Showing papers in "Romance Quarterly in 2017"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the complex and essential transformations suffered by literary writing practices in contemporary Spain where ill attention has been devoted to the social, political, and aesthetic implications of neoliberal globalization in rural areas.
Abstract: The novelistic production related to the 2008 financial crisis has been partially studied from the lens of the label of “literatura de la crisis.” In this article, I analyze the complex and essential transformations suffered by literary writing practices in contemporary Spain where ill attention has been devoted to the social, political, and aesthetic implications of neoliberal globalization in rural areas. Departing from a thorough conceptualization of the notion of “literatura de la crisis” and its paradoxical impact over the most recent literary production, I study the rural discourse and the emerging academic challenges for the assessment of the rural experience in literary works. In conclusion, I set the main principles for the development of a transposable model of textual analysis that will shed new light on the cultural representation of the rural sphere in the aftermath of the 2008 financial recession.
10 citations
TL;DR: The Popular Indignant March as mentioned in this paper was conceived as an original way of rounding off the occupations of hundreds of squares throughout Spain, their objective being Puerta del Sol in Madrid, the first square to be occupied.
Abstract: On Saturday July 23, 2011, Guillermo, a young student from Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), who had been camping out since the beginning of the 15M movement, arrived in Madrid after walking over 450 kilometers, in one of the six columns that had crossed the Iberian Peninsula during the previous weeks. The “Popular Indignant March” had been conceived as an original way of rounding off the occupations of hundreds of squares throughout Spain, their objective being Puerta del Sol in Madrid, the first square to be occupied. On the way, which was from the urban periphery toward the center, passing by the rural Spanish plateau, the population's claims and complaints were to be gathered and taken to the agora of the participatory democracy. The experience of having groups of people walking from different origins with a common destination evokes the classical anthropological experience of the religious pilgrimage. Spain's best example is the Camino de Santiago, which has attracted thousands of pilgrims from all ...
8 citations
TL;DR: Barcelona as discussed by the authors depicts the underworld of scrap metal collection in Barcelona, where mainly immigrant workers wander the streets, barely eking a living out of the detritus of consumerist society.
Abstract: In this article, after analyzing the comics industry in Spain in the context of the 2008 crisis, which reveals how small and medium publishers have adapted to new trends in consumption, I focus on the graphic novel Barcelona. Los vagabundos de la chatarra (2015) by Jorge Carrion and Sagar. This comic depicts the underworld of scrap metal collection in Barcelona, where mainly immigrant workers wander the streets, barely eking a living out of the detritus of consumerist society. It is an example of graphic journalism in comics, one of the most interesting developments in the genre in the past few years. It is also a novelty in Spanish comics because certain topics were far from common in the existing repertoire, which had been dominated by adventures, fantasy, and science fiction. Drawing on Veronica Gago's La razon neoliberal (2014) and Saskia Sassen's Expulsions (2015), I challenge conventional approaches to neoliberalism by focusing on neoliberalism from below, which is seen by Gago to point towa...
7 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a series of examples from the musical field, including essays, songs, and public uses of music, are studied and contextualized in order to analyze different interpretations and critiques of the Transicion developed by artists, intellectuals, and politicians who took part in the 15M or have been influenced by its "climate" (Fernandez Savater).
Abstract: Spain's current economic and social crisis has involved a profound reappraisal of the country's history, institutions, and official narratives, especially after the emergence of the 15M or indignados movement in 2011. A crucial example of this shift has been the widespread criticism of Spain's “Transition to Democracy” or Transicion, widely considered Spain's “foundational” narrative. In this article, a series of examples from the musical field—including essays, songs, and public uses of music—are studied and contextualized in order to analyze different interpretations and critiques of the Transicion developed by artists, intellectuals, and politicians who took part in the 15M or have been influenced by its “climate” (Fernandez Savater). In these examples, two complementary trends are identified: on the one hand, an intention to reclaim part of the Transicion's collective mood through its musical symbols; on the other, a rejection of its political legacy, as expressed in criticisms of its musical ...
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a largometraje de ficcion Hermosa juventud (2014), de Jaime Rosales, cuestiona constructos sobre los que se asienta dicho acercamiento mediatico dominante a la precariedad.
Abstract: Entendiendo por “pornoprecariedad” el entramado visual que explota y consume como forma de entretenimiento la exhibicion de las nuevas formas de miseria en las que se sostiene y que reproduce el neoliberalismo, en este articulo se analiza como el largometraje de ficcion Hermosa juventud (2014), de Jaime Rosales, cuestiona constructos sobre los que se asienta dicho acercamiento mediatico dominante a la precariedad. Relacionar criticamente precariedad con pornografia hace emerger problematicas relacionadas con la representacion visual, la recepcion de esta y la dimension etica de ambas, planteando interrogantes acerca de la responsabilidad, el mirar o las relaciones de genero y poder. El film de Rosales dialoga con tradiciones artisticas y reflexivas que trabajan con desarrollos socioeconomicos de largo alcance que la crisis biopolitica patente especialmente desde 2008 en la Europa meridional ha sacado a la luz.
6 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the reasons the eminent philologist could have had to carry out tremendous artifice and, at the same time, the objective and personal qualms that, during the revision, produced the auctoritas of her figure.
Abstract: In 1952, Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel published a work in Sur magazine about the literary sources of Jorge Luis Borges. In the second paragraph of that work she relates a passage from one of the Argentine's stories with a verse from the Aeneid and, later on, two verses of the poem “Las calles” with some others from Lucretius' work De rerum natura. In both cases, she cites the number of the book and verse of the Latin poets. The one referring to Virgil is correct; however, Lucretius' verses are apocryphal. In this work, I analyze the reasons the eminent philologist could have had to carry out tremendous artifice and, at the same time, the objective and personal qualms that, during the revision, produced the auctoritas of her figure.
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce how the 2008 financial crisis appears in Spanish recent drama and propose a critical analysis of Nada que perder, a play that not only holds the ruling class responsible for the situation, but also charges the ordinary people with irresponsibility and lack of public conscience.
Abstract: In this article I introduce how the 2008 financial crisis appears in the Spanish recent drama. Although the impact of the crisis has been studied in other genres and artistic expressions such as narrative, poetry, or comics, this issue needs more attention in Spanish contemporary drama. The article proposes a critical analysis of Nada que perder (Bazo, Romero, and Yague, 2016). In this play, we can observe a new perspective of the crisis that not only holds the ruling class responsible for the situation, but also charges the ordinary people with irresponsibility and lack of public conscience.
4 citations
TL;DR: A manuscript written by Diego de la Torre (Lilly Sp. Hist. 1628), an Andalusian Carmelite who was taken captive in the 1620s and brought to Tunis as discussed by the authors, contains a translation of the Epistola Rabbi Samuelis, a polemic concerning the captivity of the Jews.
Abstract: This study concerns a manuscript authored by Diego de la Torre (Lilly Sp. Hist. 1628), an Andalusian Carmelite who was taken captive in the 1620s and brought to Tunis. The manuscript begins with a prologue to his Spanish translation of the Epistola Rabbi Samuelis, a fourteenth-century Latin polemic concerning the captivity of the Jews. The prologue is dedicated to a French nobleman and fellow captive, Thomas d'Arcos, who infamously converted to Islam and whose name has been consequently blotted out in the manuscript. A close reading of the text that follows sheds further light on the translator's perspective as a “captivo” in the preliminaries of the epistle. It shows how Diego de la Torre's version of the Epistola—as an example of what Clem Robyns has theorized as a “defensive translation”—associates Christian enslavement with notions of Jewish captivity, and also expresses anxieties over maintaining religious difference and the threat of apostasy in Muslim North Africa during the early seventeen...
3 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the propagation of national narratives through football in both the Spanish and the European media in the period 2008-2012 and found that Spanish national team's victories in the 2008 and 2012 Euros and the 2010 World Cup resulted in the consolidation of a domestic "narrative of success" that depicted Spain as a flourishing, modern European country.
Abstract: This article explores the propagation of national narratives through football in both the Spanish and the European media in the period 2008–2012. The Spanish national team's victories in the 2008 and 2012 Euros and the 2010 World Cup resulted in the consolidation of a domestic “narrative of success” that depicted Spain as a flourishing, modern European country. Yet as the economic crisis increased, Spanish governments, mass media, and corporations promoted this narrative of success as a “compensation mechanism,” aiming at making up for the country's dire financial situation. In the European media, the initially benign portrait of Spaniards was gradually transformed into a new representation that depicted Iberians as slackers and scroungers of European Union funds. The article shows the re-emergence of derogatory stereotypes as a manner of making Spaniards scapegoats for the economic crisis, while reinforcing nationalist narratives among Europeans.
3 citations
TL;DR: A review of the main theoretical and critical positions regarding space in literature from the second half of the twentieth century is given in this paper, where the authors propose a methodology that may clarify the significance of space in a literary text.
Abstract: Space in literary texts has been widely studied but poorly systematized. There is no valid method of analysis that gives space a critical meaning. For instance, critics have eluded the fact that time and space cannot be considered separately. On the other hand, they have used concepts or methods from disciplines aside literature such as anthropology, biology, psychology, or geography that do not help clarify the meaning or signification of a literary text. We begin this article by giving a review of the main theoretical and critical positions regarding space in literature from the second half of the twentieth century. We do this in order to evaluate the main results those studies have attained. Later on, we propose a methodology that may clarify the significance of space in a literary text. The concept topoiesis (as far as we know, it has not been used in the humanities) represents for us a key word. It helps us to distinguish one main process where space can turn from a signification practice to ...
2 citations
TL;DR: In 2005, the museum of Vilafranca del Penedes (Catalonia, Spain) programmed a cycle of cultural events in order to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Francisco Franco's death as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the autumn of 2005, the museum of Vilafranca del Penedes (Catalonia, Spain) programmed a cycle of cultural events in order to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Francisco Franco's death. Among them, the performative one-piece exhibition Listen, Franco! The Purgatory for a Dictator showed a bronze sculpted bust of the dictator (belonging to the museum collection) and invited citizens to freely participate and “tell to him” all they would have liked to say if they had had the opportunity to. The unusual shape of the event and the high level of participation made the exhibition become a media success. However, a last-day surprising performance experience—as a result of which the bust was “vandalized” or, should I better say, “re-signified”—became a source of reflection about the boundaries between preservation and transmission of cultural heritage, as well as about museums as places for collective elaboration of public memory. This case appears as a catalyzer of a cultural crisis that explod...
TL;DR: The second part of the special issue devoted to analyzing the links between culture, crisis, and renewal as part of a research project called "Cultural Na... as mentioned in this paper, was published in 2013.
Abstract: The articles presented in this issue constitute the second part of the special issue devoted to analyzing the links between culture, crisis, and renewal as part of the research project “Cultural Na...
TL;DR: This paper examined the representation of the pilgrim in the corpus of early and early modern Iberia St. Christopher dramas and found that the pilgrims undergo a transformation in the sixteenth century as they become comic and serve as foils to the protagonist's gravity.
Abstract: This article examines the representation of the pilgrim in the corpus of St. Christopher dramas of early and early modern Iberia. The importance of the character's supporting role varies according to the era in which each play is written. At first, in the medieval religious dramas of the Crown of Aragon, the pilgrim not only celebrates St. Christopher's piety and anticipates his meeting with Jesus Christ, but also embodies the sanctity and devotion necessitated of pilgrimage. The pilgrims undergo a transformation in the sixteenth century as they become comic and serve as foils to the protagonist's gravity. On the seventeenth-century secular stage, the representations diverge: they begin with a traditional representation of the pilgrim, but then the figure ultimately disappears as the comedias focus on the later period of St. Christopher's life, the result of a Tridentine directive that refocused the general worship of saints and hagiographical literature.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze two Spanish documentary films that reflect on the 2008 financial crisis in Spain, Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Alvarez, 2011) and No estamos solos (Pere Joan Ventura, 2015), which are marked as political for their choice of a collective protagonist and dealing with the issues of inequality with the purpose of appealing to mobilization and resistance to the neoliberal Western agenda that have provoked social cutbacks after the 2008 crisis.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyze two Spanish documentary films that reflect on the 2008 financial crisis in Spain, Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Alvarez, 2011) and No estamos solos (Pere Joan Ventura, 2015). These movies could be marked as political for their choice of a collective protagonist and for dealing with the issues of inequality with the purpose of appealing to mobilization and resistance to the neoliberal Western agenda that have provoked social cutbacks after the 2008 crisis. Mercedes Alvarez and Pere Joan Ventura follow the tradition of political documentaries traced by filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Pere Portabella, and Basilio Martin Patino and open the debate on how people can contribute to searching for renewal policies in times of crisis.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on three aspects related to the enunciator: the topoiesis of the communicative situation, the topoing of the enuncative frame, and the writing individual.
Abstract: The literary text is a communicative situation that involves a sender, a message, and a receiver. Literary theorists and critics have extensively studied the different instances of enunciation, making it clear that the author of a literary text is not the enunciator of it. This article intends to show that each one of them belongs to a distinctive level: those of the communicative situation and the enunciative situation. This article intends to show the space-time axis related to the situations mentioned above. This would allow the researcher to find the mechanisms of power that lie behind the authorization or discredit of a speech. By doing so, we intend to extend the analysis of the literary work, including the context of creation of the literary text. We would like to focus our attention on three aspects related to the enunciator: topoiesis of the communicative situation, topoiesis of the enunciative frame, and topoiesis of the writing individual.
TL;DR: In this article, the text reception point of view is considered, and a theoretical framework using useful concepts from hermeneutics and post-structuralism is proposed to discuss the real existence of a dialogue or a "fusion of horizons" in which a sense of space of a text would be blended in the meeting point between textuality and the reader.
Abstract: This article proposes a particular notion about “topoiesis,” focusing on the text reception point of view. Initially, it establishes a theoretical framework using useful concepts from hermeneutics and post-structuralism, to later discuss the real existence of a dialogue or a “fusion of horizons” in which a “sense of space” of a text would be blended in the meeting point between textuality and the reader. Finally, through this space we propose a categorization of the different types of “topoiesis” of literary reception, establishing correspondences with the concept of “enunciative instances” in the text space, detailed in another article.
TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of topoiesis of textual space was proposed to address an analysis of the spatial elements that tend to provide a meaning to the literary text, based on textual semiotics where there is an organized relational system of meanings.
Abstract: The concept of topoiesis of textual space addresses an analysis of the spatial elements that tend to provide a meaning to the literary text. Based on textual semiotics where there is an organized relational system of meanings, in this article we propose that it is possible to determine the function of space as a meaning issue from three different literary text instances (event or motive; character; and object). This distinction will permit a deeper interpretation of the sense of space in the literary text.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the procedures used by the author to achieve a narrative that by its nature of nouvelle refuses the explicit in exchange for the suggestion, including the character of the narrator, the ellipsis, and a language of conjecture and doubt.
Abstract: Based on a presentation of the production of nouvelles in Hispanic America and its current study, in which the permanent academic and critical interest in Juan Carlos Onetti's Los adioses (1954) stands, this article raises and discusses the procedures used by the author to achieve a narrative that by its nature of nouvelle refuses the explicit in exchange for the suggestion. Among such procedures are the character of the narrator, the ellipsis, and a language of conjecture and doubt. With all of those procedures Onetti builds an open and multiple text in which his major emphasis during the writing process lies in the development of the meaning of the text, instead of just narrating the story, as proposed by Henry James in various prefaces to his nouvelles.
TL;DR: The authors propose a methodology of analysis based on some concepts such as peritexts (Genette) and visuo-graphic zone (Cardenas) for the analysis of the relationship between the message and its channel.
Abstract: Never before have the layout, the text format, and support been as important as they are today. Studies reflecting on the relationship between the meaning of the literary text and its form have rapidly increased. This kind of study has focused mostly on the history of the reading process and the history of the book as well as on the possibilities of new technologies in the literary field. However, none of these approaches has reached the point of creating a comprehensive methodology for the analysis of the relationship between the message and its channel. This work is intended to propose a methodology of analysis based on some concepts such as peritexts (Genette) and visuo-graphic zone (Cardenas).
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the mythological motifs in the Poema heroico de San Ignacio, by the Colombian poet Hernando Dominguez Camargo, not only as material extracted from a prestigious culture, but as a starting point for the elaborations of wit, which is the main objective in the aesthetics of the wit.
Abstract: This article examines the mythological motifs in the Poema heroico de San Ignacio, by the Colombian poet Hernando Dominguez Camargo, not only as material extracted from a prestigious culture (i.e., classical culture), but as a starting point for the elaborations of wit, which is the main objective in the aesthetics of the wit.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors study the particular case of the mythological plays of Calderon that form a cohesive and recognizable set of works in certain circumstances, modulated by specific issues of reception, under the dominant global principle of playfulness, through the mechanisms of admiratio, and different strategies of courtly game.
Abstract: This article studies the particular case of the mythological plays of Calderon that form a cohesive and recognizable set of works in certain circumstances. This kind of comedy is modulated by specific issues of reception, under the dominant global principle of playfulness, through the mechanisms of admiratio, and different strategies of courtly game that can be summarized in four basic areas: conventional comicity, the writing of a theater full of sensorismo, the importance of the intellect games, and finally, the strategies to point identity marks of a particular social group.