  Book Reviews
  Reviews
Janet Pérez
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Peninsular Literature
Faulhaber, Charles
B.
Libros y bibliotecas en la España
medieval: una bibliografía de fuentes impresas. London: Grant &
Cutler, 1987. 213 pp.
Few publishers in the world have done more to
provide Hispanic scholars with bibliographies than has Grant & Cutler in
its Research Bibliographies and Checklists series of which this is volume 47.
Prominent scholars in various fields have compiled outstanding critically
annotated bibliographies which are extremely comprehensive and useful. This is
the eighteenth volume that has dealt with a Hispanic topic. The editors have
established high standards for their compilers, who have met them in every
way.
Faulhaber's bibliography concerning books and libraries in medieval
Spain continues with meeting the high standard of excellence already
established. In 1975 Faulhaber announced his intention to compile such a
bibliography. He writes
«en aquel entonces creí
que conocía ya la mayoría de los inventarios impresos; pero a
medida que profundizaba en mis investigaciones, me di cuenta de que quedaban
muchas fuentes por revisar» (17). Like most bibliographers
he discovered that few bibliographies, especially those that demand much travel
to countries outside of one's own, are compiled within an expected definite
time.
His introduction, pp. 11-18, should be read with care. He notes
that his bibliography
«es esencialmente un suplemento,
en lo que se refiere a bibliotecas medievales, al
Handschriftenschátze
Spaniens de Beer. Por tanto, omite materias ya señaladas
allí, a menos que requieran adiciones o
correcciones» (14). The introduction discusses the
organization of the volume, the indices as well as the history of the work's
development and acknowledgments.
The work is divided into España,
Corona de Aragón, Corona de Castilla, Francis and Italia. The two
Coronas are subdivided. There are a subject index, a chronological index, a
toponymic index, index of individuals who owned the library and an index to
modern scholars who have compiled inventories of medieval libraries or written
studies on medieval books and libraries.
This bibliography has 666
well-annotated items. The annotations are extremely useful commenting as they
do on the types of works found in medieval library catalogs and inventories.
The annotations identify the individuals to whom these libraries and books
belonged. They vary from one to twenty lines. His abbreviation list of journals
and
homenaje volumes occupies pages
19-22 and it is very doubtful, despite his modest disclaimer in his
introduction, that he has missed material of any importance. Pp. 22-24 are
identification symbols for libraries, for Faulhaber quite helpfully indicates
one library either in the United States or in Europe that possesses the
item.
Data concerning medieval books and libraries in Spain are
scattered throughout many sources and this bibliographical guide will be an
indispensable starting point for those interested in these subjects. Through
placing his vast knowledge of the field, his patience and perseverance in
searching out studies on his subject, Faulhaber has put all of us in his
debt.
Hensley C. Woodbridge Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Ruiz, Juan.
Libro del Arcipreste (También llamado «Libro de buen amor»). Edición sinóptica de Anthony Zahareas
con la colaboración de Thomas McCallum. Madison: Hispanic Seminary for
Medieval Studies, 1989. 228 pp
The
Libro del arcipreste, as the
Libro de buen amor was best known to
medieval audiences and readers, is a text which is not only aware of the
possibilities of its own kaleidoscopic verbal ambiguity («Non ha mala palabra si non es a mal
tenida», 64b;
«De todos instrumentos yo libro
só pariente; / bien o mal, qual puntares, tal te dirá
ciertamente», 70ab, and
passim), but one which has come
down to us in three principal differing incarnations: manuscripts
S, G, and
T. Together the latter raise issues not
only of textual fidelity, filiation, chronology, and authorship, but also of
the validity of critics' multiple interpretations of the work. In short, along
with
Celestina, the
Libro is one of the two most important
yet textually unstable and problematical literary works of the Spanish Middle
Ages.
While Manuel Criado de Val's and Eric W. Naylor's edition of the
Libro (Madrid: CSIC, 1965; second
corrected, expanded edition, 1972) remains the first and best comprehensive
effort to negotiate the textual labyrinth of the work through synoptic editing,
Anthony Zahareas's and Thomas McCallum's provides a reliable, more readable
alternative. Essentially an abridgement and sensible reorganization of the
labors of Criado de Val and Naylor; this new synoptic edition permits an easier
reading of the
Libro as literature without losing
sight of the major instabilities of the text. Lacking Criado's and Naylor's
possibly distracting paleographical intricacies
(albeit this
reviewer finds the latter important), as well as suppressing transcription of
the various fragments of the
Libro cited in other medieval
witnesses, this edition deliberately eschews interpretive notes, commentary,
and recording minor variants in order to offer an unobstructed vision of the
Protean text. As a result, it provides a salutary reminder of the risks
inherent in the
Libro's interpretation.
Zahareas's and McCallum's edition is important, then, because it reminds
critics, particularly those dazzled by theory at the expense of philology, that
there remain significant unresolved codicological problems which an undermine
and vitiate even the most elegant and persuasive interpretations. Though aware
that the act of reading, indeed even of synoptically editing the
Libro, are in themselves gestures
fraught with nuances of interpretation, the editors continue to believe that a
degree of empirical objectivity is both possible and necessary in reading and
understanding the work. They are sensitive to the fact that medieval texts
persist in posing arresting diachronic questions which will continue to command
our attention. Zahareas and McCallum, thus, provide a wider, welcome lesson in
the inherent interdisciplinary and tentative nature of Medieval Studies.
The mechanics adopted for the presentation of this synoptic text are logical
and easy to use. Using
S as a base, differences between the
three principal manuscript witnesses are coded in the left margin using the
abbreviations
S, G, and
T. Hence, a
cuaderna marked
SGT 1251 indicates that it appears in
all three.
SG 70, on the other hand, points to a
quatrain recorded in
S and
G but lacking in
T, and so on. Similar devices help
distinguish missing and transposed verses, clearly and simultaneously
identifying at each step the reading in each of the manuscripts. In keeping
with the desire to produce a synchronically readable text, however, only
variants affecting the rhyme and the sense of key words and expressions are
registered in the
Notas de comentario textual at the
back. The
Guía del lector preceding the
text is a useful reference tool de signed to help readers sort out the
relationship of the
Libro's narrative voice to the myriad
literary forms it adopts. The accompanying selected bibliography is
well-chosen, well-organized, and up-to date, while the glossary is adequate,
though not complete, since it fails to record many puns and well-known ribald
second acceptations recognized by medieval audiences (for example
recabdado, 868d, and
cobros, 591b, not in the sense
of
logrado and
logros, as per the gloss, but as
euphemisms for sexual conquests).
In conclusion, while the
Libro may be satisfactorily read in
this edition, the latter does not commend itself to scholars interested in
detailed philological and paleographical aspects of the work. The result is an
eminently useful edition that nevertheless falls short of providing a fully
comprehensive, synoptic vision of the text.
E. Michael
Gerli
Georgetown University
Biglieri,
Aníbal A.
Hacia una poética del relato
didáctico: Ocho estudios sobre «El Conde Lucanor».
North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 233. Chapel
Hill: Department of Romance Languages, 1988. 237 pp.
El Conde Lucanor ha recibido últimamente docenas de
estudios críticos, como se verá en la extensa bibliografía
de más de 300 citas en éste de Biglieri, el cual es sin duda no
de los más valiosos por su nítida brillantez en aclarar la
función de los ejemplos dentro del marco del texto. Sus ocho
capítulos van dedicados a análisis semióticos («es
decir, de lo que hace posible el
sentido de la fábula»
[183]) de los ejemplos 36, 46, 37, 41, 23, 24, 2 y 33 respectivamente. Todos,
incluso la aplicación especial de los modelos formales de Susan Suleiman
(Authoritarian Fictions) al 24 y de Lucien
Dällenbach (Le récit spéculaire) al 2,
forman un argumento integral que desdice un ambiente
realista-mimético-autobiográfico para
El Conde Lucanor en favor de uno
arbitrario-composicional-didascálico. Según este punto de vista,
la obra es el producto de una mentalidad elitista feudal -caballeresca- en que
la sentencia rimada que se encuentra al final de cada ejemplo, aparentemente
allí como efecto de una aplicación del relato de Patronio a la
vida real, es en verdad el motivo y causa de lo anterior: «La moraleja,
ciertamente, está al final del
discurso, pero en realidad, y por
pertenecer al nivel de
sentido y, por lo tanto, al del texto
en su totalidad, lo precede y lo condiciona en todos sus aspectos» (43).
Por eso, uno tiene que despojarse de las ideas decimonónicas del
verosimilismo realista para aceptar una verosimilitud genérica en que la
lógica de la narración se basa en una motivación
composicional por la cual las acciones no tienen lugar
porque algo ocurrió, sino
para que el lector entienda el sentido
que da Juan Manuel al relato. Además, esta
arbitrariedad del relato depende de dos
propiedades siempre presentes en la obra manuelina: la falta total de
ambigüedad, para asegurar la univocidad del mensaje, y moralización
única, para facilitar, una vez establecido su sentido, la
universalización de la enseñanza.
Dado esta lógica
del discurso didáctico,
El Conde Lucanor es una
colección de relatos bastante «cerrados», planeados y
construidos para persuadir al lector que acepte una visión arbitraria de
la sociedad feudal del siglo XIV español. El lector, por su parte, sea
contemporáneo o moderno, sabe y acepta la agenda de don Juan Manuel al
empezar el libro mismo con su introducción al lector y al leer cada
ejemplo con sus redundantes principios y finales. Las consejas hincadas en cada
ejemplo vendrán de un sinnúmero de fuentes literarias e
histórico-legendarias, pero los consejos son de la
ética nobiliaria de la Edad Media. En las palabras de Biglieri:
«Su misión consistirá en imponer una sola
descodificación privilegiando determinadas relaciones de
significación y,
simultáneamente, excluyendo o "bloqueando", interpretaciones contrarias.
En otras palabras, en el marco se estipula el "contrato de lectura" a que el
lector deberá someterse» (195).
La prueba más
genial de estas aseveraciones es su análisis del ejemplo 33, «De
lo que contesçió a los muy buenos falcones garçeros... del
infante don Manuel». El alegato tradicional por un texto
autobiográfico, o por lo menos representacional de asuntos
históricos en que Alfonso XI es el águila y Juan Manuel el
halcón, es rechazado sistemáticamente por Biglieri en un
impresionante ejercicio de análisis semiótico digno del mayor
aprecio, que pena a la consideración correcta del halcón como un
símbolo de las virtudes estamentales de los «defensores»:
los atributos de constancia, tesón, fortaleza y esfuerzo predicados ya
en el libro entero.
En fin, el libro de Biglieri hace más que
indicar nuevas sendas que seguir; porque cierra la puerta a toda una serie de
estudios histórico-realistas. Es un libro esencial para una
apreciación completa de
El Conde Lucanor como magnífico
artefacto literario y como la obra maestra representante de su clase social
nobiliaria y su época medieval.
David H. Darst
Florida State University
Hutton, Lewis J.
The Christian Essence of Spanish Literature:
An Historical Study. Lewistown, New York: The Edwin Mellin Press, 1988.
512 pp.
Lewis J. Hutton's study is an ambitious attempt to slow the
evolving nature of Christianity as seen in works of Spanish literature from the
Middle Ages through the twentieth century. The author has evaluated
representative works from all periods to show the differing portrayals of the
Spanish literary spirit. In particular, he contributes significantly to the
readers' understanding and appreciation of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
The Christian Essence contains an
introduction, five extensive chapters and an epilogue. Chapter 1 treats
«Knights, Warrior Priests and Troubadours»; Chapter 2 examines
«Renascense Exuberance and Erasmus»; Chapter 3 continues the themes
examined in the previous chapter and traces them through the Baroque period. In
Chapter 4, we find the impact of the Age of Reason on the religious experience,
which Chapter 5 develops to its logical conclusion, «Alienation,
Destruction and Christian Symbols». The Epilogue provides the reader with
suggestions for further reading for «the Christian person»
(493).
The scope of this book is wide and potentially interesting, but
one which is too ambitious for a single-volume work. While the author's
intentions are worthy, he does not always five up to the expectations suggested
by the title. Much of the text plot summary, completely unnecessary in the case
of such well known works as the
Poema del Cid, La vida es sueño
and
El burlador de Sevilla. Space which
could have been devoted to critical analysis is wasted on a repetition of the
obvious. In particular, Hutton fails to examine critically the works of Gonzalo
de Berceo and
El libro de buen amor which he
summarizes at great length. In his evaluation of the
Poema del Cid, he tantalizes the reader
with the theme of anti-semitism, but fails to follow up with an explanation. A
more serious defect lies in two major omissions from the study. No mention is
made of
El auto de los reyes magos, the oldest
surviving religious play in Spanish, nor of Lope de Vega's
La corona trágica, a
controversial
contrarreforma work. Despite Hutton's
acknowledgment of the significance of the battle of Lepanto to the Christian
Essence, he fails to cite any of the recent studies devoted to the naval
encounter.
The book contains a thorough and insightful treatment of the
mystics Luis de León and Santa Teresa and the section on Cervantes
succeeds in piecing together the lofty ideals in the
Quijote and the
Novelas ejemplares. The author makes a
convincing case of parallels between the latter and the Bible. For many of his
ideas, however, Hutton relies too heavily on summaries of previous criticism.
Where he does excel is in his digression on the visual arts, which are
technically speaking, beyond the scope of his study.
Perhaps the most
serious defect of
The Christian Essence is its
documentation style and too numerous typographical errors. The extensive end
notes contain too many superfluous
Ibid. citations, which could
have been incorporated into the body of the text. A large number of the
references are to standard textbooks rather than to critical editions or
studies, which present more reliable information There is no bibliography, a
technique used by publishers to hold down the costs of publication, but one
which is frustrating to scholars attempting to use the work.
The
Epilogue does not adequately replace a summary or conclusion. All of the
author's extensive investigations do not seem to have a point. It is only after
several readings of the lengthy text that the reader an appreciate the author's
intents. Hutton's inconsistent use of Spanish names or their English
equivalents (e. g.,
Juan of Austria vs.
John II of Castile) adds to the
confusion of the work. Moreover, his use of
Elizabeth to designate Isabel I does
not conform to modern standard usage. The author's best sections are in the
modern period. Perhaps had he limited himself to a narrower chronological scope
(e. g., 1800 to the present), his efforts would have been more fruitful and his
study more coherent.
Michael G. Paulson
Kutztown University
Ruiz Ramón,
Francisco.
Celebración y catarsis (leer el
teatro español). Murcia: Cuadernos de la Cátedra de Teatro
de la Universidad de Murcia, 1988. 227 pp.
Tomando como punto de
partida la falta de prestigio real que tienen los clásicos en
España, Francisco Ruiz Ramón explica que estas obras responden a
la doble función del teatro: la función
celebrativa y la función
catártico-conjuradora. Ya que se
ha tendido a silenciar esta segunda al insistirse en el carácter
exclusivamente conservador del teatro clásico español y en su
intención radicalmente didáctico-moral, los directores y su
público no han llegado a «leer» el contratexto o antitexto
«donde aparece algo mucho más profundo y de radical alcance
ideológico» (21). El libro de Ruiz Ramón sirve pues un
doble propósito, el de reflexión de cómo debe ser adaptado
un texto clásico hoy en día, y el de interpretación de
textos a través de personajes, mitos y la doble función del
teatro.
Estos tópicos se estudian en una serie de breves ensayos
donde, por ejemplo, se examina una adaptación moderna de
La hija del aire; se afirma que el
protagonista de la comedia de capa y espada no es ni el galán ni su dama
sino la pareja «en busca de su mítica unidad original» (44);
se habla de mitos históricos, personajes-mito y mitos clásicos,
llegando a la conclusión que el grupo titulado mitos
bíblicos-cristianos es «el más rico, complejo, original y
prometedor» (52). También se agrupan personajes en dos
categorías, Autoridad y Libertad; y se analiza la relación entre
el rey y el bufón, recalcándose un segundo contraste entre el
vestido cómico de este personaje y «la trascendencia del
significado de su palabra» (62), lo que se relaciona claramente con las
dos funciones de los textos teatrales propuestas anteriormente.
Todas
estas formulaciones y estudios breves sirven de prólogo al último
capítulo de la primera parte que es en realidad el núcleo de este
texto y está dedicado al estudio del Nuevo Mundo en el teatro
clásico. Apunta Ruiz Ramón, como ya otros lo han hecho, la
pobreza del tema americano en el drama del Siglo de Oro y nos presenta una
lista de sólo unas dieciséis obras que abordan directamente este
tema. A éstas podríamos añadir
El nuevo rey Gallinato de Andrés
de Claramonte aunque se sitúa Chile junto a Camboya y los eventos
históricos en que se basa la obra pertenecen al mundo oriental -una
expedición española que partió de las Filipinas a Camboya.
Utilizando los conceptos y categorías anteriores, Ruiz Ramón
estudia en detalle varias comedias de tema americano. En el
Auto de las Cortes de la Muerte de
Michael de Carvajal, la queja de los indios ante el tribunal de la muerte es
claro ejemplo de los textos y antitextos de que habla Ruiz Ramón. La
escena incluye no sólo una celebración de la conquista del Nuevo
Mundo sino que también manifiesta claramente la función
catártico-conjuradora, pues San Agustín, San Francisco y Santo
Domingo actúan como defensores de los indios quienes se lamentan de las
atrocidades de los españoles y se sorprenden de su codicia. La
ironía del antitexto se presenta aún más claramente en las
palabras de Satanás, Carne y Mundo quienes defienden a los cristianos
del Viejo Mundo.
El juego de oposiciones lo estudia Ruiz Ramón
con destreza y precisión en las comedias americanas de Lope de Vega. Por
ejemplo, en la compleja caracterización de Cristóbal
Colón, encontramos la imagen del loco/cuerdo que ya había
descrito este crítico al tratar del gracioso como bufón del rey.
La visión mística e idealista del descubridor de América
se opone en
El nuevo mundo descubierto por
Cristóbal Colón a la «práctica» o
codiciosa actitud de otros conquistadores. Ruiz Ramón demuestra
claramente cómo el oro y el sexo obtenido por la violencia se enlazan
irónicamente con la catequización de los indios en esta comedia.
Añade este crítico que Lope le da más importancia a
cómo los indios perciben a los conquistadores que a la visión que
los españoles tienen de ellos y nos muestra cómo esta escena
clave de
El nuevo mundo descubierto por
Cristóbal Colón se repite en obras de Tirso y de
Calderón. El uso del punto de vista ajeno reaparece también en
Arauco domado. Aquí Fresia,
esposa de Caopolicán, es realmente un personaje indomado cuya
pasión por la libertad subraya el tema central de la obra: «Aunque
la victoria de las armas corresponda a don García Hurtado de Mendoza y
sus españoles, la tragicomedia está pensada en tanto que teatro
como un canto a la libertad del vencido» (112). Ruiz Ramón
podría muy bien haber apuntado aquí que esta idealización
del vencido tiene una larga historia teatral, desde
Los persas de Esquilo a
La Numancia de Cervantes. De gran
interés son también las páginas dedicadas a la
mitología en la trilogía de Tirso y finalmente a la
transcodificación de dos universos míticos (el incaico y el
cristiano) conciliados en María/la Aurora en la obra de
Calderón.
Si aquí concluyera el libro, sería una
importante aportación al estudio del teatro del Siglo de Oro. Pero Ruiz
Ramón añade una segunda parte donde se establecen paralelos muy
certeros entre el conflicto padre-hijo de
La vida es sueño y ciertos
aspectos claves de dramas románticos tales como
Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino
y
Don Juan Tenorio. Coincidimos con Ruiz
Ramón en deplorar la falta de un estudio sobre la recepción
romántica de la obra de Calderón en España. Esperamos que
continúe sus investigaciones sobre este importante aspecto del teatro
romántico. También se encuentran en esta segunda parte de
Celebración y catarsis estudios
sobre Valle Inclán, Buero Vallejo, Martín Recuerda, Domingo Miras
y Luis Riaza, concluyendo el libro con una visión panorámica del
teatro español de 1975 a 1985. Estos ensayos finales se apartan de
algunos de los temas ya discutidos y crean algo así como un segundo
núcleo dentro de este libro.
Celebración y catarsis presenta
lecturas cuidadosas y reflexiones teóricas que interesarán
tanto a los estudiosos del teatro clásico como a los del
teatro contemporáneo.
Frederick A. de Armas
Pennsylvania State University
Molina, Tirso de.
Las dos versiones dramáticas
primitivas del Don Juan: El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra y Tan
largo me lo fiáis. Editor Xavier A. Fernández, Madrid:
Estudios, 1988. 94 pp.
_____ .
El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de
piedra. Editor Luis Vásquez. Madrid: Estudios, 1989. 293 pp.
Fernández publishes a facsimile edition of the
princeps of both plays along
with a brief introduction. Vásquez, on the other hand, provides a
critical edition of
El burlador with introduction and
notes.
Fernández is interested in the possible relationship
between the two plays; he subscribes to the theory that an early, inextant
version of
Tan largo gave rise to the published
version of the play and also to the composition of
El burlador. Because no autograph
manuscript remains of either
Tan largo or
El burlador, Fernández
reproduces the single copy of the first extant printed edition of each play,
numbering verses and pages for easy reference. In so doing, he has performed a
great service to Tirso scholars whether or not they agree with his hypothesis
about the plays' origins. Although he had planned to publish this edition as
long ago as 1964, the recent publication has benefitted from later studies of
the two works.
In the «Presentación» of
Fernández's edition, Luis Vásquez notes that the editor, who
published the text of
Tan largo in
Estudios (1967), and
El burlador in
Alhambra (1982), was the first editor
to produce a critical, an notated edition of
Tan largo and also the first to attempt
to establish the text of
El Burlador without depending on
Américo Castro's earlier edition (5).
El
burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra first appeared in
Doze comedias nuevas de Lope de Vega y otros
autores, Segunda parte (Barcelona: Gerónimo Margarit, 1630). The
play, the seventh in the volume, is ascribed to Tirso. The title page also
states that Roque de Figueroa staged it. Cruickshank, basing himself on
typographic evidence, was able to prove that
El burlador has been published in
Seville by Manuel de Sande (1627-1629). He also proved that the volume of
Doze comedias was actually published in
Seville by Simón Faxardo with the falsified title page of
«Barcelona, Margarit, año de 1630» (10). In his 1967 edition
of
Tan largo, Fernández had
conjectured that the editor of
Doze comedias had reprinted nine
sueltas and three comedias taken
from an earlier volume.
El burlador is one of the three (9).
Thus arose the enigmas surrounding the provenience and publication of
El burlador (9).
Mystery also
surrounds the first appearance of
Tan largo which was attributed to
Calderón and published in a
suelta with no indication of
place, publisher or date. Fernández notes that Cruickshank determined
that the play was published in Seville around 1635 (11). Fernández goes
on to state that Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos's
Comedia Eufrosina, which appeared in
Spanish translation in 1631, inspired the characterization of Don Juan and is
responsible for the definition of Don Juan as
«el gran garañón de
España» in contrast to
El Burlador's description of him as
«el gran burlador de
España» (11).
While Ferrández elucidates
the bibliographical mysteries surrounding the two plays and their possible
interrelationships, Vásquez, who believes
El burlador's composition to be totally
independent of
Tan largo, prefers to deal exclusively
with the former work (17). The detailed «Cronología de Tirso de
Molina» which opens the volume is presented in advance of the documented
biography Vásquez has planned (9).
Vásquez states that the
goals of his edition are to recover the text of the
princeps, discuss the questioned
passages, and prove that
Tan largo does not aid in editing
El burlador because its solutions
postdate the
princeps and modify the latter's
meaning, aesthetics and structure (17). Vásquez also disputes Alfredo
Rodriguez's attribution of the play to Andrés de Claramonte and attempts
to disprove the claim by means of textual analysis. He points out that the
doubts about Tirso's authorship stem from the imperfect text and from the fact
that Claramonte's posthumous
Deste agua no beberé contains
one almost identical
redondilla as well as
overlapping names-Diego Tenorio, Tisbea and Juana Tenorio (19). After
enumerating the many suppositions about the two plays, he concludes that he
sees no reason to doubt Tirso's authorship of
El burlador. The play was published in
his name twenty years before his death and in several other abbreviated
versions during the seventeenth century with nobody questioning his authorship.
El burlador also coincides...
«con el modo de poetizar y hacer
comedias, con la formación teológica, con la libertad
lingüística, con el habla, etc., de Tirso de
Molina» (21).
Vásquez is further convinced
that although the
princeps contains some errors,
omits some verses and was probably carelessly edited, it is much less defective
than previous editors -Castro, Fernández and Rodriguez- believe (21). He
then discusses the play's linguistic forms, poetic language, dramatic
structure, characteristics of style and Tirso's use of gods, heroes and
Greco-Roman characters.
«La prioridad textual de
El burlador» is a key section to
Vásquez's theory of
El burlador's independent composition.
Here he refutes Fernández's theory that
Tan largo and
El burlador proceed from a common text.
He points out that
El burlador, written long before it was
published, still appeared six to eight years before
Tan largo:
«El
Tan largo está demasiado
apegado al texto
impreso de
B, incluidas sus erratas y versos
suprimidos, para que podamos postular ninguna hipótesis de
composición anterior. La génesis de
El burlador en su edición
princeps depende del
manuscrito tirsiano -acaso en no muy buen estado- y del desaprensivo editor
sevillano. La génesis de
Tan largo también en su
edición
princeps depende
directamente del manuscrito que su autor -o quien fuese- entregó a la
imprenta, como fruto de una refundición de
B, y del correspondiente editor
sevillano. No hay por qué postular ningún
texto matriz anterior y
común a ambas versiones» .
|
Vásquez refutes at great length Alfredo Rodríguez's theory
that
Tan largo preceded
El burlador and that Claramonte wrote
both plays.
Having stated previously that
El burlador was written long before it
was published, Vásquez attempts to establish a date of composition
despite the lack of documents concerning either the composition or the
representation Believing that the play belongs to Tirso's early stage, he sets
the
termino a quo at 1613, before
Tirso's voyage to Santo Domingo. The
termino ad quem he sets at 1617
(79). He concludes his introduction with a list of proverbs appearing in
El burlador and other plays by Tirso,
an analysis of the play's versification and a bibliography of editions and
critical studies. The edition itself is clean, meticulously documented and has
much room for marginal notes. Only one speech out of place, Don Juan's answer,
«No». to Isabela's
question
«¿Qué no eres el
Duque?» (106) and a few printing errors mar the work.
Scholars must decide for themselves which theory of composition they prefer.
In the absence of historical documents that would prove one or the other
definitively, Vásquez's meticulous study is very persuasive. Yet despite
the need to disprove others' theories, his work would have benefitted from more
emphasis on his own very considerable contributions. Fernández, by
making available a
facsimile edition of
the
princeps of both plays, has done
an outstanding service for Tirso scholars. Both volumes are valuable
contributions and welcome additions to Tirso scholarship.
Ann E. Wiltrout
Mississippi State University
Percas de Ponseti,
Helena.
Cervantes the Writer and Painter of Don
Quijote. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988. 110 pp.
It is common practice, under the
aegis of
deconstruction, to show how marginalia -in the broadest sense- may both subvert
and supplement an uncertain center.
A telling example here is Don
Quijote's supposed
dictum on
Ut pictura poesis, brought forward as
lead epigraph for chapter 2, «Confronting the Text» (11). Rather
than substantiation, his querulous comment on Avellaneda serves to preclude any
prospect of promising parallels («el pintor o
escritor, que todo es uno, que sacó a luz la historia deste nuevo don
Quijote que ha salido; que pintó o escribió lo que
saliere...» (II, 71]). The supposed parallelism between the
arts («que todo es uno») is
vitiated by the fact that it is marginal to the main point, which is that
Avellaneda combines the worst features of bad poets
and bad painters, for, being a writer,
he emulates the inept painter Orbaneja in his casual approach to strategy and
structure:
«lo que
saliere». The parallel concerns the incompetence of a
certain sketcher and a certain scribbler, not inter-media comparisons.
The author maintains that «we are crossing the threshold of modern
painting» (8) already in 1605 15, since Cervantes's text
«anticipates by three centuries the revolution in the arts» (64).
The thesis is that Cervantes captures in his portraits of characters and scenes
key elements of realism, impressionism, expressionism,
and surrealism. Some may be perplexed
by this premise and may question the evidence adduced in support of it; they
may wish to indulge a choleric quest for analytical rigor and conceptual
clarity elsewhere.
On the other hand, readers receptive to allegory
should relish the following critique of the episode of the lions (Don Quijote II, 17): «His lance, now 'a phallic
symbol'... is cast aside. Rocinante, the flesh, is dismissed... Only the
knight, the spirit, remains vigilant, clutching his symbolic sword (the cross)
and his bare shield (his identity)... Don Diego futilely flees on his mare,
lust; Sancho... spurs his donkey, simplemindedness; the carter... prods his
mules, stupidity and ignorance» (47). Others may relish it for other
reasons.
The author does attempt to validate her reading of this
«emblematic» level (51) by recourse to Cirlot's
Diccionario de símbolos. She
situates Cide Hamete on the narrative level, Cervantes on the emblematic, and
maintains that they send the reader disparate messages. In one instance,
«Cide Hamete has told us a medieval tale; Cervantes a modern one»
(35), using identical material.
Nevertheless, we learn that Cervantes
laughs caustically through his main character, which is to say through Cide
Hamete's narration of the incident (42). Elsewhere, «Cervantes's voice
addressing the reader may be perceived in Don Quijote's words to
Sancho...» (76). These appear to be instances of metalepsis, the
intrusion of the emblematic level (Cervantes's sphere) into the diegetic (Cide
Hamete's) and the mimetic (Don Quijote's).
This dialectic of emblematic
(Cervantes) and diegetic (Cide Hamete) is transposed to the mimetic level in
binary pairings of characters. Thus, in chapter 3 Don Quijote is set in
privileged opposition to Sansón Carrasco, while in chapter 4 he is
similarly opposed to Diego de Miranda. In both instances, a Romantic reading is
proffered.
No mention is made of Cide Hamete's illuminated manuscript
(1, 9), although it is the Moor who is portrayed textually as a practitioner of
both imitative arts, rather than Cervantes. His illustrations
were
apparently suppressed by the translator (or the editor persona), who must have
felt in adequate to the task of reproducing them.
The principal problem
with this study is that it is distressingly impressionistic. The voluminous
theoretical and practical commentary on the inter relations among the arts and
the efficacy of intermedia comparisons of this sort has not been utilized. Had
it been, the monograph could not have been published in its present form.
I am grateful for the supplementary insights on pp. 3, 6-7, 23, 33, 38-45,
51, 57-58, and 69-70, most of which are marginal to a center that will not
hold, in my estimation. The copious notes, several illustrations, and extensive
bibliography are likewise welcome and worthwhile.
James A.
Parr
University of Southern
California
Godzich, Wlad and
Nicholas Spadaccini, editors.
The Institutionalization of Literature in
Spain. Minneapolis: The Prisma Institute, 1987. 275 pp.
Spadaccini, Nicholas
and Jenaro Talens, editors.
Autobiography in Early Modern Spain.
Minneapolis: The Prisma Institute, 1988. 294 pp.
Godzich, Wlad and
Nicholas Spadaccini, editors.
The Crisis of Institutionalized Literature
in Spain. Minneapolis: The Prisma Institute, 1988. 374 pp.
Hispanic Issues is the generic title of a series of books being published by
The Prisma Institute of Minneapolis, Minnesota, with assistance from the
Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United
States universities as well as from other cultural organizations that the
editors duly acknowledge in preliminary notes. The editor-in-chief is Nicholas
Spadaccini, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature at the
University of Minnesota. Several of the contributors are from the same
institution, but readers of the three volumes will observe that the authors,
the editors, and the members of the Advisory/ Editorial Board come from a wide
range of European and North American universities. Among them are mature and
distinguished Hispanists as well as young scholars who are commencing their
academic careers.
Hispanic Issues defines itself as follows:
A semi-annual publication in English touching on
theoretical and methodological issues toward are configuration of Spanish
literary history and criticism. The series stresses collaborative research,
drawing on a network of scholars from the U. S. and abroad. Sample areas of
inquiry include: Literary Criticism and Historiography; Historical Function of
Cultural Forms; Popular and Mass Culture; Literature and Institutions;
Literature among Discourses (5).
A key word is
«reconfiguration». The editors and the authors invite us to examine
Hispanic literature with different perspectives. They employ critical
approaches that have been developed over the last several decades and make
frequent references to exponents of a particular approach. On the part of some
authors there is a commitment to Marxist criticism while others choose from
among the many systems that have achieved prominence in recent years. What
seems to be in «descendancy» is the aestheticism of the New Critics
of yesteryear.
The heading of this review shows the three books in the
order of publication. Another order would be chronological by the periods of
Spanish literature covered:
Autobiography... with the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries: Santa Teresa, Antonio Pérez, picaresque
novels, Cervantes.
The Institutionalization... refers to
the eighteenth century, while
The Crisis... publishes chapters on the
Romantic period, the nineteenth century, and the early twentieth century. This
last volume also has chapters on Catalan and Chilean literature. They seem out
of context except that methodologically they fit in well enough. A fourth issue
is being announced as a special Quincentennial (of the discovery of America)
volume entitled: 1492-1992:
Re/Discovering Colonial Writing, to be
edited by René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini. The announced contents deal
with the Colonial period in Latin (mostly Spanish) America. In an appendix
entitled «Documenting the Conquest», the editors propose to
reproduce in Spanish or Latin several documents with their English
translations. (In
Autobiography... they printed a
Cervantine document in the same manner).
It is clearly the intent of the
editors of these volumes to produce books rather than collections of disparate
«articles» that might well appear as appropriately in a journal.
The key word here is the designation of chapters. The editors -Spadaccini for
all volumes plus a second person for each- have striven to set the
contributions in an order that gives a logical flow from one to the other. They
have written introductions that succeed in bringing coherence to the whole, and
my recommendation to readers is that they begin each volume by reading these
introductions. The editors have further provided a single index to each volume,
so that the total contents are at the command of the reader. However, each
article has its separate notes and bibliography. (A few, by the way, do not
follow MLA style.) It might seem that, if the chapters use numbers one to seven
or nine or ten, it would make sense to take them in that order. However, I
expect that most readers will choose the topics that interest them most and
read that chapter first (remember that I urge that the introductions be read
beforehand). Readers who do so will not be wrong, for try as they may, multiple
authors do not achieve the unity of style of a single author or of co-authors,
even when they are as
resolutely methodological as are these.
There are disparities in the «texture» of language evident in
the introduction and chapters of these volumes that militate against the unity
of a book. The editors are, as they state in their purpose, determined that
Hispanic Issues be written in English. For example, quotations and titles are
given in both languages. While many of the contributors are native
«speakers» of Spanish, only four of the chapters are acknowledged
to be translations. That is, I think, cause for celebration, for it is
desirable that American Hispanists write equally well in both English and
Spanish. Nevertheless, the reader will observe that these authors speak with
many «voices», and some write with a texture that gives real style
to their statement.
The question of style is important, because the
authors are presenting arguments that not all readers will be prepared to
accept. The very word «institutionalization» is the title of the
first volume is a barrier. It piles up four suffixes (more if the Latin base is
considered) in order to express its concept. Some readers, I suspect, will
abandon the book at the cover page in the face of this abstraction. That will
be a pity, for this volume and its companion
Crisis... set forth in detail some
provocative ideas. In brief, «Institutionalization», as used in the
first volume, refers to that eighteenth-century process by which enlightened
government officials co-opted literature for the purpose of installing their
own ideology. Once «institutionalized», literature experienced in
the nineteenth century the crisis that is the theme of the second volume.
Yet readers may justly complain that the texture of language in these
volumes, in some instances, creates a barrier to clarity. Such is the case with
the chapter by Antonio Gómez-Moriana (translated by James V. Romano) in
Autobiography... [41-58]. It is
entitled straightforwardly «Narration and Argumentation in
Autobiographical Discourse», and the author tells us clearly enough:
«My thesis, then, proposes nothing other than a synthesis of diachrony
and synchrony» (43). But what are we expected to make of the protracted
sentence that begins the next paragraph?
If the
inclusion of the semantic dimension obliges us to revise our concept of
'literature' (and of art in general) as an autonomous and autotelic entity
(common denominator of the schools of diachronic structuralism that coincide in
proclaiming their self-referentiality as specific to artistic and literary
language), the inclusion of the pragmatic dimension will force us to take into
consideration the socio historical implications of
literary praxes (including
autobiography), at least as an «interdiscursive task» (44).
There are many sentences in these volumes that produce a similar clouded
vision before the reader attains the final period. Nevertheless, I want to
continent positively on the achievement of these writers who provide the
material that the editors have so ably put together. Clearly, colleagues will
wish to look into the contributions of established scholars such as the late
José Antonio Maravall, Iris Zavala, Margarita Levisi, Anthony Zahareas,
and Ruth El Saffar. Their chapters speak for them. Deserving of comment are
several of those listed at the end of each volume, in the sections entitled
«Contributors», as assistant or associate professors at their
institutions.
It is with real pleasure that I observe the sound
scholarship of younger colleagues who are bravely endeavoring to bring Hispanic
themes into the critical mainstream. At the risk of omitting equally deserving
contributors, I want to call attention to chapters that struck me, with my
particular interests, as exceptionally good. In
Institutionalization... Edward Baker's
«In Moratín's Café» presents a novel perspective as
he considers the themes of «urban
politesse, idleness, and their
relation to the social organization of productive labor and public
entertainment» (101) in
La comedia nueva. Steven Suppan,
although he uses «occult» (131) as a verb, indulges in phrases such
as «the Enlightenment instrumentalization of reason» (133), and
commits barbarisms such as «everyone always already knows their
place» (128), nevertheless gives us a refreshing view of Ramón de
la Cruz's familiar
sainete in «Managing
Culture:
Manolo and the
Majos's Good Taste» (125-68).
In
Autobiography... George Mariscal may be
given a temporary pardon for using «foreground» (60) as a verb in
return for his study, «A Clown at Court: Francesillo de
Zúñiga's
Crónica burlesca» (59-75),
which places an unfamiliar work in the spirit of its times and interprets it in
the context of ours. Many readers will enjoy, I think, the lively boldness of
Patrick Dust in his presentation of «A Methodological Prolegomenon to a
Post Modernist Reading of Santa Teresa's Autobiography» (77-96).
In
The Crisis... Gwendolyn Barnes is to be
congratulated for a masterful treatment of a difficult subject that we hear
little about: «The Power of the Word: Religious Oratory in
Nineteenth-Century Spain» (121-47), although one misses at least a
passing retrospective reference to Padre Islas
Fray Gerundio. In the same volume,
Nancy Membrez, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on the
teatro por horas, offers a splendid
essay on «The Mass Production of Theater in Nineteenth-Century
Madrid» (309-56).
In summary, some readers may be put off by the
approaches used by the authors of these three volumes, but I think they will
ignore at their peril the subject of these essays. There is much sound
scholarship here. Although the jargon may offend some (including this
reviewer), the presentation, especially by the mature scholars, is on the whole
straightforward. Best of all is the treatment of both
novel topics
and familiar subjects from perspectives that provoke a thoughtful response.
John Dowling The
University of Georgia
Coughlin, Edward V.
Nicasio Álvarez de Cienfuegos.
Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. (TWAS 804). 139 pp.
Cienfuegos, one of the
most intriguing figures of the late eighteenth century, has received less
attention than other authors. Jose Luis Cano rekindled modern interest in him
in a series of valuable articles written in the late 1950s through 1970s
(including his excellent 1969 edition of the
Poesías), but stiff, no one has
published a complete study of the life and works of this fascinating
individual. Coughlin's book, a coherent overview of what is known about
Cienfuegos, his poetry and drama, takes a step in that direction.
Coughlin breaks no new ground in his presentation of the life (1764-1809) or
in the analyses of his verses, plays, and minor writings, but he convincingly
argues for this «poet and patriot's» central place in the Spanish
Enlightenment. In the biographical section Coughlin discusses Cienfuegos's
artistic and political career against the tumultuous background of the Carlos
IV-Maria Luisa-Godoy period. Cienfuegos was deeply influenced by Cadalso,
Jovellanos, and (especially) Meléndez Valdés in Salamanca, and
combined his career (he was named to a bureaucratic position in the Reales
Consejos in Madrid in 1789) with his growing interest in literature. The 1798
edition of his
Poesías stared debate and
revealed a thinker fully in tune with the progressive ideals of the European
Enlightenment, whose major themes included mankind, social justice, friendship,
sentiment, virtue and the importance of reason as a motivator of man's actions.
Coughlin discusses the poetry predominantly from this thematic perspective,
reserving some comment for structure, versification and, in an interesting
section, language. Several provocative observations might have been developed,
such as reference to «a movement away from the universal quality of the
descriptive passages to a greater realism through reference to specific locales
in Madrid» (32; Sebold has detected similar movement toward realism in
Iriarte, Moratín and García de la Huerta), the importance of
female friendship in Cienfuegos (38), and the employment of first-person
narrators «to express feelings concerning personal experience as well as
events in society» (62). There is material here for further study.
Cienfuegos wrote four tragedies -Idomeneo (1792),
Zoraida (1798),
La condesa de Castilla (1798),
Pítaco (published 1816)- and one
comedia lacrimosa,
Las hermanas generosas. Coughlin
presents the theme, plot, characterization, ideology, and artistic
achievement/defects of each play in turn, and gives us this good reminder:
«To appreciate... Cienfuegos it is important to bear in mind that he
wrote... in a society preoccupied with questions of law, justice, duty,
government, and virtue...» (83).
The book bears the marks of
having been hastily written. Clichés, inconsistencies (Leandro de
Moratín [105] vs. Leandro Fernández de Moratín [107];
Nivelle de la Chauseé [103] does not appear in the index), and
repetitions mar the otherwise straightforward discussion of Cienfuegos's life
and works, and distract from its effectiveness. At times very similar wording
is repeated: «The manner in which Cienfuegos describes his friendships is
not surprising because the poets of Salamanca considered it to be the principal
way to achieve virtue» (38); «It is not surprising to see this
friendship, for among the poets of Salamanca it was a most notable passion and
the principal means of achieving virtue» (45). Or: «Abuse of his
priestly role to strike fear in the hearts of others in his most striking
characteristic» (70). Or this sequence (all within four paragraphs):
«great emotional intensity», «intense emotions»,
«outbursts of emotion», «intense states of passion»,
«intense emotion», «passionate outbursts», and
«strong passions» (93-94). Coughlin criticizes Cienfuegos for
«overstatement, an unnecessary repetition of words, and a tendency to
create an inappropriately rhetorical or overly dramatic tone» (119).
Apparently, to paraphrase Mesonero Romanos,
«se
pega».
David Thatcher Gies
University of Virginia
Shoemaker, William H.
God's Role and His Religion in
Galdós's Novels: 1876-1988. Valencia: Ediciones
Albatros/Hispanófila, 1988. 110 pp.
Students of Galdós
will recognize immediately in this last book by Shoemaker the same encyclopedic
motivation and style as in his earlier titles
La critica literaria de Galdós
(1979) and
The Novelistic Art of Galdós
(1980, 1982). Given the subject of the work and the octogenarian status of the
late author, readers may have expected a different kind of book: a personal
meditation on the stated theme with the work of Don Benito serving as stimulus.
Robert Kirsner's
Veinte años de matrimonio en la
novela de Galdós (1983) comes to mind here. Such is not the case
though.
Shoemaker considers only the twelve Galdosian contemporary
novels from
Doña Perfecta (1876) to
Miau (1888). He does not explain why
the
Episodios nacionales might not have
been also taken into account, but does offer two versions of one reason for
selecting the group of novels upon which he settled. These novels «were
and still are the least likely among Galdós's entire corpus of
contemporary social novels to contain a significant role for God and His
religion» (9). And later novels such as
Realidad, Ángel Guerra,
Nazarín, Halma, Misericordia and the Torquemada tetralogy do not
require attention because they «are well known to the casual reader and
have been studied in depth
for their affirmative Godly, Christian
content and motifs, and for this reason have not needed to be included in my
present search for affirmations where least expected» (9). Shoemaker does
not address the probable objection that
Doña Perfecta,
Gloria and
La familia de León Roch might be
thought by many to fall into the category of novels well studied for their
«affirmative Godly, Christian content and motifs». Nonetheless his
chapters on these works average only slightly more than two pages in length and
refer to some of the relevant extant bibliography.
Shoemaker purposely
limits himself to evoking the verbal references to God and religion and to
setting forth the extent to which the Divinity and the Church are active in
Eves of given characters. He concludes that while that system of references is
one of the «important fundamentals» in the twelve novels studied,
«literarily in Galdós's novelistic art, these fundamentals have
rarely been the dominant force, except in certain parts and temporarily, in the
human situations, but they have often been the contrasting, dramatic
counterpoint» (105), i. e., «contrasting literary foils to the
usually dominant nature of these novels» (109).
La de Bringas is the novel where their
contrapuntual contribution is least,
Miau where it is greatest.
In
the epilogue to his monograph, Shoemaker seems to indicate that it is an
incomplete study, or, perhaps better said, the first stage of a complete one
(108). Perhaps he felt he did not have time to work out fully exact analyses
that would reveal how «God's role and His religion» are integrated
into the overall literary syntheses which are the novels. Doubtlessly Shoemaker
would want to see someone else take up where he left off.
Stephen Miller Texas
A&M University
Dobson, Andrew.
An Introduction to the Politics and
Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989. xiii + 182 pp.
What Dobson calls
one of his aims, namely to suggest
reasons for José Ortega y Gasset's relative decline and the factors that
could lead to his «resuscitation» (3), is [as I read the book] the
aim of this excellently written and well researched study. Making frequent use
of Ortega's private correspondence, the book is an introductory exposition and
an extended critique of Ortega's political philosophy that developed from
doctoral research at Oxford by Dobson, who at present is in the Department of
Politics of the University of Keele.
The work is written with the
British public primarily in mind in order to convince it that reading Ortega is
worth the time and effort. This is no easy task, given that «even at the
height of his [worldwide] fame he was never particularly well known or
well-received in Britain» (3) except by a circle of Hispanophiles. The
causes of Ortega's low profile are various. Besides the age old
«generally held British prejudice toward Spain» (10), which
reluctantly admits Spain to be part of the European continent, one can point to
two main causes. One is the almost exclusive philosophical emphasis in Britain
on the analysis/elucidation of language, an emphasis that excludes most of
continental thought from philosophy. The other is the fact that the 1932
English language translation of
La rebelión de las masas never
met with nearly as large a readership in Britain as in the United States,
presumably be cause the British form of liberalism did not favor a
«meritocracy». As Dobson perceives the cultural situation, it is
changing as to what counts both in philosophy and the contents of liberalism.
Through his book he aims, admirably, to encourage an interest in Ortega's
political philosophy and in the metaphysics and epistemology of the human
condition in which it is grounded.
The case for Ortega is presented in
three parts. Part one, consisting of Chapter 1, is devoted to Ortega's
political life and the principal influences on him. Included is a contrast
between Ortega's public silence and private correspondence during the Civil
War, an issue to which Dobson rightly devotes more space given the relatively
recent accessibility to Ortega's private papers. It is Dobsons
«opinion» that this new material confirms the previous general
assumption that Ortega's sympathies were with the Nationalists, even if he grew
increasingly disillusioned with the Franco regime.
Part two, consisting
of Chapters 2-6, analyzes/elucidates the key concepts of Ortega's political
philosophy: (2) «socialism» and «capitalism», (3)
«liberalism» and «democracy», (4)
«conservatism» and «elitism», (5)
«nationalization» [in the sense of national integration but not
centralization] and «decentralization», and (6)
«fascism». Included in this part is a brief, but important, section
on «Ortega and John Stuart Mill», in which it is argued that
«... Ortega's concerns in
La rebelión de las masas are
identical with those of Mill, and provide us [British readers] with another
relatively familiar landmark for orientation» (69). Dobson's effort to
reconcile Ortega' s early rejection of «isolated individualism» and
his espousal of some form of liberalism would have been dearer, as I see it, if
he had placed it within the context of Ortega's later distinction, in
El hombre y la gente, between
«the interindividual» and «the social».
The
consideration of these concepts in part two leads directly to their
metaphysical basis in part three, whose four chapters (7-10) outline Ortega's
discovery of individual human life as radical reality through the utilization
of «reason from life's point of view» (as Dobson translated
razón vital). This
discovery amounts to a radical reform of philosophy, a reform that Dobson is
convinced, rightly so, is still worth studying today.
Antón Donoso University of Detroit
Landeira, Ricardo and
Luis T. González del-Valle, editors.
Nuevos y novísimos: Algunas
perspectivas críticas sobre la narrativa española desde la
década de los 60. Boulder, Colorado: Society of Spanish and
Spanish-American Studies, 1987. 228 pp.
This collection of thirteen
essays -five in Spanish, eight in English- by well-known United States-based
scholars of the contemporary fiction of Spain has as its stated purpose the
offering of critical insights, employing a variety of methodological models, on
the Peninsular novel of the Seventies and Eighties. The essays are of several
distinct types: panoramic studies focusing upon a group of writers (Concha
Alborg's «Cuatro narradoras de la transición» and
Germán Gullón's «El novelista como fabulador de la
realidad: Mayoral, Merino, Guelbenzu»); overviews of a particular
writer's entire novelistic production, or a substantial portion thereof
(Catherine G. Bellver's «Division, Duplication and Doubling in the Novels
of Ana María Moix», «Una visión esquemática de
la novelística de Ramón Hernández» by Luis T.
González-del-Valle, Janet Pérez's «Rhetorical Structures
and Narrative Techniques in Recent Fiction of José María
Guelbenzu», Kessel Schwartz's «Themes, Style and Structure in the
Novels of Pedro Antonio Urbina» and «Juan José
Millás, fabulador de la extrañeza» by Gonzalo Sobejano);
and approaches to a writer through a particular work or, in one case, two. This
last category includes: Germán Gullón's «El reencantamiento
de la realidad:
La orilla oscura, de José
María Merino»; «The 'New' Characterization in José
María Guelbenzu's
El río de la luna», by
David K. Herzberger; «Behind the 'Enemy Lines'»: Strategies for
Interpreting
Las virtudes peligrosas of Ana
María Moix, by Linda Gould Levine; Gonzalo Navajas's «Repetition
and the Rhetoric of Love in Esther Tusquets's
El mismo mar de todos los
veranos»; Gemma Roberts's «Amor sexual y frustración
existencial en dos novelas de Guelbenzu»; and «Ana María
Moix and the 'Generation of 1968'», by C. Christopher Soufas, Jr. The
articles range in length from eleven to twenty-five pages.
Luis T.
González-del-Valle rightly notes, near the beginning of his chapter on
Ramón Hernández, the concentration of critical study of the
post-Civil War and post-Franco novel of Spain upon a few major names, to the
neglect of numerous other writers of substantial merit. His article -in which
he successfully takes on the task of crafting a coherent, unified analysis of
thirteen Hernández novels- represents one effort toward redressing this
injustice. Since González-del-Valle is also co-editor of this volume,
whose chapters taken together represent a clear emphasis upon less-studied
writers, it seems reasonable to surmise that one of the book's guiding
principles has been the desire to draw the attention of Hispanists and other
scholars to the large body of under-studied narrative of Spain's post-war
years. In this sense, the
Nuevos y novísimos portion of
the volume's title suggests a subtle play upon the concept present in
José María Castellet's now-classic
Nueve novísimos poetas
españoles (1970), since several of the writers included in the
present volume were publishing well before the two decades focused upon but
suffered critical inattention, while the long, cumber some subtitle of the
Landeira and González-del Valle book anticipates the disclaimer offered
in the preface.
«No se ha pretendido... dar una
visión equilibrada de la novelística española más
reciente» (7). Indeed, the volume's contents represent a
clear imbalance. For example, one writer -the excellent novelist José
María Guelbenzu- is the sole focus of two studies and the partial focus
of another, while many others are omitted entirely. While most critics would
agree that Spain's women writers belong to the group of neglected authors, five
of the thirteen essays and a portion of a sixth are devoted to their works;
three of the five are on one writer, Ana María Moix. The advantage of
this sort of concentration is, of course, the opportunity for breadth and depth
in the consideration of the two writers in question.
Two focal points
for a vision of Spain's recent narrative emerge from the volume's contents: a
grappling with the «New Spain», the Spain of political transition,
and the marked tendency toward fantasy in the newest Peninsular fiction, while
twentieth-century existential anguish remains as a constant theme. In the first
of his two companion pieces, Germán Gullón examines the fantastic
mode in the work of José María Merino, a member of the
interesting and original «Leonese group» of contemporary novelists;
the Galician, Marina Mayoral; and the Asturian, Guelbenzu. Writing gracefully
and engagingly, Gullón views the work of these writers in the context of
the fantastic tradition of Spain's Northwest and elucidates the defamiliarizing
function of the fantastic. In the second essay, Gullón studies the
mirror-imaging, pluralizing functions of
«narrador
mago», narratee, and character in the portrayal of
multiple reality in the 1986 novel by poet and storyteller Merino.
Pedro
Antonio Urbina and Juan José Millás are also studied as writers
in the fantastic mode. In his carefully documented essay, Kessel Schwartz links
recent, bizarre Urbina works to the confusion of identities and of
reality/fantasy evoked by Urbina in his previous writings for very young
reading audiences and for the theater. Insisting perhaps too greatly upon the
autobiographical nature of a substantial portion of Urbina's work, Schwartz
suggests the role of fantasy as an artistic response to the New Spain. Less
successful is the attempt to elucidate the complex, shifting author-narrator
character relationship in Urbina's fiction. Terminology relevant to these three
entities tends toward interchange and, hence, confusion, despite the helpful
use at one point of a distinction between «the super author» and
«the temporary author».
In his well-written
and convincing essay on Juan José Millás, Gonzalo Sobejano
focuses upon the nightmare as structuring device of Millás's novels and
organizing experience of his characters. Sobejano studies the nightmare motifs
in each of three expressions: loneliness, family membership, and group
identity. In each case, the individual is overwhelmed by a devastating force,
as in nightmares.
Though the narrative of Guelbenzu is also rich in
fantasy, Janet Pérez and David Herzberger take on other aspects of the
Asturian's work. The Pérez article examines unifying rhetorical devices
in Guelbenzu's prose: abundant imagery of travel; variations upon the pathetic
fallacy; the use of fight and color, sounds and silences; the parody of
literary and cinematic conventions. The completeness and meticulous
documentation of this study will make it an invaluable research tool for
students of Guelbenzu.
In his persuasive, well-crafted essay on
«new» characterization in Guelbenzu's
El río de la luna, David
Herzberger continues a line of research he has undertaken with reference to the
novels of Juan Benet. Observing that «in many respects... Spanish
narrative during the past two decades moves in opposition to
de-characterization» (84), Herzberger sees the development of strong
individual characters, not only as a counterpoint to the collective
protagonists of neo-realism, but also «as a new point of departure, in
which authors equate the revalidation of character with the essential purposes
of their art» (84). Guelbenzu is seen to take a post-modernist approach
to characterization, eschewing the restrictions of nineteenth-century literary
conventions.
In an insightful essay whose points could be further
sharpened by careful pruning, Gemma Roberts applies to Guelbenzu texts the
theories of Erich Fromm and Victor Frankl on sexuality in relation to selfhood
and society. Studying
El río de la luna and
El esperado, Roberts sees the
protagonists' compulsive sexual activity as an indicator of existential
alienation and a reflection of society's consumerization, which tends to
separate sex from love.
Also treating love is Gonzalo Navajas in his
rigorous, tightly structured, and articulate post-modernist analysis of the
first novel by Esther Tusquets, to whom surprising reference is made in the
volume's preface as
«esta importante pero poco
conocida narradora» (10). Love in the novel is seen as an
anti-mimetic force of individuation which, however, is subverted by the
protagonist's ironically absolutist «theology of negativity» (24)
and her return to a trivialized world.
In her look at the fiction of
Lourdes Ortiz, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Soledad Puértolas, and
Rosa Montero, Concha Alborg discusses the narrative strengths of each and the
question of the existence of a «new novel» to match the New Spain.
The three quality pieces on another woman writer, Moix, are particularly
welcome given the paucity of critical work on this unprolific writer of
challenging and remarkably varied texts. C. Christopher Soufas examines her
1968 novel
Julia in the context of a possible
Generation of 1968, considering the insights of major theoreticians of the
literary generation in Spain and concluding that
Julia is antithetical to such a
generational notion.
Hispanists have come to appreciate the skill with
which Catherine G. Bellver brings to the study of Hispanic texts the insights
of other disciplines. Her essays on character division and doubling in Moix's
fiction adeptly incorporates the fruits of psychological research. Threading
her way carefully through existing Moix scholarship, Bellver studies several
kinds of doubling, seeing its use as a metaphor for the instability and
complexity of human relationships generally. A tendency toward the use of
calques from Spanish is mildly distracting.
Finally, Linda Gould Levine
applies discourse analysis to the study of the strange and disconcerting
stories in Moix's
Las virtudes peligrosas. She sees the
collection's discourse as characterized by «a complex artifice of
absence» (97), a dialectic of dominant and muted voices, and a
«hostility and antagonism toward words present in [Moix's] writings since
the inception of her career» (100). Textual silences, both forced and
otherwise, connote for Levine those of marginated groups within Spanish society
today, as well as the «devaluation of discourse» (100) of the
Franco years.
Despite a rather high incidence of typographical errors
and some unevenness in the essays, this volume is a valuable addition to
criticism of very contemporary Peninsular fiction which its critics will
undoubtedly find themselves consulting again and again.
Mary S. Vásquez
Michigan State University
Pérez, Genaro
J.
La novela coma burla/juego: Siete
experimentos novelescos de Gonzalo Torrente Ballester. Valencia:
Albatros/Hispanófila, 1989. 107 pp.
Despite the critical and
popular success enjoyed by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, as yet there have been
surprisingly few monographic studies of his work and thus Genaro J.
Pérez's
La novela como burla/juego is
especially welcome. Pérez analyzes seven of the Galician author's most
innovative novels, published between 1963 and 1987, giving a brief summary of
the plot of each before examining the principal themes, motifs, structural and
stylistic features. In addition he notes the influence of writers admired by
Torrente (Cervantes, Sterne, Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle) and points of
coincidence with some of his contemporaries (Nabokov, John Fowles).
Don Juan is the first work in which the concept of the novel
as
juego is evident. Pérez
explores
the theme of
burla, as executed by Don Juan
and experienced not only by the women enamored of him but also by the narrator
and by those naive readers who expect a conventional, closed novel rather than
an experimental, open one. This initial chapter is an excellent introduction to
two elements, metafictionality and intertextuality, that are of great
importance in Torrente's
oeuvre. Chapter 2 is
devoted to
Off-side, the least studied of the
novels apart from the early
El golpe de estado de Guadalupe
Limón. Pérez describes the 1969 book as a
novela negra, albeit an atypical
one because of its philosophical dimension and because its tough guys are not
flat characters. Structurally the novel is reminiscent of
La colmena and it depicts life in
Madrid some twenty years later, during the 1960s. The portrayal of swindlers,
prostitutes, homosexuals, and former prisoners lends itself to implicit
criticism of the sociopolitical realities of the Franco dictatorship.
Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the best-known novels,
La Saga/fuga de J. B. (1972) and
Fragmentos de apocalipsis (1977).
Pérez focuses on the intertexts, showing how Torrente has drawn from a
variety of sources (including fiction, classical and Arthurian mythology,
poetry, popular songs, and literary criticism in
La Saga/fuga and has adapted or
naturalized the borrowed elements. These intertexts serve a variety of
functions, of which the parodic is paramount. The metaliterary aspect is
particularly significant in
Fragmentos, an intensely self-conscious
narrative that is filled with reflections on the process of literary creation
and its attendant problems, the genesis of characters, and the development of
story lines.
La isla de los jacintos cortados
(1980) is more conventional than its immediate predecessors as far as structure
is concerned. Torrente, long interested in historical figures and the myths
that spring up around them over the course of time, investigates the birth and
development of the «myth» that Napoleon existed, when in actuality
he was but an invention. This rewriting of events permits an exploration of the
relationship between fiction and history, and the reality of both. The parodic,
demythifying tendency of so much of Torrente's fiction continues in
Quizá nos lleve el viento al
infinito (1984), which is a combination science fiction and spy novel. Its
characters include androids and a narrator-protagonist who is a cross between
Sherlock Homes and James Bond, possessing the analytical skill of the former
and the sophistication of the latter, plus the ability to metamorphose into
other beings at will. He is a master at the game of cold war politics, all the
players of which are the target of the author's satire.
Yo no soy yo, evidentemente is a
tribute to Fernando Pessoa, famous for his use of pseudonyms to represent
different facets of his personality. In Torrente's novel two university
professors attem |