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Like some of the alchemical texts contemporary to Ausiàs March, this study of his work is only for the initiated; indeed, even those who know March's poetry well will want to have the text handy for quick reference to a poem or an image discussed. This is not to say that the work is inaccessible. Archer writes clearly and organizes well for the most part, but he is studying a difficult aspect of a complex body of poetry.

The first part of the book is made up almost entirely of background material in analogy, simile, metaphor and allegory, with little reference to March. Archer studies the use of imagery in the troubadour tradition, and finds that March's innovations, in addition to the language itself, have to do with length and sustenance. While his predecessors favored comparisons of two lines or so, March prefers longer ones and he tends to sustain an image or a set of related images throughout a poem. As others have noted, March is much more complex as well, since he so often describes an interior struggle as well as those exterior ones the Provençals depict. Archer also examines specific types of images from non-troubadour as well as troubadour sources that Ausiàs March would have known. To conclude this background section, Archer goes back to the Classics to construct working definitions and theories of the different kinds of images used so successfully by the Valencian poet. He begins with Aristotelian theory and follows through with explanations of how to write poetry in the Flors del Gay Saber from the fourteenth-century Escola de Tolosa.

For those who are already well-versed in the traditions mentioned above, Part II, subtitled «Functions of the Analogy» is much more concrete and interesting. Archer explains how March achieves both emotive and explicative functions in his poetry that set it apart from predecessors and contemporaries alike. March always strives, usually with success, for multiple evocations from the images he uses; these suggested images evoke others and elicit certain desired responses, usually of sympathy, for the poet's plight, in the reader. The real strength of March's poetry is the wholeness of each piece; even in the cases where March uses several different images in one long poem, there is a coherence and structure that make the images work together to form a unit. Archer dedicates an entire chapter to «Prefiguring the Occasion» in a way somewhat parallel to foreshadowing in modern fiction, March sets up associations in the first lines of many of his poems with feelings he wants to elicit in the reader, strengthening the original response throughout the poem with reinforcing images. The poet is thus very successful in persuading both the specific reader to whom the work is addressed and the general reader of his worthiness as a lover and his merits to have that love responded to positively. He is a complex poet because he is often at odds with himself; especially when the «Moral Perspective»; as Archer calls it, interferes with the success he feels is his due in love.

In a very unusual last chapter, Archer analyzes the cases in which March is not successful, and finds that these usually occur because he sets up a non-parallel analogy or tries to deceive himself with regard to his own responsibility for a love which is not quite the pure love for which he claims he is striving. In his conclusion, Archer puts his finger on the reason for March's achievement in his creation of such striking imagery: «While his similes are obviously allied to the troubadour analogies and those used by some Catalan poets, he goes far beyond them in the way he uses traditional themes to achieve a closer association between his images and the contexts to which he applies them» (179). This is indeed so.

The Pervasive Image is a lucid and useful study of the work of this enigmatic poet, and Archer's analyses of certain poems are very helpful. Anyone trying to teach the verse of March will find this blend of classical and contemporary scholarship indispensable; Archer's blend of respect for and skepticism toward the «old masters» of Marchian criticism is particularly refreshing. His style is occasionally marred by sexist language -he can't find   —76→   an alternative to «the reader ... he»- and there are a few interesting studies missing from his bibliography, but other than those minor points, the book is a welcome addition to Marchian scholarship.

Kathleen McNerney

West Virginia University

Nepaulsingh attempts to offer new perspectives on the medieval Spanish literary canon by focusing on composition («simply, how parts of a work are put together», [3]) in order to elucidate their structural patterns. The hermeneutics he espouses is associated with those of Hans Georg Gadamer (as filtered through David Couzens Hoy and Mario Valdés), a historist's approach that seeks to «engage [these texts] in intersubjective dialogue» (5) about how their main parts were assembled. The result is far less theoretical, however, than the invocation of Gadamer would imply. Nepaulsingh clusters well-known works such as the Cárcel de Amor and Celestina in chapters devoted to the study of broad traditions: rosaries and psalters, the rhetoric and symbolism of the Song of Songs, the apocalyptic tradition, logic and liturgy, the wheel of fortune and bookmaking. Because Nepaulsingh's exploration of these traditions tends to be thematic and imagistic rather than by recognized genres of discursive structures, the result is a mixed bag of critical perspectives at best.

Chapter 1, «Books on a String», suggests that Nepaulsingh perceives some form of narrative concatenation or parataxis as a controlling principle of composition for the works he studies under that heading: the Cantar de Mio Cid, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, and the Cantigas de Santa María. The learned anthropological and historical discussion on beads and books, threads and texts, psalms and Ave Marias seems a weak link to the ensuing presentation of echoes of the language of the psalms in the Cid, the Milagros, and the Cantigas, with some Marian imagery and numerology thrown in. Nepaulsingh is honest about his critical strategy, that these works are «composed within a tradition of stringing, which I have conveniently called the psalter tradition» (39), but the reader is inclined to agree that «the evidence of influence of the psalter tradition in the Cid is remote and indirect» (30) and that for Berceo «the textual evidence I can muster in support ... [of this thesis] ... is slight and inconclusive» (39).

In Chapter 2, «The Song of Songs and Razón de amor» Nepaulsingh argues that the unity of the Razón is based on Solomon's Song of Songs: symbols derived from or best expressed in the Song itself or motifs from its widespread tradition. The rich and lengthy discussion brings to light many expressions and parallels in imagery that have gone unnoticed or unappreciated in the Razón. Nepaulsingh sees the two halves of the work as complementary allegories, the first an erotic encounter between Christ the bridegroom and his seductive but unworthy partner in this tryst, which is associated in turn with cold water («the chill of cupidity», [54]). The second allegory, the debate proper, is the defeat of water by wine, a symbol of love and of Christ himself. It is somewhat hard to accept the dazzled and inept lover in the garden in the first half, who is very satisfied with his beloved, as Christ (subject to cupidity?), or interpret the feisty and merry verses of the debate between water and wine as principally religious in nature. Nepaulsingh cleverly demonstrates the equation wine=love, but wine's claim to preeminence and even sanctity because of its use in the Eucharist is a flimsy afterthought that leaves water unimpressed. The theological dichotomy between water and wine is perhaps not as stark as Nepaulsingh supposes, and does not take into account the scriptural (the water and blood that issued from Christ's lanced side) or liturgical (wine and water commingled at the Eucharistic table) associations which serve to unite the two in the broader religious/literary traditions as well.

The hallmarks of the apocalyptic tradition, from Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation and some of their medieval commentaries, are extracted for an analysis of the Signos del juicio final, Danza general de la muerte, Alexandre, Fernán González, Zifar, Rimado del palacio, and Laberinto de fortuna. «Sic et non: Logic and the Liturgical Tradition», examines the Libro de buen amor (as narrated by a disciple of the Devil) and the Corbacho, while another chapter on «The Magic Wheel of Fortune» dwells on the Siervo libre de amor. Cárcel de amor, and Celestina. A final chapter on «The Concept "Book" in Early Spanish Literature» is especially fresh and engaging.

The book itself is blemished by numerous typographical errors, some (stray commas and parentheses) only a nuisance, others more disquieting. Documentation is cited in the text and repeated in the notes (8-9; 232 n18). Foreign words may be used in italics, in quotation marks, and as if they were English, all within a few pages (cantiga, laisse, and tirada in Chapter 1). Manuscripts are invoked but printed editions given in the notes (240 n58); texts are quoted but the crucial MS not specified (MS O of the Libro de Alexandre is the one cited on pp. 17 and 204ff although elsewhere the author notes that he will quote only from MS P: p. 256 n43; Willis edition miscited at p. 225 n37 and 283 n7). Thirty-five lines or phrases from the Poema de Mio Cid are quoted in the section devoted to that masterpiece (24-31); twenty-six typographical errors are sprinkled among them.

Even if the results are not always persuasive, the effort is scholarly, earnest and thoughtfully presented.   —77→   There is a wealth of ancillary information in the text and notes that expand the horizons of hispanomedievalists in a dozen directions.

George D. Greenia

College of William and Mary

This wide-ranging collection was selected from among the papers presented to the thirtieth annual conference of the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of Florida, in honor of the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of Luis de Camões. The papers are grouped under four headings: The Portuguese in Europe; The Portuguese in Brazil; The Portuguese in Africa and Asia; and Camões: A Man for All Centuries. Four are written in Portuguese; the rest are in English. The multidisciplinary nature of the conference is patent in the variety of topics addressed here; there is something to catch the eye of nearly everyone interested in this historical and literary period.

A. H. de Oliveira Marques retrieves a manuscript in Germany, by an unknown Italian, who gives a negative picture of Portuguese society of the time; Peter Fothergill-Payne looks at the concept of good kingship; and editor Hower discusses a converso, Urial-Gabriel da Costa, who returns to Judaism, emigrates to Holland and influences the thinking of Spinoza. These three disparate glimpses comprise the first section. The linguist and the social historian will be interested in José Honorio Rodrigues's description of the rise of Tupi as the língua geral for the diverse Brazilian tribes, a similar development among the African slaves and the ultimate triumph of Portuguese. (Did Tupi really resemble Basque?) Fred Gillette Sturm gives another view of the Indians and slavery. Irwin Stern examines Pero Vaz de Caminha's Carta, and Frederick C. H. García essays a straightforward analysis of a Camões «imitation» of its poetic merits.

Part III sets the stage for Camões. Gerald M. Moser's examination of «grumbling veterans», George Winius's discussion of Portuguese «decadence» and Joseph C. Miller's well-documented piece on Angola all explain and amplify the mood of disillusionment manifested by Camões. Here one should also note one of this collection's major strengths: the extensive and helpful bibliography to be gleaned from the copious notes accompanying each article. If the articles, in the space provided, can do no more than whet the intellectual appetite of the reader for the subject, the road to further information is well mapped.

The final and largest section addresses Camões, his times and his work. By a careful documentation of how Humanism was strangled in its crib in Portugal, and by demonstrating the unlikelihood of contact between Camões and its proponents in Coimbra, João Sebastião da Silva Dias defends the thesis that the poet was orthodox and Counter-Reformist. He regards the Velho do Restelo episode as an anomaly. Graça Silva Dias probes the social climate of Camões's youth by a sociocritical study of Gil Vicente's Auto da Mofina Mendes. H. V. Livermore studies the roots of the epic's title, and J. E. Tomlins offers a fresh and fascinating comparison between Gil's Auto da India and Auto da Fama. (I believe, however, that it is the Spaniard in the street and not the Portuguese in India's balcony scene.) René Concepción views Amphitryon in a Camões play. A thoughtful analysis of Os Maias in the light of the epic structure of Os Lusíadas is Alberto de Lacerda's contribution, and both William Metzger and Norwood Andrews trace the influence of translation. Andrews's defense of the cultural level of the nineteenth-century American reader, using statistics, was most enlightening.

The editors deserve commendation for their success in achieving a measure of unity in such a broad spectrum of topics by their thoughtful combinations. Of course, the book's wide range of interests is also its principal weakness. Each reader will find something of interest but will regret the lack of in-depth treatment within a particular field of specialization. One will take heart, however, from the generous references, and will acquire new insights in areas which may be unfamiliar. This is especially true of Part III, where the informative articles on the Portuguese experience in Africa and Asia may provide new dimensions for both the Latin Americanist and the Peninsular specialist. The format of the book is attractive, with a readable typeface and virtually error-free typesetting.

Marian L. Smolen

Arizona State University

A reader inclined to marvel at quaint survivals of epic narrative in twentieth-century Sephardic balladry, is reminded once again by Armistead, Silverman and Katz in this elegant addition to the Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews that the Judeo-Spanish romancero is «a dynamic, eclectic tradition drawn from a great variety of sources, both medieval and modern...» (4).

It is all very well to theorize about the reciprocally dynamic relationship between folklore and literature, but we read here a specific description of how it works. Apparently the North African Sephardic corpus derives from a written source, eighteenth -and nineteenth- century broadside ballads, and also from the songs of recent Andalusian   —78→   colonists (4).

The authors make the provocative statement that each romance has its own history, its own destiny «its own "vida y milagros"» (26). Medievalists must wonder at the curious continuity experienced by the Infantes de Lara, once a medieval planctus, which has now come full circle and has again come to be used as a mourning song (43 n5). Ballad watchers and others will enjoy the compelling historical accounts of the fortunes of six modern ballads which deal with epic topics.

A concise review of the relationship between Las almenas and epic poetry enlightens us about the authors' reasonable, measured position on the thorny issue of ballad origin: «The relationship of ballad to epic in oral tradition must have been complex and diverse, "a variety of contacts, among which fragmentation was only one possible modality"» (176-77 and n15).

In the introductory remarks they give an excellent history of their own field work (4-8), and with admirable candor a summary of the reviews of the first volume in the series. A catalogue of the text types based on their three volume Catálogo-Índice of Menéndez Pidal's collection of Sephardic ballads puts the current collection in an over-all context (8-16). The extensive bibliography, subdivided into published sources, and chronicle MSS (285-315), is extended by a cross-index of linguistic-geographic categories of ballad studies and collections, e.g., Catalan, Scandinavian, Slavic (315-16).

The other índices are also wonderfully helpful: informants are indexed according to their age, their origin, ballad titles, date and place of collection; ballad titles (323-29) and first verses (333-37) are augmented by an index of other literary works (330-32). A folklore motif index (339-41) is supplemented by an index of topoi not in Stith Thompson. I found only one minor omission -L421 Attempt to fly to heaven punished. Car supported by eagles.

The musicologist, Katz, describes his three-step method: a transcription from the field tape, an analysis of each tune, and a comparison of variant tunes (30-1). For the musically uninstructed, his study of melody types is eye-opening particularly for those of us who have never experienced the ballads other than as written texts. Picking out the melodies on a piano and singing along however imperfectly brings these songs into focus as real songs sung by real people.

Photographs of the singers, their countries of origin, age, and current residence place the variants in space, time, and social context. Especially interesting are the singers' comments which show how they understood the ballad's plot. For example, the tragic events of the Infantes de Lara are woven into a cultural consciousness of centuries of persecution of the Jews (38-40, 65-9). Another singer says that the imprisoned Alonso (El rey Fernando en Francia) was a revolutionary. A singer, mistrustful of authority thinks that King Fernando, in the same ballad, really intends to kill his prisoner (123). A woman in Morocco, nostalgic for her Hispanic past, says that she learned Las almenas de Toro when she was a little girl: «Eso lo aprendí cuando era niña, cuando estaba en colegio, cuando estaban aquí los españoles» (164).

For the convenience of the reader, the critical apparatus follows each ballad. Each is summarized with its variants along with a list of Stith Thompson motifs and a Textual Commentary which traces the poem's literary history, its relationship with other ballads. Sensitive narrative analyses, ethno-musicological commentaries by Katz and the particular ballad's bibliography complete the apparatus. Footnotes rather than end notes save the reader much flipping back and forth.

The usefulness of this fascinating volume extends well beyond the field of the romancero. Ballads are poems after all and the discussion of the ending of El rey Fernando (142 and n21) deals with poetic closure. A structural analysis of Búcar sobre Valencia shows that the first four segments meet at a narrative center and then are repeated in inverse order (252). Of great folkloristic interest are the discourses on: salt, knives and bread (51-5), numerological meaning of seven and nine (67-70 n11), marriage with the murderer of one's father (91-2 n15), the strong, brave woman in Jewish tradition (152-54 n46), the motif of a young woman imprisoned in a tower (180 and n27), incest (182-83 and n35). Topics such as «prodigious sword strokes» (239-42 n14), the mirror metaphor (254-57 and n45), and chivalric oaths (259-60 n54) would benefit investigators interested in thematic studies.

As before, we can only express our admiration for and gratitude toward this remarkable team of investigators for yet another outstanding contribution to the general fund of usable and useful knowledge.

Harriet Goldberg

Villanova University

Los últimos años han visto un florecimiento en los estudios sobre literatura colonial hispanoamericana. La primera labor que todo estudioso del período debe plantearse es la de editar los numerosos textos de la época. Con muy pocas excepciones, la mayoría de las obras coloniales son difíciles de localizar, bien sea porque nadie se ha preocupado por reeditarlas, o bien por encontrarse en libros agotados, costosos o inaccesibles para el interesado. Sin embargo, las pocas excepciones a la regla, textos que podemos considerar canónicos, circulan ampliamente en numerosas ediciones de tipo histórico, crítico o de divulgación. Tal es el caso de los Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

En nuestro siglo, a partir de la primera edición hecha por el historiador Manuel Serrano y Sanz, en 1906, encontramos por lo menos once ediciones de los Naufragios. Una de ellas, hecha por Espasa-Calpe para su colección Austral, ha sido reimpresa en numerosas ocasiones. Los últimos tres años han visto la aparición de tres ediciones críticas de la obra: la de Roberto Ferrando (Madrid: Historia 16, 1984); la italiana de Pier Luigi Crovetto con notas de Daniela Carpanil (Milán: Cisalpino-Goliadica, 1984); y la edición que nos ocupa. Sabemos además que el profesor Enrique Pupo-Walker prepara actualmente una edición crítica de la obra. La edición de Milán es aparentemente desconocida por nuestros editores.

Los profesores Favata y Fernández nos ofrecen una breve «Introducción» (págs. x-xix) que consta de una somera biografía de Cabeza de Vaca, un resumen de la fortuna editorial de los Naufragios y dos páginas dedicadas al «Valor literario» de la relación. Nos sorprende que al recontar las diferentes ediciones de la obra en el siglo XX no se indique que la edición de Enrique Peña (Buenos Aires: Editorial Estrada, 1911) es facsímil de la de Valladolid de 1555.

La edición de los profesores Favata y Fernández se basa en una fotocopia de la de Valladolid de 1555, que fue la segunda edición de la Relación. La primera, como asientan los editores en su «Introducción», se publicó en Zamora en 1542, y es un libro rarísimo que incluso se creía, por una época, perdido para siempre. Nuestros editores han cotejado las variantes entre estas dos ediciones, y las incluyen en un apéndice (págs. 149-61) y ésta es una de las contribuciones de su trabajo. Al final del libro se incluye también una «Bibliografía selecta» (págs. 162-67). Esta bibliografía es bastante completa, pero llega solamente hasta el año 1982, ignorando varios estudios importantes que se han publicado a partir de esta fecha.

El texto que han fijado los editores conserva la ortografía original, con algunos cambios menores: división de palabras, puntuación, resolución de abreviaturas, distinción entre u y v, i y j. Cuando hay errores tipográficos en el original, se corrigen en el texto y se señalan con una nota. La edición se encuentra profusamente anotada. Tal vez la mayor contribución de los profesores Favata y Fernández es identificar cuidadosamente los lugares que se mencionan en la narración. Hay además notas de carácter lingüístico, botánico e histórico; algunas de éstas son innecesarias, pero en general son útiles tanto para el estudiante como para el especialista.

La edición que reseñamos es una contribución a la bibliografía de Cabeza de Vaca. El texto de la Relación está cuidadosamente fijado, y las notas son de utilidad. Es una bienvenida adición al campo de los estudios sobre las letras coloniales.

Francisco J. Cevallos

University of Massachusetts

Students of Golden Age Theater, especially undergraduate students, should be indebted to J. B. Hall for this invaluable compilation of fundamental analytical information on Lope de Vega's remarkable drama, Fuenteovejuna. In this work Hall provides excellent background information, both historical and dramatic, on the play which, in turn, offers a point of departure for further study by the curious or more serious student. As we all know only too well, the comedia and its criticism is often difficult for the average student to read and to understand. Hall has carefully written this work in language that is more accessible to the student, which facilitates the student's comprehension and appreciation of the ideas of the play.

Hall's work is divided into seven chapters, the first of which, entitled «Dates and Sources», is well-written and very thorough. He relates the actual historical accounts upon which the play is based and the possible sources from which Lope de Vega could have drawn his material. Hall also includes here comments on the artistry and the purpose of the comedia: «For Lope and his contemporaries artistic originality lay more in the manner than the matter... Fuenteovejuna thus fulfils the great demand of the time: that art should combine deleite with doctrina, as the Golden Age rendered the Horatian concepts of dulce and utile» (19).

In the second chapter on «Staging», Hall demonstrates not only the specific staging of Fuenteovejuna, but also the intricacies of staging in general and the corrales in which the dramas of the time were performed. The physical descriptions of the sets, sceneries and stage properties encourage the student to «see» the play as it was actually presented to the audience. He further explains why the costuming was so elaborate and how the costumes functioned as visual symbols in the play (22).

In defining the plot and sub-plot in the third chapter, Hall cautiously presents the views and opinions of opposing critics. I was impressed with his attempt to acquaint the student with more than one viewpoint so that, given the facts, the student is allowed to form an opinion. The author also clarifies the scenification of the comedia, thereby revealing the internal structure of the work. He demonstrates how the plot and sub-plot are interwoven or overlap in some scenes and yet remain separate in others.

The chapter on characterization is quite good, especially the section on Fernán Gómez. Hall depicts the Comendador quite accurately as «an impressive study in villainy» (48). He manages to capture the Comendador in this portrayal: «In all he does the Comendador obeys the dictates of instinct and passion rather than those of conscience and reason. Pride is a central element in his character: the opening lines of the play reveal his obsession   —80→   is his yearning for violence and domination both on a national level and in his personal relationships» (41). Obviously this characterization pertains to much more than just the Comendador. The remainder of the characters are not depicted in as much depth but their characterizations are sufficient to clarify the role each plays in the drama.

Chapter 5 on «Style and Versification» is subdivided and begins with a discussion of symbolism and imagery in the drama. One of the weaknesses of the work is that Hall mentions the Cross of Calatrava, the royal coat of arms, and the animal imagery, yet he does not explain fully this symbolism. For example, He states: «Other instances of animal imagery include such brief and highly conventional examples as "perro" and "caballo" for insults» (67). It is conceivable that many students would not be aware of the symbolism mentioned and would, therefore, benefit from a somewhat more substantial explanation or perhaps a footnote to serve as a point of departure for further study. In this chapter Hall also presents the levels of style (appropriate language usage in discourse), irony and wit, and, finally, versification within the drama.

The four basic themes discussed by Hall in Chapter 6 are: Town and Country, Honour, The State and The Citizen, and Love and Harmony. Again, Hall turns to the text to illustrate the themes that he sets forth. The author brings the dramatist into his comments as he attempts to interpret the reasoning behind Lope's choice of themes. In so doing, Hall raises an important issue of the drama: «Lope appears to be raising here the distinction between the letter of the law and its spirit. The villagers break the former in order to preserve the latter, whereas the Comendador pays lip service to the outward forms of the law yet has no real concept of justice» (88). In the Conclusion Hall restates that the themes are not themselves original, but that it is Lope's skill as an artist that distinguishes his borrowing of these themes.

On the whole, I think that Lope de Vega: Fuenteovejuna is an excellent work for the student of the comedia. At first reading I felt that it fell short in that many of the discussions were not as detailed or as penetrating as I would have liked. After some thought on the matter and rereading the text I have changed my view of the work. I believe that Hall offers the student more than sufficient information and material with which to begin an in-depth study of the drama. At the same time, the author leaves enough unsaid to challenge the student to think and to seek further information. One final noteworthy inclusion in the work is Hall's annotated bibliography on Fuenteovejuna which will be invaluable to the student. Hall has succeeded in making Fuenteovejuna more accessible to the student of the comedia.

Susan Niehoff McCrary

Old Dominion University

German and English Romanticism, especially the Schlegel brothers' studies of irony and humor, is the point of departure for this study which is a major reworking of the author's dissertation (UCLA, 1976). Frederich Schlegel saw irony as an existentially liberating influence whose multiple interpretations require an analytical intellect and an aesthetic appreciation. The author shows both as she traces the development of the theories that ultimately coalesce into her coherent and convincing analytical approach.

After defining irony in the introduction, Hernández-Araico emphasizes its carnivalesque roots in Calderón's tragedies. She notes that his comic irony stems from the medieval tradition that equated laughter with evil. Yet at the same time, oratory made use of laughter to convey disagreeable truths. By the Renaissance, laughter, now characterized as unique to man, was considered an essential part of his relations with his world.

Applying to Hapsburg Spain Bakhtin's observation that irony and satire are produced during periods of social change, Hernández-Araico observes that the ironic, carnivalesque celebration of the mundane tempers disillusionment and tragedy. She believes that by means of his irony, Calderón attempts to transcend the limits of his ambiance. Consequently she disagrees with Maravall's and Díez Borque's sociological approach. Because the comedia deals with deception and hypocrisy in a highly structured system, she sees it as an escape valve rather than a defense of the hierarchy. In this regard, she cites Robortello who, in 1548, distinguished between the theater of entertainment based on imitation in contrast with the didacticism of the rhetoric of persuasion (26).

She next traces the Romantics' development of types of irony with special attention to dramatic irony. The ironic message is often conveyed to the audience by means of a deliberate rupture of the dramatic illusion on the part of the gracioso. Calderón's graciosos both parody their masters and penetrate the truth to which the masters are blind. This combination of parody and objectivity together produces the irony of Calderonian tragedy.

Chapter 3, «El gracioso, la ficción cómica y las bodas de la tragedia nueva» lies at the heart of the author's vision of Calderonian tragedy. For her, the gracioso is a fictitious character whose asides bridge the gap between the play and the spectators and remind the latter that they are watching a fiction. His cynical comments on that fiction then persuade the public to adopt an ironic posture vis-à-vis the protagonist's heroic illusion and system of values. For example, in the tragedies, the gracioso's negative attitude toward marriage ultimately reveals the fallacy of marriage as a happy ending and solution to all problems.

After explaining her methodology and generally applying the approach to Calderonian tragedy in the introduction and first 3 chapter, Hernández-Araico treats specific plays, Los cabellos de Absalón and La hija del aire in the last two. Both chapters appeared previously: the former in the Bulletin of the Comediantes; the latter, in Hispania. A portion of chapter three, «El gracioso, la ficción cómica y las bodas de la tragedia nueva», was published in Imprévue.

Chapter 4, «Risa y ambivalencia en Los cabellos de Absalón: Tamar, el gracioso y Teuca» is a skillful analysis of how in revising La venganza de Tamar, Calderón altered the gracioso's role, allowing him to serve as a link between Tamar and Teuca who will ultimately be relegated to his socially obscure and inferior world. Both women engage in deception: Teuca because she is possessed by the devil and Tamar, because of amorous passion. Their duplicity sets in motion the tragic force of the play. By linking the two women, the gracioso emphasizes the play's causality for the audience.

Chapter 5, «El contraste irónico del gracioso en La hija del aire» returns to the gracioso's actuation as a means of entertaining the spectators while simultaneously encouraging them to reflect on the action. He is also the author's mouthpiece for the expression of disagreeable truths. «No puede haber duda que por medio del gracioso, Calderón se distancia de sus protagonistas insinuando una pequeñez ridícula tras un admiratio impresionante. El humor entreverado con el argumento trágico aclara entonces la verdadera opinión calderoniana sobre la sublimidad de sus personajes nobles y la aparente superioridad de los valores que encarnan» (139).

Hernández-Araico has done an excellent job of developing and explaining her methodology for dealing with irony, the carnivalesque and the gracioso in Calderonian tragedy. Her study would have been even more substantive, however, if she had established the gracioso's ancestry. To a large extent, he revives the dramatic functions of the shepherd of the sixteenth-century religious drama. The coarse, iconoclastic rustic also used asides to prevent the audience from empathizing with the play and served as an explicator of values and morals. Additional specific examples from Calderón's tragedies would also have confirmed the astuteness of the author's observations and the validity of her methodology. The tragedias de honor are nowhere mentioned in the book even though Coquin of El medico de su honra provides a perfect case in point to illustrate the third chapter. Moreover, Hernández-Araico's thesis would be equally valid for the comedies, although the case is more easily made in the tragedies where the ambivalence of the gracioso's observations and values is more poignant.

The author writes well, clearly and concisely. Yet because irony and the carnivalesque coalesce in the gracioso, who is the central focus of her work, a title such as «Ironía y el gracioso en las tragedias calderonianas» might have more aptly described the book's contents. In any case, Hernández-Araico adeptly synthesizes and interrelates complex techniques and theories. Her book is a valuable contribution to Calderonian criticism.

Ann E. Wiltrout

Mississippi State University

This is a modest book in appearance. Ruiz Ramón states that his study «no es, por tanto, un estudio exhaustivo ni de la tragedia calderoniana -pues sólo me ocupo de dos de sus modelos- ni de las tragedias calderonianas, puesto que concentro la atención tan sólo en seis de ellas» (6). The work consists of an introduction and three lengthy chapters. The first deals with one of the models for tragedy, «libertad/destino». The examples utilized here are El mayor monstruo del mundo, Los cabellos de Absalón and La cisma de Inglaterra. The next chapter develops the second model, the honor tragedies, explicating El médico de su honra, El pintor de su deshonra and A secreto agravio, secreta venganza. The final chapter summarizes and brings together the insights acquired in the previous discussions.

In spite of its modest appearance and aims, the book is a significant contribution to Calderonian studies, providing new and important visions of his tragic plays. The first model proposed by Ruiz Ramón is particularly fascinating. This critic posits that «el hado», fatum or fate is the most important element in Calderón's tragic structure, thus creating an affinity with classical tragedy. This type of play commences with a horoscope, prophecy or dream, establishing thus the circularity of the action, since it begins with point «A» and returns to it at the denouement. Fate also creates suspense. The reader/audience is concerned not so much with what is going to happen but with how it is going to transpire. While fate is the key element in the structure in this first model, tragic irony is central to signification. Along with the dichotomy created between freedom and necessity, comes the separation of perception between central character and spectator, for the latter, through distancing, can perceive the ambiguity and polyvalence of signs announcing the future, while the central character is of necessity blind to the diverse possibilities, since his interpretation is based on his own limited vision. Furthermore, the character is hindered by present time: «Interpretar el futuro en los términos del presente, únicos que tienen a su disposición, entraña necesariamente la posibilidad del error dada la no identidad de ambos términos» (166).

Time is also of the essence in the honor tragedies, for here we have the presence of the   —82→   past in the present. The woman marries, thinking her lover dead or unattainable, only to discover that such is not the case. In a present moment dominated by honor, a past love surfaces. The figure of the loved one is transformed into the symbol of temptation, for he refuses to accept the present situation. The tragic irony is born, according to Ruiz Ramón, in woman's heroic resolution to defend honor. This leads to suspicion, misunderstanding, fear and finally death. While she is ruled by fear, her husband is ruled by suspicion. In these honor tragedies we also have a separation between spectator and actor. There is a radical rupture in vision and interpretation between these two. The male protagonist follows a code that demands assassination. His violent and cruel act is not followed by an anagnorisis. The spectator, on the other hand, witness to the myriad oppositions and contradictions, comes out with a greater understanding and an expanded awareness.

There is much in this book that will be of use to the student of Golden Age drama. It would be interesting to discover how these models relate to other works by Calderón, including the mythological plays. Their cyclic nature, as studied by William R. Blue, recalls the circularity of the action proposed by Ruiz Ramón. And, what of the role of Providence? Can its presence turn a tragic vision into a comic one as Thomas O'Connor proposes? This is an excellent study, clear and well-written, that explores some key questions that concern not only Calderonian drama, but also all of Golden Age theater. It provides new insights and leads us to further speculation and discussion on the nature of tragedy, tragic irony and the role of honor and fate in the comedia.

Frederick A. de Armas

Louisiana State University

Checa has written a very valuable and well-structured study which, however, appears to be titled somewhat inaccurately. Strictly speaking, the second part of its title, Espacio y alegoría de la Edad Media al Barroco, best characterizes the book's content. It traces the uses of imaginary spaces in allegorical works from the Spanish fifteenth century through the middle of the seventeenth. In two cases, Dante and epic poetry, recourse is made directly to literature outside Spain. A wide variety of places are examined (palaces, gardens, mountains, cities, labyrinths, and so forth) and the various allegorical uses of the spaces are described and compared. Once the basic literary techniques and the moral and spiritual preoccupations have been established, the author carries them systematically through his historical survey, adding new elements that arise with the development of European literature from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. Checa's technique in handling so much raw material is to be admired, both on the micro -and the macro- level. Each sentence and paragraph is constructed with a view to what has preceded and what follows; the style is refreshingly clear without becoming pedestrian, a trait which makes the book recommendable in itself. Likewise, each section contains references to previously discussed works and authors, thus helping to unify the book. The author has a keen eye for similarities and differences between works and periods. There is new critical insight without an evident effort to be novel.

What makes the first part of the title puzzling is the importance it gives to Gracián's Criticón, which in the text of the study is not the main focus of attention, but rather a synthetic work: «reúne y modula originalmente las funciones más destacadas del espacio arquitectónico» (2). I suspect that specialists in Gracián, as well as in other authors discussed (Juan de Mena, Ariosto, Quevedo) will not find new global interpretations but rather a systematization of certain well-documented features and an examination of these from a new historical angle. For a book that purports to deal with concrete images in literature, there is very little close study of specific passages, that is, close enough to make plain the spatial configurations of the imaginary places.

This leads to the puzzling use of the term imagen arquitectónica. Checa extends the term to include «las figuras espaciales bien delimitadas y donde, de manera clara, se suspenden, transforman o intensifican las leyes vigentes en el mundo empírico o en el resto del texto espacial» (1). This broadening leads to the loss of the implication of human construction in the term. Natural spaces are thus included in the definition and one could adduce in their favor the commonplace of God as the «architect» of the universe. Yet this figure only seems appropriate to me in passages where the whole natural world is described as one spatially organized place, which is almost never the case in the Peninsular works studied. Furthermore, Checa's definition leads the reader to suppose at the outset what is the very opposite of the case. What his study shows, in fact, is that most of these works, with their predominantly allegorical intention, are relatively unconcerned with the architectural consistency of the buildings they present. If an «architectural image» is simply a fictional presentation of a building, then the works studied are replete with such images. This is not equivalent, though, to an «architectural imagination». The works selected by Checa could be fruitfully contrasted with those of contemporaries who did achieve convincing ekphraseis of human or natural constructions. A few examples which come to mind are: Felicia's palace in Montemayor's Diana, the cafe of Fitón in La Araucana, the abbey of Thélème   —83→   in Rabelais, and the complex implied architecture of Calderonian comedies such as Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar. Precisely those authors who, through the medium of words, can respect the laws of three-dimensional space, distribution of rooms and structural supports, can be said to possess an architectural imagination. One could even include authors who describe real places, such as Lope de Vega's Descripción de la Abadía or the Inca Garcilaso's description of Cuzco's temple, since they must re-create the edifices in a basically non-visual medium. It may appear that I am taking Checa to task for a book he did not intend to write, but his insistent use of this key term forces one to point out the difference between a spatial imagination and an architectural one. The first sort places its fantasies in a two -or three- dimensional space, horizontal or vertical or both, and, as Checa points out, in allegory it may or may not respect the laws of gravity and geometry. An architectural imagination, I would hazard to guess, probably gains strength in literature as allegory is weakened and the author concentrates more on the limitations of actual physical conditions in our space and its human uses. This is how such scenes as Clarín's cathedral of Vetusta and Zola's mines in Germinal became possible in the nineteenth century.

However, this unfortunate selection of terminology should not get in the way of the enjoyment and instruction provided by a scholar devoted to a thoughtful working out of historical literary problems.

David J. Hildner

University of Wisconsin-Madison

It is usually with some apprehension that I approach the task of reviewing still another edition of some oft-published Spanish Golden Age classic. But anxiety soon gives way to gratification when that new text proves worthy of being added to my personal collection of literary masterpieces. Antonio Carreño's carefully edited and annotated collection of romances gongorinos merits such consideration.

The ninety-four separate entries are listed in chronological order of publication, headed by the approximate date of composition. On the same page a footnote immediately provides all the relevant historical and bibliographical information a scholarly reader would demand: the particulars (i.e., date, title and editor) of each poem's original and subsequent publication, plus the general classification to which it has been assigned by various critics (e.g., «burlesco», «lírico», «morisco»). Carreño relies principally on the text of the Chacón MS (45 Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid), but he carefully footnotes variants found in the several romanceros generales of 1600, 1604, 1605 and 1614, as well as in other editions of Góngora's work published over the centuries by critics such as Vicuña (1627), Hoces (1634), Durán (1849), Castro (1903), and Millé y Giménez (1972), to name but a few.

Also cited -and cross-referenced in the bibliography- are selected noteworthy critical articles and commentaries published (through 1980) on the celebrated Cordoban bard or touching upon specific works included in the present collection. At the same time, Carreño has wisely provided, via footnotes, an ample number of helpful glosses of words and phrases that require special treatment. Dámaso Alonso's invaluable commentaries and translations, for example, have been prudently and frequently utilized throughout. To his credit, editor Carreño has courteously provided a closing alphabetical index of these palabras comentadas.

The text is preceded by an excellent Introduction that includes a concise history of the romancero, both viejo and nuevo, and a useful discussion of some of the general traits of Góngora's art: his tendency to use odd acoustical patterns in his assonance, his predilection for grouping verses in cuartetos, and his fondness for musical refrains (estribillos) and the six-syllable romancillo format. This is followed by a section entitled «El Romancero de Luis de Góngora»; wherein Carreño describes the origin and evolution of the poet's peculiar style within the romance mode. Here we are apprised of the not-always-amicable rivalry that existed between Góngora and Lope de Vega in this very traditional Spanish verse form. The final portion of the introduction comments at length on the various categories into which the Cordoban poet's romances have traditionally been grouped («morisco», «pastoril», «caballeresco», «carolingio», «mitológico», «amoroso y picaresco», «de cautivos», «piscatorio/venatorio», and finally «rústico»).

Misprints (e.g., the year «1933» is erroneously substituted for the correct «1633» on p. 77) are relatively scarce and the format quite sensibly designed: a fifty-five page Introduction, seven pages of Selected Bibliography, 388 pages dedicated to the text and notes, followed by three different índices. Two of the índices (of first verses and terms footnoted) are quite useful; one wonders, however, why Carreño then went to the trouble of providing an index of romances attributable to Góngora but not included in this volume.

Given the cost of texts these days, I would not expect the very specialized Carreño volume to be added to the required reading list for courses in Golden Age poetry, but it certainly would be a welcome addition to the library collection of every university with a serious doctoral program in Spanish. Needless to say, specialists in the field will find it particularly useful for the preparation of lectures and class handouts.

E. T. Aylward

University of South Carolina

El estudioso de Larra se encuentra aquí ante una monografía muy prometedora de título ambicioso y original. Su objetivo, según la introducción, es estudiar el aspecto de la dimensión artística de la obra de Fígaro. Considera insuficientes para un completo aprecio de sus escritos los análisis de su técnica y de su estilo. Además mantiene que los artículos del gran satírico son una serie de ritos para librar a España de sus anacronismos y de sus males. Afirma también que Larra tenía una sensibilidad casi mágica, vehículo ideal para la rebelión. Esto transparenta una intención muy encomiable y presagia un tributo digno del escritor en el sesquicentenario de su suicidio. Las prematuramente formadas ilusiones del entusiasta de Larra comienzan, sin embargo, a desinflarse pronto con afirmaciones del «dandismo» de Larra a lo Francisco Umbral y su vinculación al masónico Cagliostro en sus intentos de reformar España mediante «una suerte de charlatanería» (18).

Después el volumen contiene cinco capítulos seguidos de una brevísima bibliografía. El primero, «Larra el mago», considera al personaje de Larra narrador un nigromante, que en un principio se identificó con la figura de seres maléficos. Así la intención destructiva de su sátira «marca más su asociación con espíritus diabólicos» (26). Incluso su lenguaje es propio de las hechiceras por su juego irónico. El capítulo siguiente, «Las máscara de Larra»; fue publicado en Ínsula en 1978. En él se hace hincapié en que Larra efectuó su magia disfrazado con las máscaras de los seudónimos, las cuales son representaciones estilizadas del escritor para dramatizar sus emociones y su interés humano y social.

Después en «Ritual de Larra: sus esquemas» con dos partes, trata del carácter retórico del lenguaje similar a los dichos de los encantamientos. Considera los proverbios un elemento de intensificación para ataques, y los epígrafes, apodos y repeticiones, elementos de carácter mágico. Luego en la parte publicada ya en Mariano José de Larra, interpreta la vida como un baile que culmina en la muerte y relaciona los escritos larrianos con la danza macabra en su orientación destructora. Finalmente en el capítulo quinto, también dividido en dos segmentos, estudia el tiempo y el espacio, rasgos esenciales del acto ritual y de los artículos de Fígaro. Comienza considerando el espacio como origen de la atmósfera en que el escritor ejecuta sus ritos mágicos. Ve las Batuecas como templo que asume un significado similar al otorgado en la novela de la Comtesse de Gentis de 1817, y como símbolo de toda España. Hay otros escenarios que constituyen microcosmos de España: el café, la fonda y otros. La segunda parte, aparecida en Ínsula, considera que la publicación periódica de los artículos acentúa su índole ritual, siendo el medio más apto para la transformación que intentan. Las tres ocasiones primordiales del rito son: Carnaval, Día de difuntos y Nochebuena. La sumarísima bibliografía, en tres grupos, finaliza el estudio. Una sección es para las obras de Larra con una sola entrada, la edición de Carlos Seco Serrano. La otra, destinada a obras sobre Larra, tiene únicamente veinticuatro entradas, por eso resulta deficientísima. La final, otras obras, es la más extensa con treinta y ocho títulos.

En resumen, esta monografía presenta algunas ideas nuevas y acertadas, particularmente en lo ya publicado con anterioridad. Los excesivos comentarios de lo que ciertos teóricos entienden por magia, mago, rito y demás, distraen de lo esencial, el análisis e interpretación de la obra periodística de Larra. La materia está ordenada con rigor, lo que hace sospechar que detrás está el armazón de una tesis doctoral, quizá respetable, pero no un libro de crítica sólido que vaya a producir un impacto indeleble, concebido desde su origen como tal. La falta de madurez es evidente también en que no se han tomado las debidas molestias para reformar la primera versión introduciendo las valiosas ideas difundidas desde entonces. Es imperdonable que se hayan ignorado las opiniones de farristas de primera fila como Susan Kirkpatrick, Gregorio C. Martín y Aristide Rumeau. Es digno de mención el cuidado con que está hecha la edición, donde se encuentran muy pocas erratas y ninguna es grave. También la presentación es muy atractiva.

Luis Lorenzo-Rivero

University of Utah

In the ever-increasing bibliography on Aldecoa's narrative work, critical emphasis has focused on the novels. Aldecoa has always been considered the undisputed master of the short story of the «generación intermedia», and because of this overshadowing notion of Aldecoa as primarily a short story writer, it was not an easy task for scholars who first attempted to establish his merit as the exceptional novelist that he is to do so. It is thus with a distinct pleasure that we welcome a new book, sorely needed and long overdue, dedicated solely to his short narrative.

The book is divided in two major parts, plus an introduction, conclusion and bibliography. The introduction is at the same time a carefully developed literary biography of Aldecoa and an exposition of theories pertaining to the short story. Irene Andrés-Suárez offers a brief history of the short story in Spain from Clarín, Pardo Bazán and others, as well as its parallel development in the United States, from Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe to modern authors, expanding on the theoretical opinions   —85→   the American writers had on the essential characteristics of the genre and what its ultimate effect should be. The critic elucidates the influences which the North American short story had on Aldecoa and how he incorporated its tendencies and characteristics into his brief narratives. Andrés-Suárez is well-versed in the theories on the short story expressed by Spanish theoreticians such as Baquero Goyanes, Anderson Imbert and Tijeras, as well as those of other international scholars. She maintains that criticism should consider the autonomy of the short story and analyze it as a literary genre in itself, not by following procedures more appropriate to the analysis and criticism of the novel. An examination of certain constants and values present in the short story can help to formulate a set of standards by which a short story should be composed, and further, judged and analyzed.

Part I, entitled Trayectoria de un maestro, constitutes a chronological study of Aldecoa's short stories grouped according to thematic affinity. Part I provides a general introduction to the historical period in which society suffered the aftereffects of the civil war, the isolation of the Second World War, and the 1960s «apertura», the incorporation of Spain into the international community and the subsequent effects on the mentality and mores of Spanish society of the waves of tourists and increased economic prosperity.

Examination of the themes is achieved by dividing Aldecoa's work in two periods, the first up to 1960 and second, the 1960s. Aldecoa's orientation toward «la gente humilde» is predominant in the first and «la clase media acomodada» in the second. In each of Aldecoa's periods the socio/economic environment, the characters and language are examined. The first part is subdivided into thematic categories: «Las víctimas», «El trabajo», «La soledad», «La temporalidad problemática», «Los condenados», «Los sueños y los fantasmas de la psique» and «La clase media acomodada».

The critic's procedure is to offer a general introduction to the theme and choose one or two of the short stories which best illustrate it and to present an excellent structural analysis along with a linguistic study and perceptive observations on the psychology of the characters. The differences between the first and the second periods are sharply delineated in regard to themes, narrative techniques and linguistic experimentation. In the 1960s there was manifested a saturation with «social realism» and a marked desire for renovation in theme and language. Aldecoa was in the vanguard of this movement without abandoning his traditional posture.

Part II, entitled Recursos y características de estilo, offers an extensive and detailed study of Aldecoa's stylistic traits (descriptive language, narrative, reiteration, enumeration). The author demonstrates how the global unity of Aldecoa's work is the sum total of a felicitous synthesis of the thematic, the structural and the linguistic, which make for his extremely personal style. She conclusively proves what Aldecoa had said about his motivation, «Pretendo que mis obras tengan hálito poético y expresivo adobo».

Irene Andrés-Suárez explicates competently the poetic elements of Aldecoa's prose, dexterously manipulates his ideas and concepts and provides a rigorous structural analysis. The high degree of scholarship contained in this study makes this book a most valuable addition to the bibliography on Aldecoa.

The book concludes with a select and solid bibliography on the short story. The student of Aldecoa's work will find this book a most rewarding study of his short narrative.

Drosoula Lytra

City College of New York

When readers of this reference work see its more than three hundred pages of annotated entries, their reactions are likely to be contradictory. On the one hand, they are apt to reflect with dismay on the great number of unfamiliar writers, and they may experience some discontent with their own preparations in Spanish literature. On the other hand, they will no doubt be grateful as well, because Women Writers in Spain: An Annotated Bio-Bibliographical Guide (henceforth Women Writers) goes a long way toward rectifying the lack of information that its very existence makes overwhelmingly evident.

As Carolyn L. Galerstein explains in the book's introduction, her primary purpose as editor was to «create a survey of Spanish women writers' accomplishments» (xii). In this, with the collaboration of seventy-eight contributors, she has succeeded admirably, for her book makes available detailed information about the life and work of three hundred authors. For each writer, there is a brief biographical sketch, followed by a list of her works and descriptive annotations for most of the titles listed. The writers are presented alphabetically, and they include women from the fourteenth century to the present. There is a complete index of all titles mentioned, and there are four appendices: a list of the authors by birthdate; a list of Catalan authors; a list of Galician authors; a list of translated titles mentioned in the text. Galerstein has provided a preface and a general introduction, and Kathleen McNerney, who was responsible for editing the entries about Catalan, Galician, and Basque authors, has written a brief introduction to the vernacular section.

This book is not, of course, the first to attempt   —86→   a comprehensive list of Spanish women writers. Several other important bibliographies exist, and Galerstein both offers a short description of the most significant and suggests that her work be considered a companion to them. In particular, she notes, it must be used in conjunction with Manuel Serrano y Sanz's Apuntes para una biblioteca de escritoras españolas desde el año 1401 al 1883 (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1903-05). Women Writers does not contain entries for authors included by Serrano y Sanz, «except in those cases where some new information on the author or the work, or a more recent edition of a work, can be added» (viii). Galerstein also lists Women Writers in Translation: An Annotated Bibliography, 1945-1982 (New York and London: Garland Press, 1984), edited by Margery Resnick and Isabelle de Courtivron and Diane Marting's forthcoming Women in Spanish America: An Annotated Bio-Bibliographical Guide (Greenwood), two very recent bibliographies that complement her own, and refers readers to them.

As the link between Galerstein's work and that of Serrano y Sanz suggests, the principal contribution of Women Writers is to nineteenth -and twentieth- century literature. In addition, thanks largely to McNerney, the book also includes -and in this regard Galerstein's guide is definitely a pioneering effort- considerable information about authors whose work is primarily or exclusively in a language other than Castilian. In her introduction, McNerney stresses the importance of Spain's «minority» women writers, and she presents a brief historical overview of their work, with an emphasis on Catalan authors. Somewhat ironically, it also falls to her to explain that, as well as making Women Writers more comprehensive, the inclusion of non-Castilian writers was responsible for certain lacunae because of the difficulties she and her contributors encountered in their research. McNerney's candor about this incompleteness is both laudable and instructive; it provides a comment on the status of writing by women in Catalan, Galician, and Basque, and it allows her to describe in some detail the collaborative spirit that pervades Galerstein's volume.

Although that spirit is particularly evident in McNerney's acknowledgements, it is also underlined by other aspects of the book. Galerstein herself refers to Women Writers as «only a beginning», and thus identifies it as but one achievement in a continuing effort to make accessible the work of Spanish women writers. Like McNerney, she knows well the strength of collaborative work, and she is to be commended for orchestrating such an immense undertaking and for maintaining -despite some unevenness in the individual entries- a generally consistent quality in the annotations. She readily admits the parameters of her project, and apparently sees them as opportunities for further collaboration rather than limits. One can even imagine that, undaunted by the fact that Women Writers was inevitably «outdated» even before publication, Galerstein and her contributors are already at work on its second edition.

Although the preceding paragraphs should make explicit the immediate significance of Women Writers as an indispensable reference book that -in spite of a few unavoidable rough edges- will be welcomed by even those scholars who demand definitive documentation, I want to close this review with an observation about the book's long-range importance. As I read McNerney's description of this work as an «on-going» project, I could not help but think that the retrieval of work by women, the uncovering of female literary traditions, and the questioning of conventional definitions and evaluations will have far-reaching implications for Spanish criticism and pedagogy. If readers accept the invitation extended to them by the open-ended nature of Galerstein's volume, familiarize themselves with the work of Spanish women writers, and participate in that work's study and dissemination, the repercussions of this guide can be great indeed. The first response to a challenge is often dismay, or even discontent; in this case, such a response should lead not only to the discovery of additional «new» writers but also to a more comprehensive understanding of Spanish literature.

Carol S. Maier

Bradley University

All scholars dream at one time or another of rescuing some undiscovered or long-forgotten text from oblivion by revealing its hitherto unsuspected riches in a series of carefully researched and brilliantly argued treatises, without reference to which any mention of the work itself would henceforth be unthinkable. This is, needless to say, an aspiration achieved by very few. Yet it is hardly an exaggeration to affirm that Rolena Adorno, in little more than a decade of sustained, meticulous, and highly insightful scholarship, has come close.

Lost until 1908, when it was discovered in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, the Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615) was severely criticized (and as a result marginalized) by the Peruvian   —87→   expert Raúl Porras Barrenechea and others on the grounds that its historical and geographical accounts contain numerous factual errors. Adorno's research has been the prime instrument in bringing about a needed reevaluation of the chronicle based on recognition of Guaman Poma's literary and ideological achievement (he was an ethnic Andean) in the face of formidable cultural barriers.

One of the many laudable aspects of Adorno's work on Guaman Poma is its continuity. Beginning with her 1974 dissertation (Cornell University ), an introduction to the Corónica, she has undertaken methodical investigation of many of its most important aspects: the reasons for its critical neglect, its depiction of the Peruvian viceroyalty, the question of point of view, the specific contributions of the drawings, the cultural typology presented, the textual configuration of narrator and narrataire, and the sources, among others. With her mentor, the noted anthropologist John Murra, the Quechua specialist Jorge L. Urioste, she also collaborated in the first critical edition, published in 1980 by Siglo Veintiuno.

In assessing the value of Adorno's research, it is important to note that even ordinary chronicles of Indies have traditionally presented stumbling-blocks for critics owing to their nature as hybrids. The fact that they do not adhere to modern standards for either history or fiction makes them as a rule difficult to approach effectively. The complexity of the Nueva corónica, however, causes such problems as these to appear virtually negligible. For one thing, Guaman Poma's Spanish is far from perfect-one of the main reasons detractors have repeatedly ridiculed the work. Too, there are numerous intercalated Quechua-language texts, and it is only recently that decipherment -no easy task- has revealed how cleverly Guaman Poma constructed many of them to parody the speech of various levels of Spanish officialdom. Despite its double title, the work's 1200 pages consist, as Adorno is able to show here, of not less than three distinct parts: the story of ancient Peru, the conquest, and finally (in the Buen gobierno) an exhaustive synchronic account of everyday occurrences in the Peruvian viceroyalty. Further complexities arise from the chronicle's discursive structure, which is that of a letter petitioning redress of grievances of none other than Felipe III, King of Spain, who thus becomes the narrataire. Guaman Poma's manuscript also presents an unusual spatial dimension in the form of the 400 remarkable full-page drawings that are an integral part of the text. The position of the prologues, which he consistently places last, is another feature that can easily disorient the reader.

Adorno competently addresses most of these issues here, but the dramatic new insight she offers in Writing and Resistance, her first book-length study of the work, relates to another of the Nueva corónica's most problematic aspects -its genre. By painstakingly reviewing the catechisms and sermons known to have circulated in the early years of the viceroyalty, she is able to show for the first time the extent to which ecclesiastical rhetoric permeates Guaman Poma's text and even affects the configuration of his authorial voice. Seeking the most effective way to transcend the overwhelming cultural barriers between himself and the distant Spanish monarch, he seizes upon a truly ingenious strategy, that of adopting the lofty and exemplary stance of a Christian preacher. It is the device that best serves to confer upon him the authority he must possess to drive home an urgent message of moral indignation -that the Spanish in Peru are seriously mistreating Andeans while making a travesty of the religious teachings they claim to believe in. What Adorno deduces from this is that although juridical and historiographic treatises did influence the Corónica's structure as had traditionally been supposed, the principal opposition is not history vs. fiction but rather ecclesiastical rhetoric vs. poetics. This is a highly significant insight. In fact, there is no doubt that it is a major milestone on the road to a just reassessment of this long misunderstood colonial text.

Elsewhere in the book, Adorno repeatedly reveals Guaman Poma in the role of mediator, cleverly (and necessarily) seizing a position «internal to the moral world of the king but external to the corrupt sphere inhabited by colonial exploiters» (121). Again and again she shows him subverting the invaders' literary and social conventions through his adept strategies in both the written text and the accompanying drawings, demonstrating his resistance to subjection covertly as well as by means of the most strident satire. Yet she sees him as tragically unable, in a final, eloquent failure, to weave the disparate strands of his people's existence under the Spanish into a coherent whole -a history- offering instead «an endless sermon» for which he continues to draw heavily on the «visual and verbal codes of Christian rhetoric» (123).

Adorno is successful in conferring «unity» upon one of the most puzzling works in all of Spanish American literature. In demonstrating the chronicle's many modes of subversion, she sheds fight as well on one of the important constants of the then -nascent mestizo discourse- its enduring nonconformity before any preexisting language, genre, or representational mode.

There is only one aspect of Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru I would criticize. This is the inclusion of what appears to be an excessive number of bibliographical references within the body of the work. I found these interfering with my concentration on the arguments being unfolded in more than a few instances. Undoubtedly many citations are necessary in a work drawing on such varied disciplines as anthropology, sociology, historiography, law, theology, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and semiotics, but I did   —88→   feel that in some cases the concepts being invoked were sufficiently well known to obviate the need for specific attribution. On the other hand, in Adorno's defense, it should be noted that the several words required by the new style of citing are much more distracting than a simple footnote would be.

In conclusion, I believe that no student of Latin American colonial culture can afford to overlook, Adorno's brilliant scholarly breakthrough in this monograph. It might be added, finally, that the bibliography alone vale un Perú.

Lee H. Dowling

University of Houston

En esta nueva versión de su historia de la novela hispanoamericana Fernando Alegría ha creado algo verdaderamente nuevo. Su enfoque ha cambiado y con él las obras y los autores que integran el estudio. El escritor chileno justifica el cambio de la siguiente manera: «En esa obra [Historia de la novela hispanoamericana (México, 4ª edición, 1974)] pesaba la base decimonónica y, también, el buceo por los cauces y confluentes de los orígenes de nuestra novela. Hoy enfoco centralmente la novelística del siglo XX y, en particular, las obras cumbres de los últimos cuarenta años» (i). Este cambio de énfasis se debe al nuevo enfoque: «Mi punto de vista, es claro, ha cambiado. Descarto por artificiosas las excesivas clasificaciones cronológicas y geográficas. Prefiero tratar de captar, identificar y describir tendencias examinando algunas novelas claves que marcaron un hito y cuya resonancia y reverberación se prolongan y crecen con el paso del tiempo» (i-ii). Lo que sí no ha cambiado en este libro es la metodología. Así, sin dejarse influir por las nuevas tendencias críticas, Fernando Alegría presenta un valioso panorama de la novela contemporánea, valiéndose de su profundo conocimiento de la narrativa, de su propia experiencia crítica y de su intuición poética.

La Nueva historia consta de tres partes que reflejan el mayor interés por lo contemporáneo: 1) «Orígenes y siglo XIX» (3-101); 2) «Siglo XX» (105-203); y 3) «La ruptura» (297-436). Los «orígenes» en el título de esta primera parte se reducen a menos de veinte páginas. En ellas, Alegría resume las conclusiones más notables de los estudiosos de la prosa colonial y pasa a reseñar rápidamente la aportación de Lizardi. El resto del siglo XIX se estudia bajo en rótulo general de «La novela romántica» y mantiene, en lo esencial, clasificaciones y juicios tradicionales.

Aunque la segunda parte se titula «Siglo XX», el subtítulo -«Mundonovismo»- es más representativo de su verdadero contenido: esta sección cubre la última década del siglo XIX y la primera mitad del presente. Se trata obviamente de una división impuesta por la cohesión interna de la literatura analizada. Esta cohesión exige que la novela modernista (1890-1920) se considere la primera manifestación de las nuevas tendencias. El resto de la segunda parte se ocupa de la novela de la Revolución Mexicana, del regionalismo y del neorrealismo -que Alegría divide en dos movimientos independientes.

La tercera parte -«La ruptura»- contiene la aportación más personal y novedosa del volumen. Esto se debe en parte a que Alegría se ocupa aquí de los autores y obras más recientes, es decir, de aquéllos sobre quienes escasean las evaluaciones críticas. La larga experiencia de lector crítico le permite a Alegría lanzar juicios acertados y sugerentes. El crítica se refiere en primer lugar a las diez novelas de la década de los 60 que considera claves, algunas de las cuales analiza en detalle. A continuación examina la trayectoria y la significación de la novela escrita durante los últimos veinticinco años (1960-1985). Novela que divide en dos grandes compartimientos cuyos títulos delatan la problemática social que las identifica: «Carnaval: la dictadura y el exilio» y «La novela de la liberación».

El valor de la Nueva historia de la novela hispanoamericana reside en el esfuerzo sostenido de su erudito autor por evaluar la significación de la novela actual. Su enfoque personal de los textos crea esa sensación de inmediatez característica de su obra general y que le permite guiar al lector con certeza y decisión. No es arriesgado vaticinar entonces que, como ha ocurrido con sus estudios anteriores, este nuevo manual se convertirá en libro de consulta esencial para estudiantes y especialistas.

María A. Salgado

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Hugo J. Verani ha recopilado en un solo volumen, con cuidado y con amor, toda la obra poética de María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira (1875-1924). Recoge ciento doce poemas publicados en el único libro que la autora entregó personalmente a la imprenta, La isla de los cánticos (1925); setenta y un poemas de La otra isla de los cánticos, poemario compilado por Emilio Uribe en 1959; cincuenta y un poemas inéditos de la primera época, destinados a formar el libro Fuego y mármol, comentado por Alberto Nin Frías en 1903 pero no publicado hasta esta edición, más poesías varias rescatadas directamente de los manuscritos originales conservados por los albaceas de la poeta y del «Archivo María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira» de la Biblioteca Nacional de Montevideo. Hugo Verani recoge también muchos poemas que habían aparecido en publicaciones rioplatenses difíciles de encontrar hoy, pudiéndose decir que su volumen constituye realmente la obra completa y total de María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira.   —89→   Verani presenta de forma concisa las variantes que ha podido observar al cotejar manuscritos y publicaciones y, en lo posible, establece una cronología de los poemas, ya que, como es bien sabido, la poeta no solía fechar sus escritos. Este libro no recoge pero menciona la poesía dramática de María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira que consiste en tres obras de un acto, las tres estrenadas en el teatro Solís de Montevideo, dos publicadas, La piedra filosofal (1908) para la cual ella misma escribió la música, Resurrexit (Idilio medieval) (1913), y una inédita, Los peregrinos (1909).

El libro lleva una introducción corta, clara y objetiva y hace referencia a otros estudios realizados sobre la poeta como los de Zum Felde o Ángel Rama ya algo antiguos, o el de Teresa Porzecanski de 1982 en Plural. Estudia a grandes rasgos las etapas por las que atravesó la poesía de María Eugenia, explica la metodología seguida, ayuda al lector, desbroza el camino al investigador, deja hablar a la poeta. Es un libro importante porque nos ayuda a conocer mejor la obra de esta gran poeta, si no totalmente desconocida, sí eclipsada por otras uruguayas algo más jóvenes como Delmira Agostini y Juana de Ibarbourou, cuyos temas son parecidos aunque con diferentes variantes. Como ha dicho otra poeta uruguaya, Silvia Puentes de Oyenard (Amor y muerte en la poesía femenina Uruguaya): si Delmira es la búsqueda y Juana la seducción, María Eugenia es la pasividad frente al deseo. Delmira vive el amor trágicamente, Juana lo canta con naturalidad, María Eugenia se mantiene al margen. Los temas fuego-mármol, carne-estatua, deseo-retraimiento, ideal-desengaño, amor-soledad, perpetuo afán contradictorio, van hilvanándose en la poesía de María Eugenia desde la primera etapa neorromántica de coplas y tonadas populares con reminiscencias de Bécquer y Rosalía de Castro, pasando por la segunda de lenguaje esplendoroso con ecos rubendarianos, hasta la tercera y última, más honda, más angustiada, más perpleja, más íntima y personal, en la que el amor se convierte en soledad. María Eugenia no canta la entrega amorosa, canta el amor ideal, imposible, siempre esquivo, siempre insatisfactorio.

Esta edición, con introducción y notas de Hugo J. Verani, es una encomiable labor de crítico, pues pone al día la poesía de María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, situándola en el contexto de su generación literaria en el Uruguay, con ese grupo de escritores de trascendencia continental con figuras como las de José Enrique Rodó, Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Julio Herrera y Reissig, Florencio Sánchez, Carlos Reyles, Horacio Quiroga y Delmira Agostini. Iniciada la labor, esperemos que sea continuada con análisis y estudios críticos para así poder tener un conocimiento más cabal y completo de esta gran poeta.

Antonio H. Martínez

Texas A&M University

Rodrígues Suro has accomplished a monumental task in this fine contribution to the already countless critical studies of Erico Veríssimo, one of the most widely read authors in the Portuguese language. Suro examines the literary creations of Veríssimo from the perspective of their relevance in reflecting the theme, character, and contemporary historical trends in Brazilian society. After carefully documenting how the novels of Veríssimo serve as a synthesis of Brazilian life and a concise analysis of the societal machinations at work in Twentieth-Century Brazil, Suro shows how the novelist utilizes the literary vehicle to convey his socio-political ideas and thoughts as he interprets contemporary historical events. The works which Suro analyzes from this perspective span the works of Veríssimo from Clarissa, written in 1932, to the more contemporary Incidente em Antares, 1971.

Suro begins his study by incisively delineating the formalistic criticism of Northrop Frye, the sociological criticism of Lucien Goldmann, the dialectical critical theories of Kenneth Burke and finally the sociological approach of Georg Lukács, all of whose theories are applied critically by the author in his discussion of Veríssimo's works as they mirror current socio-politico-historical realities. Suro establishes the fact that Veríssimo is representative of the middle class in Brazil and his works demonstrate that particular social posture, with all of its attendant complications.

Suro divides his study into six chapters, each examining specific periods in Veríssimo's novelistic production and each succinctly analyzing the role that historical and social events have in determining the ideological directions of the novelist's basic themes and choice of protagonists as well as his complete narrative process. Chapter 1 investigates optimism and pessimism in the early novels of Veríssimo, from 1932-1934, in which he expresses his attitude toward the Revolution of 1930 and the democratic liberal constitution of 1934; Chapter 2 examines the irrationalism and fascism which sought to destroy liberal democracy in Brazil in the 1930's. According to Suro, in Um lubar ao sol Veríssimo rejects the pessimistic vision of fascism in favor of a providential view of the future, one in which life just gets better. Chapter 3 examines Veríssimo's reaction to the semifascist dictatorship of the Estado Novo reflected in Olhai os lírios do campo, Saga, and O resto é silencio. Suro sees this novelistic period as one of optimism for the future, in spite of the Getulio Vargas dictatorship. At the conclusion of the chapter, Suro synthesizes and relates the major themes treated in each of the novels analyzed. Chapter 4, «Mito e realidade histórica», is a study of the obvious relationship between literary and social history as portrayed in the monumental trilogy O tempo e o vento (O continente,   —90→   O retrato and O arquipélago). Ideologically, Suro discovers that now Veríssimo's providential optimism is corrupted by political circumstances thus his character portrayal becomes exponentia of the historical-social ills that beset the Rio Grand do Sul region and the rest of the nation during the period 1745 to 1945. Chapter 5, «O existencialismo e a alienação nas cidades», examines a unique Veríssimo novel, Noite, a phenomenological-existential creation which reflects the alienating and do humanizing atmosphere of all large modern cities in the world. The abstract, nameless protagonist, «O Desconhecido», is a modern Everyman condemned to social anonymity. The final Chapter 6, «As vicissitudes da democracia», is an application of the cyclical-mythical theory of history (the individual does not change throughout history, but simply repeats his/her acts, right or wrong) to O senhor Embaixador, O Prisioneiro, and Incidente em Antares. The vision is pessimistically echoed in his final work, Incidente em Antares, in which it is clear that positive historical and social changes are virtually impossible and social ills are simply perpetuated indefinitely in a cyclical spiral. A final «Conclusion» synthesizes and concisely reiterate: the thesis presented in the introduction, that historical events in the socio-political realm play a major role in Erico Veríssimo's choice of literary themes, ideas and aesthetics.

Suro clearly defines two major periods in Veríssimo's novelistic production: The first, from Clarissa, published in 1932, to O tempo e o vento, 1949, is a period in which his novels demonstrate, through theme and action, that eventually good will triumph over evil. The second period, from O tempo e o vento to his final novel, Incidente em Antares, 1971, emcompasses essentially pessimistic novels that explore the cyclical-mythical nature of history.

Suro concludes his finely crafted essay by asserting that if one is to fully understand Veríssimo's novelistic art there must be a critical understanding of the relationship between history and the portrayal of that history through his novelistic creations.

This valuable contribution to criticism on the works of Erico Veríssimo also includes an exhaustive and up-to-date bibliography of studies relating to Veríssimo. Although the text is occasionally marred by typographical errors, the critical analyses are sound and well documented throughout.

Harry J. Dennis

California State University, Sacramento

Este libro consiste en el estudio de cinco novelas paraguayas escritas en el exilio, tres de Gabriel Casaccia y dos de Augusto Roa Bastos. Las de Casaccia son: La babosa, La llaga y Los exiliados. Las de Roa Bastos son: Hijo de hombre y Yo el Supremo. El prólogo está escrito por otro escritor paraguayo exiliado, Rubén Bareiro Saguier, quien reside en París. Y la autora del libro, Teresa Méndez-Faith, también es una paraguaya exiliada, que reside en el área de Boston. Este texto está basado en su tesis doctoral presentada en la Universidad de Michigan. El libro comprende una introducción, cinco capítulos y un epílogo, a manera de conclusión.

En su introducción, la profesora Méndez-Faith recuerda oportunamente la precisión de Bertolt Brecht en torno a la realidad del destierro. No somos emigrados, decía el gran dramaturgo alemán, porque no hemos salido voluntariamente. Somos exiliados, porque hemos sido desgarrados a la fuerza de nuestro propio ámbito, y vivimos una vida alienada en tierra ajena.

El primer capítulo se ocupa de las causas históricas de la supuesta escasez literaria paraguaya. La autora, sin duda una intelectual de elevados ideales y un equipamiento profesional impecable, se hace aquí eco, a su pesar, de unas teorías completamente erróneas. No es grave este problema, ya que el libro no tiene como objetivo trazar un panorama histórico. Y el equívoco, en realidad, no es en absoluto culpa de la autora. Arrancada de su patria cuando era todavía una niña, hija de un prominente líder político que falleció en el exilio en Buenos Aires, en 1986, después de tres décadas de ostracismo, Teresa Méndez-Faith no tuvo otra alternativa que leer la historia literaria del Paraguay como si fuera una extranjera, en las bibliotecas de las universidades de Montevideo, Stanford y Michigan. No pudo disfrutar con sus compañeros de generación el florecimiento en Asunción de revistas como Criterio (1966-1977), que encabezaron una vigorosa revisión de los postulados ideológicos de la cultura hegemónica en el país, una mediocre mezcla del legado positivista y cierto neo-romanticismo recalentado. Al lado de esta mezcla, se desarrolló desde los años cincuenta el discurso impresionista pseudo-erudito de improvisados críticos extranjeros, como Raúl Amaral y, sobre todo, de Josefina Pla, que vinieron a ocupar, bajo la tolerancia de una dictadura militar oscurantista e ininterrumpida, el espacio que habían dejado los mejores intelectuales paraguayos, como Hérib Campos Cervera, Gabriel Casaccia, Roa Bastos, Hugo Rodríguez Alcalá, Elvio Romero, Rodrigo Díaz-Pérez, Edgar Valdés, Bareiro Saguier, y otros, que marcharon sin excepción al extranjero. Sólo esos ocho nombres que acabo de citar hubieran constituido, dentro del Paraguay, la más brillante constelación de humanistas desde comienzos de siglo. A ellos habría que añadir los de Criterio, como los fallecidos René Dávalos, Nelson Roura y Juan Carlos Da Costa, y los exiliados Juan Félix y Basilio Bogado Gondra, Guido y José Carlos Rodríguez Alcalá, Juan Carlos Herken Krauer, etc. (algunos de estos han empezado a volver). Demás está decir que todos los miembros de la revista pasaron por las mazmorras policiales, desde el consejo editorial   —91→   completo hasta la telefonista. Me consta que sólo contadísimas bibliotecas universitarias norteamericanas, entre las más grandes, tienen la colección (incompleta) de Criterio.

Teresa Méndez-Faith señala acertadamente los efectos negativos de la guerra civil de 1947, causantes de esa diáspora (28-30). Hay, sin embargo, en este primer capítulo algunas omisiones graves de hechos políticos, como el importante papel desempeñado por los gobiernos civiles liberales-radicales (de Gondra, Manuel Franco, Guggiari y los Ayala), en favor de la profesionalización de las fuerzas armadas, el respeto al mandato presidencial no-reelectivo de la Constitución de 1870, la honestidad administrativa y el saneamiento de las finanzas públicas. Estos factores permitieron al presidente liberal, doctor Eusebio Ayala, conducir al Paraguay a la victoria en la Guerra del Chaco (1932-1935). La autora hace así, involuntariamente, una lectura política semejante a la del propio régimen que la arrojó al exilio, cuya propaganda está basada en una campaña infamante y obsesiva contra las tradiciones liberales y los derechos individuales. Repito que esto no se debe a limitaciones naturales de la autora, sino al estado de sopor y miopía en que yace la bibliografía internacional sobre el aislado país sudamericano, que fue la única que ella pudo consultar, y prácticamente la única que se puede consultar en los Estados Unidos todavía hoy.

En la primera parte del segundo capítulo, la profesora Méndez-Faith repite lamentablemente las teorías de la señora Pla y su discípulo, Francisco Pérez-Maricevich, en torno a la narrativa paraguaya del siglo veinte. En ese error no está sola, ya que otros críticos paraguayos en el exterior, como Hugo Rodríguez Alcalá, y numerosos críticos extranjeros, como Enrique Anderson Imbert y otros historiadores, también se guiaron por los mismos postulados. Estos consisten básicamente en inventar una supuesta «generación de 1940» (en la que Josefina Pla se coloca a sí misma, junto a figuras tan dispares como Roa Bastos y el director del diario oficial de la dictadura, Ezequiel González Alsina). Una vez inventada esta abstracción (sin ningún fundamento ideológico ni histórico), se procede a desconocer los méritos de los autores precedentes: se fabrica entonces la teoría de «la escasez literaria» paraguaya. Como ya advirtieron críticos más sagaces, como Edgar Valdés, en realidad el Paraguay produjo algunas figuras poco estudiadas pero muy valiosas y originales, que merecerían ocupar un plano más destacado dentro de sus respectivos períodos: Ruy Díaz de Guzmán entre los cronistas criollos, Francisco Solano López en el ensayo del siglo diecinueve, Rafael Barrett en el período modernista, Eloy Fariña Núñez en el mundonovismo, Manuel Ortiz Guerrero y Juan E. O'Leary en la poesía post-modernista, Julio Correa en el regionalismo y varios otros. Estos valores debían ser negados por la crítica local por el mismo motivo que este libro de Méndez-Faith ha sido ocultado y silenciado en Asunción: las verdaderas muestras de talento de los paraguayos serán siempre un desafío al status quo y a la mediocridad del régimen y sus corifeos.

La prueba de lo que estoy diciendo se pone en evidencia, me parece, en los capítulos tres, cuatro y cinco, en los que Teresa Méndez-Faith pasa a ejercer la crítica de las novelas. En ellos la profesora paraguaya demuestra su excelente preparación teórica, su dominio acabado del instrumental interpretativo, un manejo coherente y de primera mano de las corrientes críticas más modernas y un conocimiento impresionante de los textos que analiza. ¿Un milagro? De ninguna manera. Ocurre simplemente que ahora Méndez-Faith está libre de lastres y dispone de una bibliografía mucho más adecuada, que es amplísima en el caso de Roa Bastos, y en el caso de Casaccia, es más reducida pero correcta, pues consiste esencialmente en el libro clásico sobre este autor, del profesor Francisco Feito.

En vez de repetir las ideas de otros, en estos capítulos Teresa Méndez-Faith elabora las suyas propias. El tercer capítulo es de corte expositivo, pero está perfectamente desarrollado. Y después, la autora pasa a proponer intuiciones fértiles y novedosas, analiza los condicionamientos del exilio interior y exterior (96-109), la dialéctica del pasado en el juego narrativo de ambos escritores (110-22), el papel referencial de la sociedad paraguaya en ambas novelísticas (122-35). Su imagen de «espacioscárceles» (la Areguá y la Posadas de Casaccia, el Sapukai y el Tevegó de Roa Bastos) es deslumbrante, y constituye lo más profundo que se haya leído sobre el tema (141-55). Este fragmento fue, en mi opinión, el mejor trabajo presentado en el excelente simposio organizado por la Universidad de Maryland en 1982, en homenaje a Roa Bastos.

Paraguay: novela y exilio es un típico ejemplo de los problemas que debe enfrentar cualquier crítico serio cuando busca fuentes relacionadas con el panorama histórico del Paraguay y su literatura. Lo es en sus dos primeros capítulos. Pero eso no es responsabilidad de la autora. Lo que sí constituye auténtico mérito y admirable logro de Teresa Méndez-Faith es que el suyo quedará como uno de los mejores libros de crítica sobre literatura paraguaya que se hayan escrito. El rigor, la profundidad, la originalidad, la limpidez, la vibrante prosa, la impecable organización de sus tres últimos capítulos así lo atestiguan. No puedo sino recomendarlo calurosamente, como una consulta imprescindible, de ahora en más, para los estudiosos de la magnífica obra de Gabriel Casaccia y Augusto Roa Bastos.

Juan Manuel Marcos

Oklahoma State University

The perspective from which Alazraki has selected the twelve articles and reviews and the four comparative   —92→   essays which make up this volume is that of criticism written originally in English and from an American vantage point. He has opted for including those articles that contributed a new facet to the understanding of Borges in the United States where, he insists, the Borges impact was particularly resounding. The result is a volume which contains some of the best pieces of critical commentary on the lion of Argentine letters written in any language and which constitutes an image of the reception of Borges in the United States over the past twenty-five years. Of particular value is the eighteen-page introduction by Alazraki which offers both a survey of Argentine literature in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on Borges's role, and an overview of the critical reaction in the United States following the first appearance of his work in English translation in 1962.

Borges's own «An Autobiographical Essay» opens the volume. It was originally written in English and intended for American readers. Published in the New Yorker in 1970, it provides personal details and dramatizes the thrust of his creative process. The seminal essay, «A Modern Master», first published by Paul de Man in 1964, is the first substantial interpretation of Borges in English criticism. De Man's deconstructionist reading views infamy as the dominant motif of Borges's writing. John Updike's «The Author as Librarian» advances the possibility that Borges was a catalyst for new directions in twentieth-century American fiction. He introduces a theme seen in many of the later essays in this volume, the relationship of Borges to Kafka. «Borges and the Fictive Narrative» by Pierre Macherey is the only article not originally written in English. Published in Temps Modernes in 1966, it posits the theory that Borges is essentially preoccupied with problems of narrative and that he offers a fictive theory that runs the risk of being taken too seriously or too far. In an essay written two years after Updike published his New Yorker article, John Barth expanded Updike's thesis in a study called «The Literature of Exhaustion». Using Borges's own statements, Barth concludes that if the number of metaphors literature is capable of producing has been exhausted, the ways of stating such metaphors are limitless. In 1967 John Ashbery's review of A Personal Anthology appeared in the New York Times Book Review with the title, «A Game with Shifting Mirrors». Ashbery believes that there are deeper oppositions than affinities between Kafka and Borges, but he concludes that readers find Borges's intellectual contortions serious enough to cause perplexity and light enough to provide enjoyment.

In 1968 Richard Poirier published «The Politics of Self-Parody» in which he offers a newly developed theory of parody, that of self-parody which makes fun of itself as it questions the relevance of literary styles. Borges pushes this form of creative parody to its furthest limits, he believes, and in the process obliterates any distinction between fiction and the analysis of it. William H. Gass in «Imaginary Borges and His Books» explores literature as a Borgesian landscape on which events repeat themselves with constant variations. The dimensions of this literature are generated, he believes, by the interaction between wakefulness and dream, reality and fiction, and nature and art. George Steiner's «Tigers in the Mirror» was published in the New Yorker in 1970. It constitutes a survey of Borges's publications to that year and interprets the general tendencies of his writings. Also in 1970 Geoffrey H. Hartman published a review of The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969 in the New York Times Book Review in which he affirms that «the symbols that purify us also trap us in the end. Symbolism may be nothing more than the religion of overcultured men and Borges ... its perfected priest» (127). Alfred Kazin in his profile, «Meeting Borges», written in 1971, relates his personal reactions to an interview with Borges and asserts that «to meet Borges is to read him ... the face he presents is that of a writer writing» (127). The last of the twelve articles and reviews is «The Reality of Borges» (1979) by Robert Scholes. While this is one of the longest essays in the present volume, it offers a simple thesis: we have missed the reality of Borges because we have misunderstood his view of reality and of the relationship between words and the world. Scholes concludes that certain writings endure because they continue to function for human beings as signs of some unattainable reality, and as emblems of the human struggle to imagine that reality.

The last section of this study contains four essays of a comparative nature by writers who compare Borges with Vladimir Nabokov (Patricia Merivale), with Thomas De Quincey (Ronald Christ), with modern American fiction (Tony Tanner), and with Kafka (Margaret Boegeman). Only the last essay by Boegeman was published for the first time in this volume. A two-page selected bibliography of primary and secondary sources in English concludes the book. Alazraki has chosen each of the essays in this volume with the purpose of presenting the historical development of significant Borgesian scholarship in English. To this end he has been eminently successful. While all but one of the essays have been previously published, they are now available for the first time in one volume where they are ordered historically. The editor of this collection is to be commended for having made an intelligent selection of the most important essays on Borges in the pages of American journalism during the past twenty-five years.

Harley D. Oberhelman

Texas Tech University

La emigración de cientos de miles de puertorriqueños la ciudad de Nueva York ha sido uno de los fenómenos más atrayentes para los literatos. Los escritores puertorriqueños, atentos a la interesante situación que presentan sus compatriotas en la Gran Urbe, abordan el tema en prácticamente todos los géneros. Con este volumen López Heredia se une a una corriente de la literatura puertorriqueña que, aunque ha proporcionado mayor cantidad de obras en poesía, tiene en el cuento sus mejores representantes: Pedro Juan Soto, José Luis González y José Luis Vivas Maldonado.

Los diez relatos de la colección presentan una variada gama de tipos de personajes: drogadictos, alcohólicos, sordomudos, pandilleros, jubilados, taxistas, religiosos. De estos llama la atención el Mestre de «Milagro en el Bronx», quien nos da indicios de un Jesucristo moderno con fuertes ribetes políticos independentistas. La figura femenina -madre, abuela, niñera- está presente en casi todos los relatos y en la mayoría se sitúa en un pasado isleño en el que es notable su influencia sobre los protagonistas masculinos. En varios de los cuentos hay una atracción por el uso de animales -perros específicamente- como elementos transmisores de la significación del relato.

Los episodios sangrientos y la muerte violenta están presentes a través de toda la colección. Todo parece indicar que existe una mala nota que persigue a los personajes hasta el irremediable final, aun cuando haya habido un cambio en su patrón de vida. Muchas de las muertes se narran como si no pasara nada, como si todo continuara igual. Este estilo a lo Juan Rulfo impresiona fuertemente al lector.

En muchos de los cuentos el autor se detiene a describir el ambiente neoyorquino en que se debaten sus personajes. Estos sufren la discriminación, la severidad del clima, el desconocimiento del inglés y la soledad e impersonalidad de la metrópoli. Y estos personajes tratan de salir de este ambiente, pero parece que del barrio nadie escapa. Así, entonces, llega la resignación.

La añoranza por la patria, sus costumbres, su gente, su clima, su idioma, y sus productos es nota predominante en todos los relatos. Este hecho se acentúa a través de la mención constante de elementos sumamente arraigados en lo boricua: el guaraguao, el pitirre, el coquí. Esta añoranza y el sueño del retorno convierten la isla en un lugar paradisíaco, completamente diferente a la actual realidad puertorriqueña.

López Heredia emplea con más frecuencia que los otros escritores del ciclo temático los elementos sobrenaturales. Por ejemplo, Mestre resucita y Percy -el protagonista de «El visitante»- recibe la visita de su hermano ya fallecido. En adición la superstición también tiene su espacio en los relatos. La protagonista del cuento «La taxista», por ejemplo, se atemoriza cuando entra a su auto el pasajero número trece.

El lenguaje que utiliza el autor es rico y variado, descriptivo y poético. El «Spanglish» y otras características lingüísticas y sicológicas de los puertoriqueño-neoyorquinos tan retratadas por otros escritores que abordan el tema, casi no ocupan espacio en la obra de López Heredia. Solamente en la primera parte del relato «Creados una para el otro» el autor se detiene a elaborar sobre este importante renglón del tema.

La estructura lineal predomina en el volumen, aunque hay saltos temporales y espaciales que permiten presentar así un doble plano en el tiempo (ayer-hoy) y en el espacio (aquí, Nueva York; allá, Puerto Rico). De tal forma no sólo se sigue el desarrollo social y económico de los personajes sino también el sicológico. En muchas ocasiones se confunden los dos mundos.

Verdaderamente la obra no responde a la época actual. La visión que ofrece el autor de los emigrantes puertorriqueños en Nueva York es más de los cincuenta que del presente. Se presenta más bien al recién llegado que al joven de segunda y tercera generación. Así que López Heredia se interesa más por el puertorriqueño en Nueva York que por el puertorriqueño de Nueva York. Este puertorriqueño que sólo mantiene un contacto indirecto con la Isla y si regresa es «americanito» -como lo presenta Soto en Ardiente suelo, fría estación aparece pintado en sólo dos relatos: «La taxista» (Carita de Ángel y Taíno) y «Creados una para el otro» (Bigote de Gato).

En conclusión, podemos afirmar que la obra de López Heredia, a pesar de que se interna en un tema archiconcurrido, no carece de originalidad e importancia. El caudal de temas, el mosaico de personajes y el tratamiento técnico son algunos de los elementos significativos en que yace el valor de esta colección cuentística.

Rafael Falcón

Goshen College

Omar Torres es un poeta, novelista y dramaturgo que nació en Cuba (en 1945) pero cuya producción literaria ha surgido principalmente en los Estados Unidos. Entre sus obras publicadas figuran Conversación primera (1975), Ecos de un laberinto (1976), Tiempo robado (1979) y Apenas un bolero (1981).

Al partir es una novela histórica basada en un incidente ocurrido durante la guerra hispanoamericana. El incidente implica a la joven camagüeyana, Evangelina Betancourt Cosío y Cisneros, heroína de la ficción. Ella había sido prisionera en La Habana durante el régimen del odiado Valeriano Weyler, lo cual había causado mucha oposición entre los norteamericanos. Es indudable que Torres ha fundamentado su relato en datos autobiográficos proporcionados por la señorita Cisneros en unas memorias que ella publicara en Nueva York en 1897 (The Story of Evangelina Cisneros Told by Herself).   —94→   Al compararse estas memorias con los textos de Al partir se descubren fragmentos, descripciones, reimpresiones de cartas y noticias de idéntico carácter.

Al partir consta de dos partes. En la primera (capítulos I hasta el VI) se narran los hechos ocurridos desde el nacimiento de Evangelina hasta su captura en Isla de Pinos, con el subsiguiente envío a la prisión de mujeres, las Recogidas, en la Habana. La historia de esta parte está contada en primera persona (como en las memorias), aunque artificiosamente se introduzcan cambios de perspectivas: en el «Prólogo» y en el capítulo I se mencionan a un reportero (llamado Miguel de Saavedra) y al esposo de Evangelina (Emilio Betancourt) como los que descubren y proporcionan la historia. Betancourt «lee» las memorias que Evangelina había escrito a su llegada a Nueva York en 1897.

Evangelina resulta un personaje bien delineado, revelándose en ella las angustias de una adolescente que nunca había disfrutado de su juventud, el apego casi patológico a su hermana Carmen y sus preocupaciones por la libertad de Cuba. También está bien trazado el padre de la heroína, don José Agustín Cosío y Serrano, patriota que había participado en la Guerra de los Diez Años. Los detalles de la vida de Evangelina sirven como de microcosmo de una joven cubana de la clase media de la época. Pasó su infancia en Sagua la Grande y cuando entraba en la pubertad se trasladó con su padre y su hermana Carmen a Cienfuegos (su madre había muerto cuando ella sólo tenía dos años). En Cienfuegos apresaron a don José Agustín, acusándosele de conspirador y condenándosele a muerte. Gracias a la intervención personal de Evangelina, Martínez Campos, entonces al mando de Cuba, conmuta la sentencia y ordena su traslado a una prisión en África. Evangelina ayuda de nuevo a su padre y consigue (esta vez de Valeriano Weyler, el déspota que había reemplazado a Martínez Campos) que transporten a don José a Isla de Pinos, al sur de La Habana.

Evangelina acompaña a don José a Isla de Pinos y allí conoce a Emilio Betancourt y se enamora de él. También conoce al cruel gobernador de Isla de Pinos, el coronel Bérriz, quien intenta abusar de ella y amenaza la seguridad de don José. Como Evangelina resiste a Bérriz, éste la encarcela y la envía a la prisión de las Recogidas en La Habana. Así concluye la primera parte.

En la segunda parte (Capítulos VII al XII) se presenta el período de encarcelamiento de Evangelina hasta su liberación de la cárcel y su partida a los Estados Unidos. También se hace énfasis en el impacto que la prisión de Evangelina causa en el público norteamericano y cómo este incidente es manipulado por la prensa americana y en especial por Randolph Hearst, editor del New York Journal. Se nos dice -y esto es histórico- que muchas ilustres damas norteamericanas han abrazado la causa de Evangelina y abogado en su favor con la Reina Regente de España y con el papa León XIII. Un corresponsal del Journal, Karl Decker, se traslada de Washington a La Habana con la intención de rescatar a Evangelina. Ella misma sugiere el modo en que ha de efectuarse su liberación y Decker, con la asistencia de sus amigos Hernandón y Mallory, logra que ella escape y que vestida de varón se introduzca en el vapor El Séneca con destino a Nueva York. Toda esta segunda parte, con notables excepciones, está narrada en tercera persona y en ella no aparece la llegada y primeros meses de Evangelina en Nueva York y Washington (donde es recibida por el presidente McKinley), hechos que sí incluye la autora en sus memorias.

Al partir tiene el mérito de recobrar de los estantes empolvados de selectas bibliotecas un tomo viejo y olvidado. Intenta aunar una historia romántica con la realidad desgarradora de los cubanos en el exilio. La mujer presa, el mismo destierro y la amistad entre americanos y cubanos son temas principales tanto de ayer como de hoy. Otros temas dignos de mencionar son la fidelidad familiar, el patriotismo (hay abundantes referencias a Martí, Maceo, Gómez y otros patriotas) y, por supuesto, la rebeldía del inocente. Torres hace galas de novelista cuando se aparta de su modelo y recrea escenas costumbristas o muestra el habla de los negros cubanos o desarrolla la dependencia psicológica entre Evangelina y su hermana. Torres muestra un conocimiento profundo de la naturaleza y geografía cubanas y logra bellas descripciones del paisaje. Es lástima que haya tantos errores tipográficos que desmeritan la hermosa presentación de esta obra. La portada presenta una fotografía (idéntica a la que aparece en las memorias) de Evangelina. El título de la novela es el mismo que el del famoso soneto de la Avellaneda, que aparece incluido en el texto (11).

Jorge J. Rodríguez-Florido

Chicago State University

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 71, Number 1, March 1988