar datos etnograficos, religiosos, topograficos, militares y politicos, sino de organizar los datos y eventos de tal manera que permitan proponer modelos y leyes generales destinados a un objetivo de dominacion. …

Virtual Islands: The reterritorialization of Puerto Rican spatiality in cyberspace

Abstract: Estamos en otra isla. New York es otra isla. He querido evadir el determinismo geografico, pero estamos en otra isla: ustedes y nosotros.-Manuel Ramos Otero, "La otra isla de Puerto Rico"The Coqui Controversy: A Case Study in Globalized ReterritorializationAs almost anyone who has ever visited or lived in Puerto Rico can readily affirm, the coqui is a prevalent inhabitant of the island. This small native frog makes its presence known through the distinctive nocturnal calls that have become closely associated with the landscape in Puerto Rico. Even when they remain concealed-either by foliage and natural camouflage or within the interstices of urban density-their daily ritual of vocalizing at dusk makes their ubiquitous presence undeniable. The coqui is not merely a natural phenomenon; the frog is also a symbol of Puerto Rican identity. The close link between the coqui and the Puerto Rican habitat has afforded it a privileged status as a cultural icon. Hence, not only is the coqui avowedly Puerto Rican, but it also is evocative of the specific locality of the island.The coqui's iconic status is manifested by a wide array of representations of the frog on the island. Shops in Old San Juan and near other tourist attractions usually offer a variety of anthropomorphized renditions of the coqui engaging in activities such as playing traditional local instruments, dancing, or simply reclining in a hammock. Although certain representations faithfully imitate the appearance of the frog, many of the reproductions bear little resemble to the biological referent. In fact, a particular iconography of the coqui has developed: it is most commonly depicted as a bright, green frog with a relatively small head and seemingly uncharacteristic features such as directly forward-facing eyes and small ears. The marketing of both the more realistic and the primarily cartoon-like figures appeals to a foreign desire for transportable souvenirs of the purportedly exotic destination that visitors tend to seek: they codify a rarified local specificity through a representation that is both charming and readily comprehensible (Lury).2Interestingly, the consumers of these figures are not only foreign tourists. The coquis also appeal to Puerto Rican consumers.3 Local consumption of the imagery occurs because the coqui offers a particular representation of puertorriquenidad.4 The coqui is a symbol traditionally associated with Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican identity. Moreover, this symbolism is directly connected to the putative biological and/or mythological autochthony of the frog. Certainly, the pervasive presence of the animal throughout the island reinforces its association with the Puerto Rican landscape. More importantly, traditional cultural folklore asserts that the species is utterly incapable of surviving in any other environment. According to popular lore, the coqui will simply die if transported to a different ecological environment such asfor example-New York. But Puerto Ricans also insist that the tiny frog is equally unable to withstand a shift to neighboring islands such as St. Thomas or Hispaniola, which offer an ostensibly equivalent biological setting. In other words, although no clear scientific evidence has been offered to support such claims or explain why the animal would be affected by biologically irrelevant political borders, many local residents assert that the coqui will undoubtedly perish if removed from the territory of Puerto Rico. Hence, according to these claims, the coqui is Puerto Rican to an extreme: it thrives in Puerto Rico and perishes anywhere else. According to this mythology, therefore, the production of locality takes precedence over ecological habitat and ultimately constitutes the true basis for (symbolic) cultural survival.Recently, this myth has been empirically refuted by an unexpected population explosion of coquis in Hawai'i.5 Although it is unclear precisely how or why the original progenitors were transported to this other insular environment, the coqui-rather than perishing-has thrived in its new location. …

Postcolonial Perspectives: On the Cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Africa

Abstract: FIDDIAN, ROBIN, ED. Postcolonial Perspectives: On the Cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Africa. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000. 218 pages.Robin Fiddian's scholarship has primarily dealt in the past with the works of contemporary writers as demonstrated by his main publications: Ignacio Aldecoa (1979), Garcia Marquez (1995), and The Novels of Fernando del Paso (2000). This edition clearly departs from his previous line of research and centers the discussion around the issues of colonialism and postcolonialist discourse. Although the eight essays that comprise this volume are very well written and researched, they do not constitute an organic work if compared with Postmodernidad y postcolonialidad: breves reflexiones sobre Latinoamerica (1997) edited by Alfonso de Toro; Teorias sin disciplina. Latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalizacion en debate (1998) edited by Santiago Castro-Gomez and Eduardo Mendieta; and After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas (2003) edited by Mark Thurner and Andres Guerrero.In the introduction, Fiddian gives a historical background of postcolonial theory and its suitability in relation to the Latin American and Lusophone African realities. Fiddian asserts that some regions in Latin America display the "prototypical conditions and issues of postcolonial experience"; moreover, he observes that the cultures of Latin America, along with the cultures of Lusophone Africa "share common ground[s] with postcolonial cultures" (15). However, the theme that connects these eight articles is not so much the discussion of the commonality of the postcolonial experience as such, but the contributions to this discussion by Latin American and Lusophone African authors. In the first chapter, entitled "On Metropolitan Readings of Latin American Cultures: Ethical Questions of Postcolonial Critical Practice," Mark I. Millington considers "the multiple and challenging factors at play in the contemporary reading and analysis of Latin American cultures from positions within the metropolitan nations" (27-28). Millington further argues that the universal authority exerted by the metropolitan nations is no longer convincing, moreover, "cultural forms and practices from other locations have complicated and problematized the capacity of the metropolis to speak ethically" (31). This would lead to his perspective that postcolonial discourse is not disconnected from a full range of political and economic changes worldwide, thus weakening the position of metropolitan nations to dominate discursive practices. Although theories are bound to travel and intellectuals may continue to have an "in-between position" regarding metropolitan and peripheral nations, Millington considers that the "ethical imperative is that they do so in collaboration with an active critical consciousness" (47).In the second chapter, "Ig/noble Barbarians: Revisiting Latin American Modernisms," Else R. …

Henry Buckle's decadent Spain in ortega's España invertebrada

Abstract: Espana inverlebrada poses a mystery to the alert reader. In its first part, it seems to present an accolade to the Catholic Monarchs for unifying Spain and lifting her to hegemony; in its second part, nonetheless, it undercuts this tribute to Ferdinand and Isabella by describing their accomplishment as a burst of artificial plenitude, masking a nation essentially ailing since the time of its origins. The enigma is resolved when we recognize that the same paradox appears in Henry Thomas Buckle, and that Ortega is maintaining a between-thelines dialogue with the Victorian scholar. In fact, Buckle's History of Civilization in England (published in two volumes, in 1857 and 1861, respectively) deeply affected the historiography of Spain.1 One lengthy chapter, the first in volume H, constituted a negative sequel to the whole of English history, presented as progressive; for Buckle unveiled a richly documented, 122-page synthesis of Spanish history, nearly always static or regressive from the fifth to the mid-nineteenth century. The book achieved resonance throughout Spain and immediately went into numerous reprints. The chapter on Spain, translated into Castillan, appeared in London in 1861 in a separate volume under the title Historia de la civilization en Espana, and in Valencia in 1908 under the title Bosquejo de una historia del intelecto espanol desde el siglo v hasta mediados del xix. Received as a decisive contribution, the work oriented generations of Spanish thinkers.The part Buckle's historiography played in the Spanish Regeneration movement has yet to be fully explored. The Regenerationist engineer Lucas Mallada, if "Azorin" (Jose Martinez Ruiz) is to be believed, relied too heavily on the 1861 London translation in his book Los males de lapalria y lafutura revolution espanola (1890). In a severe critique of Mallada's work, affirming the omnipresence of Buckle in Mallada, "Azorin" shows his own familiarity with the 1861 translation and the considerable diffusion of Buckle's ideas on Spain in that country. "Azorin" regards Mallada's book as the transposition to space (geology, geography) of what Buckle had concluded in time (history) in his "famoso ensayo sobre Espana, que forma parte de su Historia de la civilization en Inglaterra, ensayo que fue puesto en castellano y publicado en Londres en 1861 ... con el titulo de Historia de la civilization en Espana" (6: 254-55). According to "Azorin," Mallada arrives at more or less the same erroneous deductions about Spain as does Buckle. Even so, "Azorin" ranks Mallada's book as the most "representative" of its time, as if the spirit of that epoch in Spain coincided with Buckle's sensitivity. Not only in geography, but also in observations on Spanish politics and intellectual life, Mallada seems to "Azorin" to display Buckle's orientation (6: 255). 2Although "Azorin" does not specify Buckle's and Mallada's supposed errors, they have to do with the poverty of the Spanish soil, defects of national character, adverse conditions of Spanish agriculture, the backwardness of Spanish industry and commerce, and immorality in public life.3What "Ajzorin" says of Mallada, Miguel Olmedo Moreno writes years later of Angel Ganivet, whom he accuses of committing "un plagio" with respect to Buckle throughout the whole first part of his Idearium espanol (129). In fact, our own more recent studies have shown that Ganivet synthesizes many authors in all his main ideas. To Buckle he probably owes the notions that Spain is characterized by its desire for independence; that its land has influenced its character; and that the Reconquest amounts to a sustained, eight-century campaign for national independence. However, he moves with relative independence of Buckle in certain respects, revealing that, like "Azorin," he has given Buckle a critical reading; he does not share Buckle's anticlericalism, and, unlike Buckle, he distinguishes the policy of the Catholic Monarchs from that of Charles V (Orringer, "Introduction" 27, 68). …

Comienzos, enfoques y constitución de la comedia de privanza en la "Tercera parte de las comedias de Lope de Vega y otros auctores"

Abstract: ID*S5"" .ft 1 concepto de "genero" en literatura es fundamen*^< y tt tal, y a veces muy problematico.1 El artista y el A^T) t; critico usan el termino de diferentes maneras y .*| r 1 u con diferentes propositos. Para el escritor "gewl*= 3 nero" implica un armaz6n estructural y un con* ; cepto de lenguaje cuya funci6n ontol6gica con~'--~ Q ^trola la relaci6n dinamica entre emisor y receptor. Ademas, refleja un cumulo de convenciones de las que el autor se sirve para situar sus ideas y sentimientos espacial y temporalmente por medio de un lenguaje imaginativo. Por eso, como ha sugerido E. D. Hirsch, la eleccion por el escritor de un genero es primordial, porque determinara en uiltima instancia el significado de su texto. Esto se explica porque los significados verbales estan circunscritos por fundamentos genericos (76), es decir, por patrones y conocimientos residentes en la conciencia, tanto del creador como del destinatario. En este sentido, "genero" para el literato es una nocion de praxis habitual. Para el critico, en cambio, "genero" es un dispositivo taxonomico con el cual se puede organizar y categorizar un acervo de obras

MARX, VILLA, CALLES, GUZMÁN . . .: Fantasmas Y Modernidad En Entre Villa Y Una Mujer Desnuda De Sabina Berman

Abstract: The future can only be for ghosts. And the past.-Jacques Derrida, Specters of MarxThe modernism of underdeveloprnent is forced to build on fantasies and dreams of modernity, to nourish itself on an intimacy and struggle with mirages and ghosts.-Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity[Friedrich] Katz nos revela [en su libro Pancho Villa/ que en la Historia no hay verdades ultimas, ni totalmente desnudas. Que todas las verdades construidas par las historiadores son penultimas verdades y en el mejor de los casos, posaran semidesnudas ante los ojos criticos y escrutadores de los estudiosos.-Carlos Javier Maya Ambia, "Entre Pancho Villa y la verdad semidesnuda"En la pieza dramatica Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda, publicada y estrenada en 1993, la mexicana Sabina Berman retoma algunos de los temas mas caracteristicos de su teatro. Entre estos se encuentran, por ejemplo, la representation de posturas feministas desde perspectivas autocriticas, el parodico desmantelamiento de la historia, el agudo sentido del humor que dialoga con realidades sociales, sexuales y politicas, y la juguetona yuxtaposicion de tiempos y espacios. Bastaria con aludir aqui al ensayo de Sharon Magnarelli titulado "Tea for Two: Performing History and Desire in Sabina Berman's Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda", para reconocer cuan sagazmente los criticos se ban enfrentado con algunos de estos temas recurrentes de la produccion dramEtica de Berman y con cuanta agudeza han explorado la relacion que estos temas han establecido entre si. Magnarelli, por ejemplo, se acerca a Entre Villa a traves del entrelazamiento de la historiografia y la narratividad; explora la tematica del deseo desde perspectivas tanto narrativas como eroticas; y examina el caracter performativo del genero sexual (55). Jacqueline Bixler, por su parte, coloca su atencion en la relacion que establece la obra entre el poder sexual y el politico, y en los mitos a los que recurren los que poseen dicho poder para alcanzarlo y mantenerlo ("Power Plays" 86).Mas significativo aun es reconocer que esta variedad de enfoques que destacan Magnarelli y Bixler en el analisis de Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda se manifiesta de forma explicita en el corpus mas amplio de obras de Sabina Berman, sobre todo en aquellas que indagan en el discurso historico. El enfasis desconstructivo y experimental ante la historia que caracteriza la dramaturgia de Berman se evidencia en piezas como Rompecabezas (1982), Herejia (1983), Aguila o sol (1984), Krisis (1996), Moliere (1999), y en la obra que nos concierne aqui, Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda. Esta exploracion de la historia no debe sorprender a nadie que este modestamente familiarizado con el teatro mexicano, pues como ha senalado Sandra Cypess: "el numero de obras que exploran temas historicos demuestra la fascinacion de los escritores mexicanos con el pasado y con la investigacion del pasado como medio de entender el presente" ("Myth and Metatheatre" 37).1 Sin embargo, la particularidad de Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda es que Berman logra entrelazar con efectividad sus posturas iconoclastas ante la historia con lo que Kirsten Nigro ha identificado en esta pieza como "una forma mas tradicional de la comedia de salon" ("Theatre" 59). Ironicamente, este osado entrelazamiento entre Io "serio" y lo comico o ligero, segun nos recuerda Nigro, ha llevado a algunos admiradores de la obra de Berman a criticar Entre Villa por su coqueteo con el teatro comercial y por, alegadamente, tratar de manera superficial los asuntos feministas con los cuales Herman se ha identificado a lo largo de su produccion teatral ("Theatre" 61). No obstante, es esta controversial yuxtaposicion de elementos lo que, desde mi perspectiva, caracteriza todo el teatro de Berman y lo que en ultima instancia produce la armoniosa estridencia y la sosegada vitalidad de sus obras que tanto han captado la atencion del publico teatral y de la critica. …

A Latin American Indian re-reads the canon: Postcolonial mimicry in El Señor presidente

Abstract: As any Latin American of Indian extraction would testify, it is hard for an Indian to make his or her voice heard. Political and economical exclusion are the norm if not the unwritten law in many countries of the region. Even harder is to hear Indian input in economic, political, and social policies since elected politicians do not usually represent Indians. It is even difficult, almost an anomaly, for an Indian to give his opinion about cultural phenomena, especially art and literature since Latin American literature and subsequent criticism is done with a open pro-European bias not only in the regional praxis but also abroad. Therefore, and I think I speak for many Latin Americans of Indian extraction-who make up the majority in most of the countries of the region-thanks for the Postcolonial. This approach has allowed me to re-read canonical works taking a new refreshing look at them and hoping to bring to light a new body of criticism and, most importantly, to allow the underdogs to give their view about the celebrated and canonized narratives. I see El Senor Presidente not in the vein of the traditional criticism (but not by all means gone) of the writer as the origin of meaning, but of the writer, as Heather Hirschfeld puts it, as "a discursive formation embedded in particular historical conditions and disciplinary needs" (610). In this essay, I concentrate my efforts on the historical discourse that I discern in the work of Miguel Angel Asturias who, as we will see below, ascribed the problems of Guatemala to the presence of the Indians.In 1931, Miguel Angel Asturias went to France to thank the French writer Paul Valery for the letter which the latter had written praising Asturias's Leyendas de Guatemala (1930). One wonders what went on in Asturias's mind when Valery suggested to him to return home to Guatemala. Valery wanted Asturias to leave France, to go back to the Americas and to write about that effervescent, unknown wilderness that Guatemala offered to the European reader. Valery wanted Asturias to write not as an imitator of European literature, but as the indigenous voice of that primitive land in a state of formation. For Valery, who had been very supportive of Leyendas de Guatemala, where Asturias suggested that an atavistic mentality was the main feature of Guatemalan Indians, Asturias and Guatemala were a dual entity " 'en efervecencia como la tierra, los volcanes, Ia naturaleza.' "1 Years later, when Asturias published El Senor Presidente (1941), Valery's advice seemed to have had a strong influence on the Guatemalan writer. Everything that Valery dreamed of had come to life.Although I do not intend to dwell on Valery's ideas, his views fit a pattern of thinking about the Latin American Other. In the pages of El Senor Presidente there is that "efervecencia" that Valery wanted, which seems to come alive in the natives' primitivism, their misplaced passion and their corrupted persona. I, however, see this novel as the reflection of an inherited ideology in Latin America that has produced specific patterns in the natives' Otherness discernible in a rich body of literary imagery. This type of thinking, which thoroughly pervades Asturias's narrative, is the undying echo of the old and the new assumptions about the ontology of non-Europeans in the Americas. The Other's basic traits are not only imbedded in personal behavior but its presence is also incarnated in the political body which is the expression of the collective wish of the individual.2 In this case, the Other is the Guatemalan society (and its inhabitants) which reveals an ideological thinking proposing that primitivism and degeneration are inherent to Latin American societies.This qualitative dimension in El Senor Presidente has never been addressed. This novel, in fact, has been seen not as the formulation of a colonial discourse persistent in literary production in the region, but, on the contrary, as the unique novel of political criticism. …

Street scenes: Foreign travelers in Madrid (1825-1850)

Abstract: No country is less known than the rest of Europe. (Johnson 365)Here we fly from the dull uniformity, the polished monotony of Europe to the racy freshness of an original, unchanged country [. . .] (Ford I: 119)Those who wish to see Spain while it is worth seeing must go soon. (Christmas I: 219)Overwhelmed by the dark side of enlightenment and progress that was manifesting itself at a rapid pace in the form of capitalism, railroads, and alienated social relations, many travelers of the first half of the nineteenth century were tourists thirsty for diversion and new scenes that contrasted with the ordinary course of life. The "pleasurable instruction" that had characterized travel since the late sixteenth century was replaced by a new mode of movement grounded in the tenets of European Romanticism.1 From now on, cultural difference, immersion in local color, and individual expression would shape the traveler's itinerary. To fulfill these aspirations a new generation of travel writers ventured towards southern Europe and beyond in search of spaces unmarked by industrialism and bourgeois advances. In this way, the same poor travel conditions, urban uncleanliness, religious fanaticism, and political tensions that had persuaded many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Grand Tourists to bypass Spain came to be celebrated by Romantic travelers who considered the country one of the last reserves of independence and authenticity in Europe. As Richard Ford's assessment of his contemporaries' travel agenda suggests, the contours of the early nineteenth-century Spanish tour were defined by the expectations of the traveling public, namely a cultural landscape saturated with characters and rituals reminiscent of a disappearing traditional society:Spain's best attractions are those which are characteristic of herself: here all that is imitated is poor and second-rate, and displeases the foreigner, who can see the originals much better at home: he crosses the Pyrenees, too weary of the bore, commonplace, and the uniformity of ultra-civilization, in order to see something new and unEuropean; he hopes to find again in Spain [. . .] all that has been lost and forgotten elsewhere. (1103)As the epigraphs dramatize about the evolution of the foreign perception of the Bourbon kingdom, however, early nineteenth-century tourism's "discovery" of Spain illustrates the extent to which travel and travel texts played a crucial role in fueling the distortion of points of interest once singled out for their fresh, "untouched" image. In this essay I aim to achieve insight into how the optic of Romanticism ultimately left its mark on the Spanish landscape by setting in motion the refashioning of the country in accordance with the imagined geography eternalized in pages penned by American, SpanishAmerican, British, and French travelers.The gifted French writer Astolphe Marquis of Custine perhaps best summed up the view of many of his fellow travelers when he wrote in 1831 that "cualquier rincon de Espana que se quiera describir suscitara sin duda interes; ninguna parte de este pais recuerda al resto de Europa: jes Espana, siempre Espana y nada mas que Espana!" (qtd. in Santos 82). One such "rincon" frequented by travelers in the early nineteenth century was Madrid and its surrounding areas. Travel to the capital surged between the years 1825 and 1850, a period framed by the return of Fernando VII and absolutism, and the 1846 double royal wedding of Isabel II with her cousin Francisco de Asis and the queen's sister Luisa Fernanda with the duke of Montpensier. Getting to Madrid had also become easier as the well-trodden and most direct route from Bayonne to Andalusia passed through the city walls. Once there, travel to and around Madrid in many instances was accepted as representative of experiencing the entire country.2 The synecdochical meaning assigned to the capital traces its roots back to the Age of Absolutism and the posterior formation of the modern nations, when the European capitals were promoted as their countries' premier showcase and, as such, their image functioned as a mirror of the entire country (Baker 70). …

Reflections in Sequence: Novels by Spanish Women, 1944-1988

Abstract: SCHUMM, SANDRA J. Reflections in Sequence: Novels by Spanish Women, 1944-1988. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP; London: Associated UP, 1999. 222 pages.Was Virginia Wolf right when she proclaimed that "we think back through our mothers if we are women"? In her richly textured study of seven of Spain's leading twentieth-century female authors, Sandra Schumm answers affirmatively. Through a series of interlocking chapters, this book examines the use of metaphor in key novels by women writers, demonstrating both the individuality and interconnectedness of these texts. Focusing especially on the metaphor of the mirror, which reflects (and sometimes refracts) women's socially-conditioned image of self, the book delves into issues of identity and autonomy as enacted by female protagonists. The evolution of these protagonists reveals not only the indebtedness of each creator to her predecessor(s), but also the changing characteristics of Spanish society from the 19405 through the 19805.Beginning with Carmen Laforet's 1944 Nada, Schumm presents a detailed analysis of multiple metaphors that relate to female development. She asserts that for Laforet's protagonist Andrea, her mirror-also her "tool for self-creation"-is her writing. Although there is scant exploration of the vexed question of writing for this narrator, who writes from an unknown present and resists her role as author, the baroque images of Laforet's prose are ably linked to her protagonist's mercurial feelings. In Ana Maria Matute's 1960 Primera memoria, Schumm analyzes the phenomenon of distorted mirrors. Unlike those of Andrea in Nada, Matute's even younger protagonist Matia has only negative images returned to her from the looking glass, causing her to internalize feelings of low self-worth that lead to "negative development."Older than Matia but only slightly more worldly, the main character in Merce Rodoreda's 1962 La Placa del Diamant uses uncomplicated metaphors to explain her life. This chapter demonstrates how Natalia's simple metaphors are expanded and extended over the course of the novel, as the main character reacts and ultimately adapts to extreme experiences. In contrast to Rodoreda's concrete comparisons, the metaphors in Ana Maria Moix's 1969 novel Julia are hauntingly vague. Repressed memories (notably that of a violent rape in childhood) and evidence of schizophrenia are presented obliquely, through veiled references made necessary by both Franco-era censors and the victim's vulnerable psyche. A "weakened identity" is also ascribed to the protagonist of Esther Tusquet's 1979 El amor es unjuego solitario. Twisted, internalized metaphors from literary texts are conflated with the roles played by EHa, the protagonist, in her various relationships. …

Agency and intertexts: Arabic natural philosophy as Christian ethics in the Libro del cavallero de Dios

Abstract: One of the most significant features of medieval literature is the fluid, almost matter-of-fact way in which it juxtaposes and blends discourse from a wide range of genres and cultural traditions. Considering medieval texts, as well as the margins of the manuscripts in which they are found, the modern reader frequently finds together forms of expression that seem to test the limits of intertextuality and structural/discursive cohesion. This feature is exceptionally pronounced in works from medieval Iberia, owing principally to the significant cultural and linguistic diversity that developed within the Peninsula after its conquest by Muslim forces.The discursive diversity of Iberian texts from the medieval period takes many forms. Extensive examples can be found in the Arabic and Hebrew literature of al-Andalus, where Classical literary forms from the East (e.g. the qasiida and maqaama) related in complex ways to distinctly Andalusi modes of expression (e.g. the muwashshah and zajal). Also important is the Christian practice of recentering Arabic and Latin texts of diverse genres wilhin works redacted in Romance vernacular-the Libra de buen amor being perhaps the most famous and most avidly studied case of this. Even if we restrict our survey to narrative works in Castilian (leaving aside the hundreds of narratives found in Peninsular archives that were redacted in Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and a number of vernacular languages), we find within medieval Iberia a large number of manuscript texts that persistently transpose discourse from a multitude of genres and traditions into new settings that seem barely to contain the large ensemble of voices within them.Due in large part to the significant influence of the critical work of the Bakhtin Circle, considerations of such "many-voicedness" have become an integral component of recent theories of intertextuality and literature in general. That is, far beyond the relatively common notion that texts frequently refer to other texts (as in, for example, the way that Don Quijote makes explicit mention of earlier written works such as Amadis de Gaula or juan Huarte de San juan's Examen de ingenis para las ciencias), there is now a defined interest within literary and cultural studies in the way that narrative texts serve as frames for wide varieties of discursive styles and modes of language use.The purpose of the present article is to contribute to critical notions of intertextuality for the analysis of literature from medieval Iberia. Focusing upon the interworkings of scribes and readers around a particular manuscript copied in Castile during the fourteenth century, I will be emphasizing the importance of attending to the social foundations of textual generation and meaning. Specifically, and in line with the general contours of a growing body of research in the social sciences, this paper will frame medieval intertextuality within the larger matrices of social activity and communicative practice by which manuscript texts were copied and took shape. My focus is not only upon the interrelatedness of texts, but also upon the agentive processes by which these interrelations formed and were engaged by medieval Iberian speech communities. Besides offering a much more socially contextualized picture of medieval textuality and discourse, this approach has the added benefit of recasting medieval texts as integral players in the shaping of medieval culture rather than as merely representational epiphenomena.The manuscript that serves as my analytical focus is Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional ms. 11.309, a codex produced in Toledo during the middle third of the fourteenth century. This book contains one text, a copy of an early fourteenth-century prose narrative, the Libra del cavallero de Dios (more commonly known as the Libra del caballero Zifar). I will be paying special attention to how Aristotelian natural philosophy-filtered through a long tradition of Arabic commentary-operates within and beyond the textual frame of this book. …

The Painting of the Banquet Scene in Abel Sanchez

Abstract: Abel Sanchez is a highly intertextual and metafictional novel containing a dense collection of direct references and allusions to the Bible, Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, Byron's Cain, and a large number of works by Nietzsche (Franz, Traces 37-38). Chapters xi-xiv-in which Abel plans and then produces a painting of the murder of the biblical Cain by his brother Abel and in which Joaquin Monegro organizes a banquet in homage to the painting and the artistic successes of Abel-are particularly rich in such references. In and around these intertexts, in both these and other parts of the novel, Unamuno has self-consciously encapsulated his narrative into a formalistically arranged but mysteriously intertwined series of texts: the narrative proper, Joaquin's Confesion (ostensibly written to his daughter but in fact concocted for future generations of readers), his possibly unreproduced novel Memorm.s de un medico viejo, and the observations of the manuscript's shadowy presenter. There has been an endless number of critical commentaries on both the pre-banquet chapters and the concluding banquet scene but only a finite number of significant perspectives offered in these commentaries. The latter include (1) the Nietzschean textual basis of Joaquin's flattery of Abel in his eulogy of the latter's painting (Franz, "Nietzsche"); (2) the degree to which much of the chapters' discourse proceeds from the words of Satan in Byron's Cain (Thompson; Franz, Parallel); (3) the inclusion of dialectical elements inspired by Kierkegaard (Roberts); (4) the extent to which the intertextuality is complicated by the intertexts" unending similarities (Orringer); and, finally, the two most important: (5) the way in which Unamuno ultimately manages to exalt the superiority of painting over language despite the provisional victory of literature inherent in Joaquin's discourse (LaRubia); and (6) the degree to which the eulogy itself constitutes an envious work of prose "art" (Jimenez Fajardo). Despite these latter exaltations of art and painting in the banquet scene and elsewhere, no one has yet explored the possibility that the novelized banquet itself may constitute the most important of the many paintings discussed in the novel.Although Unamuno was deaf to music, he reveled in discussing painting and graphic art. During and following the Bilbao years dedicated to his baehillerato, he studied drawing and oil painting with the painter Antonio Maria Lecuona (Scott 60; Toscano 90; Diccionario 4283). In the following decades, he produced copious portraits of his wife, children, and other family members. He also sketched many scenes of Salamanca. He additionally drew countless pictures of frogs to amuse children, both fabricated paper birds and made drawings of his fabrications for friends and for the novel Amor y pedagogia (1902), and imitated frames from the "Felix the Cat" comic strip for one of his grandchildren. His early novel, Paz en la guerra (1897), his final narrative, San Manuel Bueno, martir (1931), and especially his many articles and collections of travel accounts all have a painting-like quality. He was a friend of the Valencian painter Joaquin Sorolla and a great admirer of the Basque artist Ignacio de Zuloaga, often testily complaining that the former was too superficial and overly dedicated to color and folklore, while the latter used his superior draftsmanship to create allegories of great spirituality (Scott 62; Toscano 91-92). He especially admired the classic painters of the Spanish Post-Renaissance-El Greco, Velazquez, Ribera, Zurbaran-because, like Zuloaga, they were focused on a spiritual dimension and were consummate masters of chiaroscuro. So much did he admire the display of these masters in the Prado Museum that he often said that they were his only worthwhile memory of student life in Madrid.When Unamuno was coming into his maturity, the genre of the painted and photographic banquet, studio, and tertulia scene was growing up alongside him. …

The metaphor of Usury in Terra Nostra on the traces of Bataille and Derrida in Fuentes's writing

Abstract: Georges Bataille da cuenta de la ruptura de la economia del trueque par la del potlatch o don que crea una economia del desgaste o de la perdida con el proposito de ponerfin a la estabilidad de lasfortunas dentro de la economia totomica . . . El potlatch rompe el statu quo conservadory erige en su lugar un principio contrario a la conservation. (Cervantes, o la critica de la lectura 108)At the conclusion of Cervantes, i la critica de la lectura, Carlos Fuentes refers to Georges Bataille's conception of general economy and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of "white mythology" as sources for his own conception of economy's relationship to writing. The study of economy in literature concerns questions of production, the distribution of elements within a literary work, and the relationship between signs and literary tropes. Because literary works are composed of tropic exchanges, metaphor and other literary tropes involving the exchange of meaning and qualities, some of these exchanges can be analyzed in terms of economic form. Thus, for Marc Shell, "the economy of literature seeks to understand the relationship between literary exchanges and the exchanges that constitute a political economy" (152). Fuentes's treatment of Bataille and Derrida serves as a roadmap for the study of literary economy in Terra Nostra. Although Fuentes uses the metaphor of usury to represent political and economic power, his discussion of Bataille's theory of "general economy" requires a critical approach that goes beyond a study of "political economy" in the novel. For example, in Fuentes's novel the tension between, on the one hand, the economies of gift-giving, excess, and expenditure and, on the other, those of accumulation and exchange, is instrumental to the novel's representation of the decline of feudal power and the rise of capitalist economy. For this reason, a preliminary discussion of the general economies of Bataille and Derrida's writings on this subject is necessary.According to Bataille, general economy would approximate a science that studies the excesses of energy produced in the universe, excesses that by definition cannot be utilized. This useless waste or expenditure also implies an irreducible loss at the level of representation. In literary discourse the excess implies a loss in meaning. As a theoretical framework, moreover, general economy studies and posits a relation to this loss with regard to other economies that Bataille characterized as restricted economies. These would be the political economy of accumulation and epistemological systems that seek to establish absolute truth and fixity of meaning. According to Bataille, political economy is restricted precisely because it is always concerned with wealth and value as common denominators. General economy is unrestricted because it concerns both principles of gains and of losses; for example, in Bataille's discussion of potlatch, or the gift of rivalry, the logic of the gift concerns not so much its reciprocation, but rather the acquisition of the power to surpass the receiver, and the expenditure or loss that comes with that gain in power and prestige. A generous king, one who is able to give, in some societies is seen as a powerful king. (In terms of gift-giving, Derrida in Given Time takes a more radical position: the gift disrupts and annuls all exchange including reciprocity [7-14].) As an approximation to literature, general economy would study the excess and the loss of meaning at the level of figuration in literary discourse. In Terra Nostra, this would include the novel's Baroque style, the excess of its figurai language, eroticism, and the thematic representation of sacrifices, potlatches, gift-giving and other socioeconomic relations not directly limited to accumulation and exchange economy.In Derrida's deconstruction of "white mythology," he analyzes the general economic play of metaphor in philosophical discourse. In particular, he employs the metaphor of usury to describe a process of abstraction in philosophical discourse, wherein figures, signs, and metaphors become abstracted through "a progressive erosion, a regular semantic loss, an uninterrupted exhausting of the primitive meaning" (Margins 215). …

Negotiating empire and desire in Lope de Vega's "Carlos V en Francia"

Abstract: Carlos V en Francia (1604) appears to promote a transparent ideology of empire represented by an august cast of historical characters including the central figure of the Spanish Emperor, Charles V, as well as Francis I of France and Pope Paul III. Unlike other plays in the history subgenre of Golden-Age comedias, it is not about Franco-Spanish military conflict followed by victory or defeat, but rather conflict resolution through diplomacy and negotiation. In the end, the antagonists reach a peaceful accord through papal mediation. Hardly the ingredients for successful drama, the play would appeal as pageantry, which most closely describes its classification.1Intersecting with the theatricalized historical actions, however, is a cast of fictional private citizens whose stories of desire and ambition provide dramatic interest and humor, and sustain the otherwise episodic "historical" negotiations. All of these conventional comedia types and their familiar issues will show refractively the principal political activity. For example, the quest of Leonor who monomaniacally pursues a liaison with the Emperor sustains the centrality of the Spanish monarch in the play. In her erotic pursuit she is as much an appellant as Francis I, and her role is a radical and entertaining counterpoint to the formulaic operations being played out in the historical drama. Among the secondary characters, Leonor is the one who is most transgressive and subversive. As a native of Italy she represents disputed territory, and later as madwoman, her proximity to and defiance of the Emperor trivializes and humanizes the very serious political struggle between the monarchs. She is the accessible site of the crisis-the one who has trespassed the corporeal and moral borders without recrimination. just as the historical crisis will conclude with reconciliation and truce rather than victory and defeat, Leonor's sexual hunger will also be satisfied apparently if not actually in a grotesque parody of the serious political accommodation.The historical events in the play describe a period between 1537-1540, years of realpolitik between the great European monarchs of the early sixteenth century, Francis I and Charles V, whose rivalry dominated European politics until the former's death in 1547.2 Their historical rapprochement, which the play dramatizes by telescoping events, begins in separate audiences with the Pope in Nice, progresses to a tentative meeting in Aigues Mortes, and concludes with effusive expressions of friendship in Paris. Throughout, Francis I is clearly the appellant. He complains of the Spanish king's severity, and is intent on mollifying his anger and indignation. At this historical level of action, there is insistence on the notion that peace must be achieved through negotiation, requiring that each party show a reasonable idea of the limits and obligations of power and rank. By resisting and demurring, the Spanish monarch assumes a posture of superiority. The theater, of course, provides an opportunity for this work to make visible the signs of power and prestige that enhance the image of royalty and, in particular, that of the emperor. Arnold Reichenberger saw such a purpose as well in Lope's careful selection and occasional distortion of historical facts (55). The political rhetoric, the fanfare accompanying processions of grandees and the presence of Pope Paul III among other aspects of performance, show the full-blown theatricality of power and the power of theatricality as Stephen Greenblatt suggests in "Invisible Bullets" (56).3To this grouping of loosely connected appearances of aristocrats and kings is joined the unhistorical and closely-knit cast of commoners that accompanies the peripatetic emperor from Nice to Marseilles, Toledo, and Paris. The socially peripheral group brings thematic continuity and natural discourse to the highly rhetorical intermittent historical scenes, a combination which George McCalmon and Christian Moe in Creating Historical Drama point out as important functions in pageant drama (239). …

El Escenario De la Imaginacion. Calderon En Su Teatro

Abstract: El escenario de la imagination. Calderon en su teatro. By Juan Luis Suarez. Pamplona: U de Navarra, 2002. 244 pages.Imagination constitutes the backbone of the art and thought of early modern Spain in general, and of Calderon's theater in particular. Calderon developed an original technique of representation by synthesizing diverse concepts of the image or fantasy which came to play a key role in his staging of human knowledge. The playwright renovated in theatrical form the Aristotelian notion that the imagination creates potential representations, ideas that are realizable through perceptions.In the present study, Juan Luis Suarez redirects his initial inquiry into the world of the senses in Calderon's comedias toward the world of the imagination in order to avoid the pitfalls of applying postmodern mental and cognitive patterns to forms of thought that are quite different from our own. Suarez examines imagination as the link between the sensorial and the intellectual, an intermediary function of human knowledge that lies at the heart of Calderon's aesthetic project. Theater thus becomes the stage of and for the imagination.Suarez's thesis that the concept of imagination articulates the construction of Calderon's "aesthetic point of view" concludes with three key ideas in which the playwright grounds his aesthetics: perspective as a central element of Calderonian epistemology; the "theory" of the point of complication, with its inherent "opposition" between words and images; and the notion of limit, interpreted in terms of representation. The essay adeptly dialogues with many of the writers and thinkers who laid the foundation for Calderon's art, subjecting the dramatic texts to philosophical, psychological, and social analyses. The book is well organized into five chapters: 1. "Sobre el imaginar y la imaginacion"; 2. "Teoria y practica de la imaginacion"; 3. "La comunicacion de los afectos"; 4. "El juego de los sentidos"; 5. "Gusto, opinion publica y desengano."Throughout his study, Suarez is careful to consider time as a chief construct of human imagination and a constant in Calderon's ontological inquiries, which treat time as "un fenomeno constitutivamente subjetivo y, por tanto, dependiente de los gustos, pasiones, deseos y expectativas del sujeto" (41). Suarez finds in Aristotle the connections between image, time, and memory that allow him to delve successfully into the problem of perception, presence, and appearance in Calderon. While Suarez's approach is solid, he does make some radical assertions, such as the dating of Gustos y disgustos son no nias que imaginacion as early as 1617, rendering that the playwright's "primera obra" (39). …

Borges's Scientific Discipline

Abstract: One of the fundamental aspects of Jorge Luis Borges's writing has been its tendency to question philosophical and scientific constructions of reality. Ana Maria Barrenechea has noted: "TaI vez la mas importante de las preocupaciones de Borges sea la conviccion de que el mundo es un caos imposible de reducir a ninguna ley humana" (53). Donald Shaw concurs in his study of Borges's Ficdones: " 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' is concerned with the deeply rooted human desire to find in the world some appearance of order and design, and thereby some hope of finality. Borges administers a gentle snub to those who feel this urge" (13).1 This well-known tendency has exercised an important influence on twentieth-century thought. Michel Foucault credits Borges with his own groundbreaking work on the discursive and cultural power structures that underlie scientific thought in the preface to his landmark The Order of Things:This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought-our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography-breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other, (xv)Foucault continues with a description of a passage from Borges's "El idioma analitico de John Wilkins" that mocks the desire to codify and organize by describing an incredibly absurd Chinese taxonomy.2 If this adroit skepticism has rightly given rise to the assumption that philosophical and scientific projects meet sticky ends in Borges's writing, it masks a tendency in his early writings to present and employ scientific theory as a guarantee of meaning and of rhetorical authority. Indeed, in certain early essays, we see science as a discipline that enjoys philosophical prestige precisely because of its ability to interpret a chaotic reality. The purpose of this study is to examine one essay in particular that belies the dismantling of systems of thought that would become one of Borges's favorite themes.By so doing, I will argue that Borges participates in a nineteenth-century practice connected with positivism in which authors called upon the scientific theory of their time as a cultural touchstone for their political and philosophical arguments. Domingo Sarmiento's use of Alexander Von Humboldt as a guarantee of his politically motivated description of Facundo Quiroga and Juan Manuel Rosas is well documented, as is the influence of that practice throughout nineteenth-century Latin American writing.3 Science became, in many texts, a guarantee of the ideas and ideologies presented by authors who incorporated and imitated scientific discourse as a source of cultural authority for their writing. The practice, which has been called literary "test tube envy" elsewhere, serves as one of the nineteenth century's defining characteristics, as Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria has argued so convincingly in his Myth and Archive.* While this literary strategy has been seen to endure in the twentieth century, one would not expect its appearance in the work of an author who inspired Foucault's critical description and concomitant dismantling of the scientific drive towards taxonomy. Indeed, the identification of a literary appropriation of scientific authority in the nineteenth century owes much of its inception to Foucault's work on power and discourse. Nevertheless, as we will see in the early essay "La doctrina de los ciclos" from his 1936 Historia de la eternidad, there is evidence of a practice that would seem to confirm the assertion made in Respiration artificial by Ricardo Piglia's literary alter ego, Emilio Renzi, that Borges was "un escritor del siglo XIX. El mejor escritor argentine del siglo XIX" (130). While Renzi (and Piglia) base their argument on the nineteenth-century paradoxical combination of gaucho fascination with an obsession for Europe that they find equally prevalent in Borges's work, the early appearance of a textual reliance on scientific authority strengthens that connection while simultaneously complicating the image critics have created of Borges as the destroyer of intellectual systems par excellence. …

Conversion and Diversion in Iberian Cutting Poems

Abstract: In an anonymous poem from the Candonero de Hernando del Castillo (1483-1511), a Jewish converso (convert), a cloth shearer called a tondidor, is favorably described as a devout Christian who prays and regularly attends mass:After reading the poem, its last stanza provides the reader with instructions to physically cut the poem in half with scissors between its two hemistichs. The cutting divides formerly whole lines into separate columns, which, when each column is individually read from top to bottom, give an opposite interpretation of the formerly devout convert, who is now transformed into a despicable man who cannot be trusted to follow the Catholic faith. The directions at the poem's end tell the reader that the trap of the truth will be revealed in the middle of the poem ("quenel medio esta la celada / delo cierto"), or in the cut, which will show that the convert is a man marked by false appearances and a duplicitous interior. Through the cut, the poem seeks to show the incompatibility of the convert's devout and heretical identities.This denigrating Castilian cutting poem, or carta de tijera, written at the intersection of the medieval and early modern periods, belongs to a long line of previous, medieval writings in Arabic, Hebrew, and Castilian that allude to composing with scissors. In theory medieval scissors writing was achieved by cutting out letters of words from parchment or paper in order to create a lace-like yet legible effect. In an allusion to this decorative result, scholars have referred to Arabic cutting poems as a kind of calligraphy.2 Supposedly, these medieval poems then would be read according to the absence rather than the presence of letters and words. However, it is likely that this cutting method of composition was purely metaphorical, since the poems I have examined indeed were written conventionally with ink on parchment, rather than with scissors.3 These medieval poems were intended for very different purposes than the early modern cancionero poem about the cloth cutter, since they entailed diverse themes such as love and aesthetics.4 Furthermore, unlike the cancionero poem's focus on the convert's duplicity and separate identities, medieval cutting poems did not emphasize division, but instead were integrative as, for instance, they praised the paradox that was established in the beauty or meaning of a literally empty page. They reveled in the contrast between vapid space where letters should be, and the paper itself. Medieval cutting poems were harmonious in their balance of two varying materials or qualities, such as paper and empty space, or nothingness and meaning. Rather than trying to ostracize difference, which is the unstated goal of the candonero poem, medieval cutting poems sought the balance of two contrasting qualities.The integration rather than the exclusion of difference was crucial to medieval Iberian thought and society. The way that medieval and modern cultures deal with difference often varies because of a fundamental discrepancy in how otherness and alterity are constituted, that is, the way that difference is made between subjects and things. Two main tenets of medieval alterity were multifaceted subject formation and the embrace of contrasts and the negative, while modern society tends to emphasize homogeneous subject formation, empirical approaches to thought and being, as well as the expulsion of qualities, people, and things deemed "negative." Medieval subjectivity was not always marked by essential qualities of character, but was mutable and shifting, while the adverse often was esteemed in the making of meaning and the forging of the social order. The negative and adverse do not solely refer to unseemly qualities, such as ugly or bad, but they also signify absence, silence, and emptiness. Although the medieval principles were not absolute and universal in Iberia, I believe they underlie many medieval texts even if they are not explicitly stated as such. …