Book Reviews

Reviews

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The problem of religious minorities dependent upon dominant host institutions received for the most part predictable solutions during the two centuries from around 1100 to 1300 in the Latin West. There, as in other areas at other times, religious identity represented the core of a community, with language, skin color and nationality playing quite insignificant roles. The presence of Muslim minorities in the Catholic West did create some special situations in Spain, Sicily and the Near East. In all cases the Muslims fell under the domination of feudal societies who considered them conquered peoples subject to vassalage in the form of slavery, serfdom, or bonded servitude. Beyond that, each national group adjusted its treatment of religious minorities according to the circumstances. In the case of the Crusaders' conquest of the Near East, detailed in Benjamin Z. Kedar's contribution «The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant» (136-74), the conquests were brutal and resulted in the flight of those who could and the enslavement of those who could not. This «Holy War» mentally created relationships beset with suspicion and hostility and impeded any meaningful exchange of learning or technology. Nor was the Norman conquest of Sicily, discussed in David S.H. Abulafia's essay «The End of Muslim Sicily» (103-33), the great exchange of knowledge traditionally ascribed to Frederick's rule (1197-1250). He thoroughly westernized the island's court culture and began the displacement of Muslims that led to their virtual elimination from the island by 1282, when it was conquered by the Aragonese.

Spain receives two studies in the collection of essays, Joseph F. O'Callaghan's «The Mudejars of Castile and Portugal in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries» (11-56) and Robert I. Burns's «Muslims in the Thirteenth-Century Realms of Aragón: Interaction and Reaction» (57-102). In both areas the recently-conquered Muslim populations, called mudéjares from al-mudajjan («those allowed to remain»), were strictly controlled by State and Ecclesiastical laws in regard to bathing, clothing, wet-nursing, cohabiting, surnames, living quarters, and religious celebrations. Nevertheless, they were given freedom of worship and were rarely forced to convert to Christianity, principally because by remaining Muslim they had to pay a «religion tax» to the Church and forfeited many social privileges (such as freedom from slavery and ownership of land). The morada vital created by there legal, religious, and social barriers was a far cry from the congruous interplay of three religions imagined by many past scholars. As Burns observes: «The two peoples did not exactly 'live together' harmoniously, as Américo Castro's famous term convivencia might suggest, but rather lived symbiotically-recoiling but constantly impinging, each resigned to needing the other, each attracted to aspects of the other, but each repelled by that wholly Other» (78).

The relationship based on need noted by Burns is termed utilitas by Powell, who considers it the major structural component in the treatment of subjected Muslims. In short, toleration depended on need. If there was a dearth of Christian labor and the Muslim populations had not fled, as in Valencia where in the late thirteenth century they outnumbered the newcomers by four or five to one (76), the subjected populations were treated extremely well, protected by their feudal lords, and considered an economic boon («Quien no tiene moro, no tiene oro»). In those areas, religion was not a factor, and few conflicts occurred before the influx of missionary activity from northern Europe, particularly by Dominican friars (48-50). In regions where the subject populations were not needed, on the other hand, as in northern Castile, the minorities were enslaved, forced to convert, or exiled. As Powell notes in the closing essay, «The Papacy and the Muslim Frontier» (175-203): «Utilitas provided the real basis for the continued existence of there communities. In the case of Muslims, once their utility to their secular masters declined, the only alternatives were expulsion or assimilation» (203).

This utilitarian attitude, coupled with the Church's insistence on separation between the religious groups, argues strongly against previous ameliorative views of Christian-Muslim relations in Medieval Spain. It is the salient point of the book, and the one Powell stresses in his concluding remarks: «Attempts to reduce the 'Spanish character' to the peculiar impact of the Reconquista receive a rather considerable blow from the discussions presented here. There is little to support the view of a common Spanish experience so fondly presented by earlier scholars» (207).

David H. Darst
Florida State University

In eleven chapters, plus a paragraph for a «Forward» and another for an «Afterward», Jean Paul Keller comes to the end of a journey that began in 1946 when his teacher asked him whether the Poema de Fernán González derived from the Primera crónica general or vice versa. Although he opts for the latter, his study moves considerably beyond this particular question, and basically analyzes how the monastic poet of Arlanza created his own Castilian myth with Fernán González as its protagonist.

Four of the chapters incorporate four of Kellers's mid-fifties studies on the Poema. These with the others purport «to shed light on the work, on the poet and on his purposes, thinking, and craft, as well as on his learning and on the world in which he lived» (2). In 1971 Alan Deyermond offered an opinion regarding the original four articles that is still valid not only

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for them, but also for the entire work: «aunque algunas de las conclusiones de Keller son de validez dudosa, constituyen una lectura obligada para el que se encuentre atraído por una visión crítica del Poema» (75 of the Spanish version: Historia de la literatura española: La edad media [1973; 11th ed. Barcelona: Ariel, 1985]). A telling example for the validity of this assessment occurs in Keller's argumentation for a new date for the Poema, a date later than the standardly accepted one of «circa 1250». The crucial evidence supporting this later date relies on the allusion to the Benimerines in line 384a. Since they did not invade Spain until 1275, «the poem could not have been written before that time» (99). Furthermore, «since the completed poem was prosified in the PCG, 1289, the proposal is now made that 1280-1285 is a more likely date for the composition of the PFG» (99). The questions that arise with this sort of reasoning follow: why accept the inclusion of the Benimerines in 384a as historical? Elsewhere Keller insists repeatedly that poetic license takes precedence over historical fact. Surely the Benimerines did not have to invade Spain for the populace, specifically the poet of Arlanza, to be aware of them. If an historical antagonist in Almanzor is glossed as poetic license, as the real Moorish enemy of Fernán González was Abderrahman III, why is poetic license not to be allowed in 384a? Keller's declared date of 1289 for the completion of the Primera crónica general grossly simplifies the facts. Finally, how does Keller establish his 1280-85 a quo-ad quem range?

Attractiveness of print and layout, albeit lacking, is immaterial. Typographical errors (not a few), misspellings, misquotations, and other infelicities which mar the text cannot be dismissed as such. Following a manual of style could have prevented needless repetition of bibliographical information and inclusion of information better placed within notes than within the body of the text.

In fine, despite shortcomings in the execution of this study, Keller offers insights that both shed light on the work, as he proposes, and suggest avenues for future research.

Anthony J. Cárdenas
University of New Mexico

Sor María's book was originally published around 1518. Giles's book can be divided into the following sections: pp. 1-117 study by Giles, pp. 123-44 defense and apology or Sor María by an admiring contemporary, pp. 145-81 translation by Giles of the essays (allegedly articulated by Sor María, by probably authored by Diego Victoria), purportedly interpreting the utterances made in Sor María's periods of ecstasy, and given the title of «Book of Prayer». The rest of the pages, 183-214, are devoted to notes, bibliography and an index.

Sor María lived in a period when the vogue was to display a bleeding side or limbs in emulation of Christ's wounds, and to reveal «divinely inspired dreams» that would be prophetic. In her time, the streets of Madrid were reportedly full of self-proclaimed soothsayers. Periodically, Sor María would display a wound in her right side to assert her stigmatic qualities.

The essays, the essence of this book, were composed not really by Sor María, but by her associates, who interpreted the words she allegedly uttered in a rapture. One of these associates was Diego Victoria, who was a prior of a monastery, and had been assigned by Cardenal Cisneros to document her nightly dreams. The prior became much more involved with this attractive, charismatic, histrionically talented, unlettered and controversial beata than he or anyone had probably planned. The result was that she bore him a child out of wedlock, and subsequently suffered humiliation and an inquisitorial trial that thereafter eclipsed her notoriety.

Diego Victoria and Sor María had the best of all possible worlds for a while, and when the Inquisition condemned her to convent-arrest, Diego became, for good personal reasons, her apologist. Sor María was of peasant stock, without formal education, but at the age of seventeen she was admitted to the tertiary order at the Monastery of Santo Domingo in Piedrahita, Spain. She soon received acclaim for her «prophetic» dreams, and political sentiments.

Men and women frequented her abode to witness the ecstatic raptures that she could arouse upon request. She was fond of fine clothes, gold jewelry and little French hats, which she wore on her strolls in the countryside (30). She could convince her audiences that everything she did was only with divine thought and for divine ends, though the means to those ends may have appeared mundane. Her fine clothes, according to her apologist, she wore to please others, and to humiliate herself; the dances she performed had divine intentions, and even her enemies agreed that she danced beautifully (31); she had men, both lay and religious, spend nights with her, but, of course, only to keep her company and help her struggle against the devil whom she feared; and when she embraced men (only with chaste intentions [30]), or when men were glimpsed lying on her, it was merely to subdue the devil, to ease her heart, and to protect her from harm in seizures that tormented her (32). Besides having personal charms, she was a pleasing flirt (9), who evidently possessed remarkable acting talents. She could, according to some, be a convincing hypocrite.

While there were those who considered her a «folly», «lewd» (13, 26) and a «fraud» (26), there were others, among them the Duke of Alba, the King, and Cardenal Cisneros who treated her as a «saint». Even Pope Alexander VI sought to have an audience with her (57). The powerful in government made sure that when her case was to be heard, they stacked the

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committee investigating her in such a way that her exoneration was guaranteed. While her name was brought up before respected writers like Fray Luis de León, San Juan de la Cruz, and Diego de San Pedro, they had nothing substantive to say of her.

The prose in the «prayerbook» itself by the apologist rambles aimlessly, or cyclically, somewhat akin to stream-of-consciousness writing, with words flowing like glossolalia, that need interpretation to become instilled with sense. The committee of her associates filtered her ideas before setting them to paper (158). Her utterances evoke two extremes; «her words if reinterpreted can mean something, or nothing», but there are occasional phrases that strike a pleasant note. However, some readers may have difficulty identifying with Giles's poetic assertion that we as readers «engage the text in the fullness of our bodies and thus engage the woman, who in the fullness of her body, is the text» (109). Giles weaves subtle quilts of words, proceeding from religious and popular culture, and from a world of images.

Giles has taken a book of questionable attribution, and has delved into the «private life» of a beata through testimonies, for and against her, in a lengthy on-and-off five year inquisitorial investigation.

While her style is an interesting one, Giles has to repeat herself throughout the study, but on the other hand, repetition is the heart of learning, if the message is worthwhile emphasizing. But what is the message? That woman were influential in the 16th century, dispelling the notion that they were mere clinging vines needing male support.

Though repetitious in spots, and extraneous in others, the book has interesting moments, revealing how one persuasive woman with histrionic talent tried to make a go of it in a not altogether favorable environment.

John Lihani
University of Kentucky

Además de los tres antologistas, los antologados son Israel Burshatin, J.M. Sobré, Edmond Cros, James Iffland, Jaime Concha, Steven Suppan, Susan Kirkpatrick, Michael Predmore, Anthony Geist y Geraldine Nichols. Sus ensayos tienen que ver con las literaturas peninsulares y van desde el medievo hasta la posguerra, abarcando textos canónicos como el Quijote y La verdad sospechosa, sin desdeñar la literatura infantil bajo el régimen franquista o los poemas poco conocidos de Pemán y Herrera Petere sobre la batalla de Madrid.

Cada ensayo tiene su mérito y el conjunto responde perfectamente al propósito declarado de resaltar la sociohistoricidad de los discursos (18). Intenta ofrecer así una alternativa a la historicidad tradicional. Pretende ilustrar un método sintético que anule el binomio historia/crítica, o, en otros términos, la tensión «entre enfoques histórico-sociales por un lado y lingüístico-formales por otro» (8). Los colaboradores son presentados como nueva escuela o tendencia crítica dentro del hispanismo de los Estados Unidos. Es de suponer, por tanto, que el florilegio ha de leerse como una especie de manifiesto.

Debido a la desacreditación del marxismo en la esfera socio-política, pocos de los que antes militaban bajo esa bandera tienen la osadía de identificarse hoy como tales. El lema ahora es la «ideología», o sea la Weltanschauung, y es notable su eclecticismo emprendedor al incorporar otras corrientes -gino-crítica, desconstrucción, psicoanálisis, Rezeptionästetik- con el propósito invariable de socavar el discurso oficial. A veces da la sensación de que los acercamientos accesorios sirven sólo de disfraz, dorando la píldora del ideosema de turno. Este discurso sintético es un discurso aguado, desde luego, muy lejos del estridentismo de antaño.

La utopía crítica anhelada por los colaboradores de Texto y sociedad no es tan ingenua como la sociopolítica que yace ahora en ruinas. Se fundamenta en una concepción más sólida y más realista de los mecanismos que entran en juego. Estos estudios nos recuerdan, por ejemplo, que la crítica es siempre conflictiva, que hay intereses creados, que el canon no es producto de la naturaleza, que toda postura crítica tiene connotaciones políticas y que la producción y el consumo de la literatura ocurren dentro de un contexto socio-económico-político.

El mayor inconveniente de la concepción restringida de la ideología, tal como es aplicada por los neomarxistas, es que insiste en la rigurosa historicidad de la creación, es decir, en una visión monolítica de la producción, determinada por factores inmediatos y materiales-variante, en otras palabras, del moment et milieu decimonónico y determinista. Los párrafos introductorios anuncian «la aspiración a criticar a fondo los planteamientos transhistóricos» (8). Tal perspectiva tiende a negar que la literatura se haga de la literatura más que de otra cosa, como también el que la literatura producida en un pasado remoto pueda dar gusto en la actualidad -problema que no supo resolver el mismo Marx. Tampoco reconoce debidamente la potencia subversiva de la mente del lector (pos)moderno -su tendencia a adaptar textos y contextos de acuerdo con su propia (de)formación idiosincrática y de encontrar, milagrosamente, lo que se mete a buscar.

Todos los artículos incluidos son buenos, pero algunos se destacan por ser realmente excelentes -por superar, a mi modo de ver, las limitaciones de la ideología subyacente- entre ellos una disquisición sobre el Quijote, justamente en el centro del libro (95143). Así es que el texto canónico por excelencia sigue en su debido puesto. Otros que me parecen sobresalientes tratan la literatura catalana medieval, el locus amoenus en la poesía del siglo de oro, los ideosemas en la picaresca, las Sonatas de Valle-Inclán, la literatura infantil bajo Franco y dos visiones

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poéticas pero antitéticas de la batalla de Madrid durante la Guerra Civil. (A modo de aclaración, el ideosema es la menor unidad distintiva de la ideología, parecido al fonema en la lingüística o al mitema en el análisis estructural del mito).

La colección problematiza facetas de la historia literaria, desde una óptica muy particular, ilustrando una ideología que se considera transhistóricamente aplicable, aunque, paradójicamente, no reconozca la transhistoricidad de la literatura.

En cuanto al echárselas de nueva escuela o tendencia crítica dentro del hispanismo norteamericano, sí se puede sostener con respecto a la base neo-marxista del discurso, pero en cuanto al intento intachable de sintetizar historia y crítica, ha habido un sinnúmero de precursores. De todas formas, da gusto ver que la revolución se ha institucionalizado oficialmente en escuela.

James A. Parr
University of California, Riverside

As the title suggests, the eight brief essays of A. G. Lo Ré's study touch upon issues that could be considered marginal to Don Quijote. One could grasp the richness of Cervantes's classic text without considering the historical, contextual, anecdotal, and otherwise peripheral elements contained therein. This does not imply, by any means, that the study is either unscholarly or uninteresting. Fans of Don Quijote and of Quijote criticism will relish the choice of topics and will appreciate the great care with which Lo Ré has approached questions of history and documentation. Adherents of current theoretical models may have reason to applaud, as well, the «off-center» orientation and the foregrounding of the anecdote that mark the essays.

Five essays focus on Thomas Shelton and the first English translation of the Quijote. In search of the «very deere friend» on whose behalf Shelton translated the 1605 text, Lo Ré uncovers Thomas Lodge, a pre-Shakespearian poet, playwright, and romancer, like the translator «relatively but undeservedly unknown» (7). Lo Ré finds in Lodge a kindred spirit to Cervantes and possibly one who aided in the publication of the exiled Shelton's work. Due to the lack of concrete evidence, the results of this process are inconclusive, but nonetheless fascinating. Even more intriguing, given its ironic potential, is the question of the authorship of the first English translation of Part II (1620), which one writer has attributed to the «putative Shelton» (29). A defensible option is James Mabbe, celebrated translator of Guzmán de Alfarache, but Lo Ré's candidate is Leonard Digges (1583-1635), Oxford graduate, master of French and Spanish, and translator of Céspedes y Meneses's Gerardo. The other essays deal with the Huntington Library copy of the 1612 Shelton translation (a gift, in 1916, of Archer Huntington to his stepfather, who in turn presented him with a copy of the Madrid 1605 princeps, now in the library of the Hispanic Society of America) and the mysteries it contains and helps to solve; with the probable title page engraver of the 1620 translation (Renold Elstrack, who worked for the printer William Stansby); and with the earliest of Quijote illustrations (in the French translation of 1618).

The most pleasant surprise is «George Washington, Diego de Gardoqui, and Don Quixote», which explains the existence in the first President's library of two sets of the novel, a 1786 London edition of the Tobias Smollet translation (1755) and an elegant Spanish edition published under the auspices of the Real Academia. It is worthy of note that Washington bought the translation on September 17, 1787, the date of the signing of the Constitution. The second copy was a gift of the minister of Spain to the emerging nation. The story is both amusing, moving, and admirably researched. Suffice it to say that the tale begins with Mr. Washington's need for a jackass.

The closing essays include commentary on the possible misunderstanding of Lord Byron's reference to the Quijote in Don Juan and a discussion of the musical comedy, Man of La Mancha.

One may conclude, then, that there is significance in the periphery and, to the good fortune of Cervantists, that the story/history of don Quijote never will be complete, that there always will be something to occupy and divert us. Lo Ré is a gifted scholar. My only reservation about the present study is that the author, after spending years to accumulate the material for the individual essays, did not take the relatively brief time necessary to unify them for the collection. He begs the reader's indulgence for this in the preface, but it is disconcerting to find allusions to Thomas Shelton as the translator of Part II, for example. This point notwithstanding, the essays are worthy companion pieces to the master text.

Edward H. Friedman

Indiana University

Clamurro informs us that sections of his book have been in process since the early 1970s. Although he acknowledges that much of this study is «pitched» somewhat narrowly to the Spanish Golden Age specialist and more precisely the quevedistas, he has tried «to make Quevedo a little more accessible to a larger audience». It seems to this reviewer that the reader of this volume should possess more than a casual familiarity with Quevedo's writings in order to appreciate the author's analysis. All of Chapter 2 and parts of Chapters 4 and 6 have been published in journal articles between 1980 and 1984. Clamurro essentially studies four of Quevedo's major prose works: the language and ideology of the Buscón (Chapters 2 and 3), the Sueños and the Ideology of agudeza (Chapter

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4), the rhetorical politics of the Política de Dios (chapter 5), and Quevedo's world as political language viewed in La hora de todos. The short epilogue bears the title «Exhaustion of Language».

By and large Clamurro does a good job in showing that ideology and rhetoric are inseparable in the prose pieces to which he devotes his attention. He accepts Louis Althusser's statement that «ideology is the system of ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group» (26) and generally regards persuasion to be the central function of rhetoric. At times, however, he goes beyond the commonly accepted use of the term rhetoric, which in his own two definitions (24) is applied only to language, and extends it to the visual arts, architecture and music (35). The author appropriately points out examples of agudeza and the ideology of Quevedo's time that one finds in the Buscón. But the reader might desire clarification of some of Clamurro's opinion concerning the Buscón. A case in point is the following statement: «The nature of the Buscón's language and its curious thematic undertones place the book generically in the gap between Quevedo's non-narrative satiric prose and the fictional character to which the work must also be assigned» (47). It would be interesting to know the author's thoughts on where the Buscón belongs as far as genre is concerned and how it relates to the «non-narrative satiric prose». A reader might want to know why Clamurro states that the Buscón offers a «striking, parodic version of the picaresque» (61). He expects verisimilitude in this picaresque novel (67) and its absence in the example of the «subtle letter» that the «crude verdugo» Alonso Ramplón wrote to his nephew Pablos de Segovia (68) surprises him. Yet we must bear in mind that Quevedo's purpose in writing his picaresque novel was to expose the hypocritical behavior of the stereotypical characters in his novel rather than to create flesh and blood characters. He is no Fernando de Rojas or Miguel de Cervantes.

In the chapter on the Política de Dios, Clamurro analyzes well the rhetoric of this important book and is correct in pointing out the well-known fact that style is a more important factor than any «political» ideas it contains and recommendations it proposes for remedying the problems involved in the administration of the Spanish government in the first half of the seventeenth century. We know, of course, that Quevedo's Política mirrored the custom of didactic writers of the Golden Age who used the Bible as a model for conduct in many aspects of human life. The last chapter on La hora de todos is well done. It would have been interesting to learn Clamurro's point of view regarding La isla de los Monopantos episode which has attracted much attention from several scholars over the years.

Clamurro has used many studies in preparing his book as is evident from the large bibliography and some 250 explanatory notes found throughout the text. He has generally provided useful analysis and suggestive thoughts in this work.

Donald W. Bleznick
University of Cincinnati

This edition of thirteen sainetes provides an unusually diverse selection from Ramón de la Cruz's comic theater. The editor, seeking a more representative collection of Cruz's comic theater has included less accessible sainetes in addition to the well-known sainetes like Manolo (here accompanied by the generally neglected Introducción para la tragedia ridícula de Manolo), Las castañeras picadas and La Petra y la Juana. Evidence of this collection's diversity is the fact that it contains only one work, Manolo, that appeared in the earlier anthology of John Dowling (Sainetes I. Madrid: Castalia, 1981) and has not a single play in common with M. Coulon's edition (Sainetes. Madrid: Taurus, 1985). As the language of these playlets is at times abstruse to the modern reader, it is worthy of note that both Dowling and Coulon provide more explanatory notes than Lafarga. Lafarga's edition contains one previously unpublished sainete, La merienda a escote, based on the only known manuscript of the play. First staged on February 4, 1774 to accompany the sixth part of Pedro Vayalarde, La merienda a escote, a mediocre comic piece, portrays the plays, complications, and ultimate failure of a proposed celebration. Its primary interest lies in its depiction of the majos and majas of eighteenth-century Madrid. This anthology is more extensive by five and three respectively than the similar recent editions by Dowling and Coulon. However, the latter anthologists provide, in this reviewer's opinion, plays of more interest to eighteenth-century audiences as well as to present-day readers.

Lafarga's forty-two page introduction contains a sketch of the author's life and works, a brief commentary on each of the thirteen sainetes, an appendix identifying all the actors who appear in these playlets, and a very useful bibliography. In the introduction Lafarga treats succinctly topics such as the problematic classification of Don Ramón's sainetes, the attacks on his theater by contemporaries, the realistic details of the stage directions, and the question of originality and imitation. Numerous critics, including Lafarga, have identified foreign sources for many of Cruz's sainetes (some seventeen per cent of his output were adaptations from the French theater). However, Lafarga believes that Ramón de la Cruz «realizó una creativa ... labor de transformación y adaptación, 'nacionalizando' sus modelos» (30). Nevertheless, the fact that he often based his one-act comic pieces on foreign plays taints his image as a defender of traditional Spanish values against the influx of foreign taste and ideas. It is also ironic that Cruz apparently had more success staging his adaptations than he did his original sainetes (Coulon, 36).

While this is a carefully edited anthology worthy of recommendation, it is less valuable, on balance, than

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the editions by Dowling and Coulon which provide the reader more insightful information on Cruz's theater and eighteenth-century society.

Edward V. Coughlin
University of Cincinnati

In this admirable book, Susan Kirkpatrick sets out to investigate «the problematic of subjectivity and gender within which the beginnings of a Spanish tradition of women's writing took shape» (1).

Kirkpatrick's study focuses on the «doubly bind» in which Spanish women writers of that period found themselves, most notably Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Carolina Coronado and Cecilia Böhl de Faber. Seduced by a new vision of personal freedom and the individual self brought about by Liberal and Romantic ideas, they were eager to write about themselves. But they were doubly constrained by a Spanish tradition that forbade them personal freedom and self-expression, and by new Romantic models that portrayed women either as objects of desire or as symbols through which male fears and aspirations were represented. When Spanish women writers began to explore their complex feminine selves, and discovered how removed these were both from traditional domestic roles and from literary models, they were on new and dangerous ground. Deep conflicts and contradictions were reflected in their writings.

De Avellaneda's exploration of the female lyric voice led her to what Kirkpatrick calls «a point of no return» (207) at which she stopped writing poetry. Kirkpatrick provides evidence that Coronado's poetic persona fell victim to its inner contradictions, and that Böhl's ambivalence about her feminine identity caused the ultimate failure of her efforts to pioneer the Spanish realist novel. Although many of the texts produced by women during this period were soon forgotten, and the import of the moment submerged or misunderstood by official culture, Kirkpatrick believes that these feminine concerns re-emerged in the next generation of women writers, and persisted in the works of Rosalía de Castro and Emilia Pardo Bazán.

Kirkpatrick's Introduction traces the vast changes that swept over social and economic structures in Europe and Spain during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Chapter 1 investigates how these changes shaped a new tradition of writing and subjectivity. Chapter 2 traces political and cultural forces that influenced Spanish women, enabling them to be heard through what she calls «print culture»: the great number of newspapers, magazines, and books written by or for Spanish women that appeared between 1835 and 1850, and that she has meticulously documented.

Chapter 3 examines those male writers she calls «Spanish paradigms of the Romantic self»: Larra, the Duke of Rivas and Espronceda. Two excellent chapters are devoted to Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's narrative and poetry («Feminizing the Romantic Subject in Narrative» and «Modulating the Lyre»), one each to Carolina Coronado's poetry («Waterflower») and to Cecilia Böhl's fiction, particularly La Gaviota («Denying the Self»).

Kirkpatrick concludes by evaluating the significance of this brief period of brilliance in Spanish women's writing. An Appendix offers selections of Gómez de Avellaneda's and Coronado's poetry currently unavailable in modern editions (unlike all the other Spanish quotations, these poems are untranslated). The Index is a model of its kind and will benefit readers, students and scholars.

This elegantly written and edited study is part of a trend in Spanish feminist studies, which in earlier phases were bio-bibliographical, or focused on a limited number of Spanish women authors and individual works. Las Románticas is based on a comparative perspective of the Romantic movement, with intimate knowledge of Rousseau, Byron, Balzac, Mary Shelley, George Sand and a host of other European writers. It also offers subtle, sensitive and often brilliant close readings of texts written by Spanish Romantic authors of both genders. Thus the women writers alluded to in the title, who as individuals have received a great deal of critical attention, are now placed in their proper historical and artistic contexts within a larger Spanish and European tradition. In addition, Kirkpatrick's research in heretofore unknown Spanish primary sources brings to light a literary canon that invites further exploration.

Kirkpatrick's book deserves to be read not only by its natural audience of Hispanist and feminist scholars, but by anyone interested in the history of ideas and creative influence.

Ofelia L. Alayeto
University of San Francisco

Reading La Regenta shifts authority conventionally attributed to the author or narrator to the fragmented and duplicitous texts that undermine the novel's presumed representationality. Two main types of «texts» are read one against the other: the folletín of seduction, with its repetition, clichés and sentimentality contaminating every level of Vetustan life, and the «classics», including everything from Santa Teresa's Vida to Zorrilla's Don Juan Tenorio. Sieburth uses this textual war to explain the tension resulting from the novel's other conspicuous dichotomies such as high vs. low, spontaneous vs. mechanical, spiritual vs. physical, and imagination vs. reality. The shaping texts of La Regenta are seen as so powerful that they determine the life of Vetustans, that is, Vetustans do

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not use folletín speech and manners but are created by the folletín, which also eventually adulterates both the narrator's discourse and Ana's private life. Thus language becomes important not for what it signifies but for its performative value and the relation between signifier and signified is dislodged: «If we further consider that both the oven and covert levels of Vetustan life are determined by texts, that all discourse and all action (i.e., all signifiers) must pass through a literary filter, it becomes evident that Vetusta represents a challenge to a naive faith in the integrity of the sign, in the transparent relationship between language and world which is characteristic of the school of realism» (24).

La Regenta, then, is cast as a battle for the control of meaning in which two warring literatures infiltrate and contaminate each other. The main actors, or, more properly, instruments, in Sieburth's drama of the control of meaning are the narrator, who attempts to draw the readers into his classical camp through ridicule of or sympathy for most of the characters, the Vetustans, whose folletín eventually engulfs even the town's most resistant, exceptional resident, and Ana Ozores, who moves irreversibly from the narrator's camp into the world of the folletín by the end of the novel. On a first reading of La Regenta, the narrator's sane world view seems to embrace wholeheartedly classic values at the expense of folletinesque Vetustan mores, but on subsequent readings the narration's ironic juxtapositions and mises en abymes serve to destabilize the narrative point of view. Readers begin to question the narrator's reliability and to recognize his manipulative gestures as it becomes clear that he sometimes uses techniques (like melodrama and sentimentality) that align him with the folletín camp.

The result of this narrative slipperiness is entropy as Sieburth has studied in her 1987 article «Interpreting La Regenta: Coherence vs. Entropy». La Regenta subverts the narrator's attempts to fix stable meanings through its use of doubling, systematic self reflexivity and mise en abyme. As all of the many segments of the novel begin to interact with one another, the narrator's authority as teller of the tale is put into question: «the main source of interpretive possibilities, then, is not the narrator, but the uncontrollable dialogue of reflecting segments» (96). According to Sieburth this indeterminateness of meaning is uncharacteristically entropic for the nineteenth century, and this is what makes La Regenta a «masterpiece» with «seething textual energy» (97).

The notion of competing literary genres is compelling, and the parallels drawn with the Quijote and other classical texts are insightful. According to Sieburth, this «intertextual dialogue ... results in the mutual contamination of classic and folletín» (74) that enriches the latter while adulterating the former. Of course, the choice of the verbs «enrich» and «adulterate» give clues to Sieburth's own «world view» regarding the struggling genres. The dichotomous relations she studies are not only value laden in La Regenta; in an unrecognized repetition of the novel's story, Sieburth's story perpetuates the value system that she studies, a fact that, unfortunately, she does not discuss.

Overall, Reading «La Regenta» is a well conceived and documented study, written in untypically (considering its deconstructive conclusion) straight-forward prose. But because its principal conclusion has the potential to provoke controversy, the author should have explored in a general discussion the implications of an entropic reading of the novel (that is, of any novel). If meaning is uncontrollable, our job as readers is also «impossible» and then what recourse do we have except the same madness that befalls Ana when her texts fail her? We, like Ana, would be doomed to silence. The book's conclusion («Ana, like the text, is a sign constantly shifting in meaning, inexhaustible precisely through the continual dialectic of the forces of control and coherence with the forces of fragmentation and entropy»), would have been the ideal stepping stone for this discussion that we can only hope will follow in the author's future works.

Lou Chamon-Deutsch
State University of New York at Stony Brook

La conmemoración del centenario de La Regenta (1885) produjo una rica cosecha de trabajos sobre la obra de Leopoldo Alas, y podría decirse que el presente volumen clausura este ciclo de clariniana. El libro reúne a un conjunto de especialistas, norteamericanos principalmente, en Clarín: James Mandrell, Diane F. Urey, John Rutherford, Harriet S. Turner, Stephanie Sieburth, Elizabeth D. Sánchez, Noël Valis, Frank Durand, Agnes Moncy Gullón, José Manuel Herrán, Carolyn Richmond, Douglass M. Rogers y Laura Rivkin.

De los catorce ensayos de que consta el volumen, ocho se ocupan de La Regenta. Abre la colección el trabajo de Mandrell que presta la mitad de su título a todo el número: «Malevolent Insemination: Don Juan Tenorio in La Regenta», y que junto al de Urey, «Writing Ana in Clarín's La Regenta», abanderan la crítica postformalista de la novela; las ideas de Derrida conceden carácter a ambos estudios. El título de Urey explica ya la idea de su bien argüido análisis: que Ana Ozores, como el lenguaje, nunca hace presente lo real, sino que las palabras disimulan su ausencia. Mandrell, en cambio, llena la ausencia de la mujer, asistido por Lacan y por la teoría feminista, con la omnipotente presencia patriarcal del Tenorio (los tenorios, Fermín de Pas y Álvaro Mesía) en la joven protagonista. Ambos esfuerzos reflejan lo que las teorías del presente añaden a la lectura de textos de ayer y, a la vez, subrayan lo que no abarcan, el mundo decimonónico recreado en el texto. Con buen acierto la editora

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escogió el título, porque le añade a la colección un toque de contemporaneidad; eso de inseminación malevolente suena a degradación y a las reivindicaciones del hoy.

Con Rutherford, «On Translating La Regenta: Sameness and Otherness», el libro cambia de onda. Pasamos a comprender las difíciles opciones planteadas a un traductor de obras decimonónicas, y cuáles fueron las soluciones adoptadas por él al traducir la novela al inglés. Aquí se nos explica cómo el traductor moldea la lengua para reproducir el original. A media distancia entre los dos primeros artículos y el de Rutherford se hallan los cuatro siguientes: «From the Verbal to the Visual in La Regenta», por Tumer; «Kiss and Tell: The Toad in La Regenta», por Sieburth; «Beyond the Realist Paradigm: Subversive Stratagems in La Regenta and Madame Bovary», de Sánchez; «The Perfect Copy: Clarín's Su único hijo and the Flaubertian Connection», de Valis. Todos ellos utilizan la crítica principal existente en torno a la obra de Alas y abordan temas a los que los estudiosos vienen dedicando atención: lo visual, el famoso beso que cierra la novela, y la dilucidación de lo que significa la novela en la órbita flaubertiana. Cada artículo supone una contribución importante, sobre el complemento que lo visual añade a lo verbal (Turner), la sutilidad con que el narrador asturiano nos hace descreer de lo que parece cierto (Sánchez), la conciencia autorial de que estaba haciendo una copia de otra novela, mejorándola con la presente (Valis). Mis escuetos comentarios hacen escasa justicia a unos estudios de estimable valor crítico precisamente por la variedad de ángulos y sofisticación con que se tocan los temas.

Durand y Moncy Gullón, en «Structure and the Drama of Role-Playing in La Regenta» y «Naming in Chapter XI of La Regenta» efectúan dos finos comentarios textuales de aspectos inéditos en la crítica sobre la novela, que revelan la riqueza sicológica con que Alas elaboraba sus mundos de ficción.

Completan el número cuatro estudios. «The Structure and Meaning of Cuervo», por José Manuel González Herrán; «Juan Ruiz, or Leopoldo Alas' Literary Apprenticeship», por Carolyn Richmond; «Language, Image and the Thought Process in Clarín's Pipá», por Douglass M. Rogers; y «Clarín's Musical Ideal», por Laura Rivkin. Herrán comenta con aptitud la novelita de Alas, los contrastes que la estructuran, mientras Richmond efectúa un cumplido examen de la revista juvenil redactada por el adolescente Alas. Rogers realiza un admirable e iluminador comentario de lo inexpresable en Pipá, que precede a la colaboración final, donde Rivkin muestra a Alas luchando por representar lo inefable.

Los interesados en Alas encontrarán aquí una fuente importante de trabajo, que con su talento habitual Valis ha sabido coordinar.

Germán Gullón
University of California, Davis

Emilia Pardo Bazán has long enjoyed the reputation of bring the premier writer of short stories among the authors of the two principal realist/naturalist generations. The volumes under review, in conjunction with their elaborate and painstaking editorial apparatus, bring for the first time to general readers and scholars the complete body of her production in the genre and a goodly amount of valuable bibliographical information.

These volumes are the logical continuation of the editor's earlier studies Los cuentos de Emilia Pardo Bazán (1979), La realidad gallega en los cuentos de Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921) (1983), Emilia Pardo Bazán. Aficiones peligrosas (1989), as well as of his 1984 anthology of her stories for Taurus. Moreover it may be considered the complement of Harry L. Kirby's labor -in his 1973 edition of the third volume of Pardo Bazán's Obras completas for Aguilar- of bringing to light as many of the author's uncollected short stories as have been discovered. The greatest discrepancy between Paredes Núñez and Kirby is over something like eight stories in a corpus of at least 580 such productions. While Kirby's purpose in 1973 was to publish 163 theretofore uncollected stories, thereby leaving the reader to consult the sixteen published volumes of her collected stories, Paredes Núñez has tried to edit and publish all the stories.

Both Kirby and Paredes agree in organizing the uncollected stories in thematic subsets. They justify this practice by citing Pardo Bazán's own precedent in her collections Cuentos de Marineda (1892), Cuentos de amor (1898), Cuentos de Navidad y Reyes (1902), Cuentos trágicos (1912), and so forth. But, especially in the case of Paredes Núñez's project of publishing the Cuentos completos, this decision may be questioned by some. In Volume 4, for example, which contains only previously uncollected stories, Paredes's grouping of «Cuentos trágicos y dramáticos» (41-114) includes stories published originally between 1883 and 1920; his grouping «Cuentos de antaño» (155-231) gathers stories from 1892 until 1920; his «Cuentos de fantasía» (233-71) bring together stories from 1879 until 1919. Independent of Pardo Bazán's own practice in collecting her stories, academic readers especially might have preferred a chronological ordering of the work she did not bring together. On the other hand the aforementioned «Cuentos de fantasía» or other groupings, also from Volume 4, such as «Cuentos de Galicia» (131-54) or «Cuentos de humor» (273-94) may serve the purpose of helping to direct reader attention, especially that of a more general audience, to more specific and manageable units of Pardo Bazán's stories than would be constituted by nearly two volumes of scores of otherwise

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unconnected stories.

Another possible criticism of the present edition would include the failure to reproduce in their entirety and at the head of the collections Pardo Bazán's «Prefacio» to Cuentos de amor and her «Prólogo» to Cuentos sacroprofanos (1899). Even though Paredes Núñez does quote extensively and to good purpose from each document in his notes, his decision not to republish this first-edition material gives us a somewhat mutilated version of those two volumes. The «Prefacio» offers a significant, if brief discussion of the short-story genre in which interesting points are made about stories which simply retell life events as opposed to those created by the imagination of the author. From there Pardo Bazán passes on to discuss charges of plagiarism of two kinds: those based on similarities of plot and character in contemporary stories by different authors; and, the publishing of stories based on material already formulated in story books of past times and/or other traditions. The «Prólogo» in noteworthy for its attempt at explaining the thematic grouping of the works included.

Another editorial decision which detracts somewhat from the «first-edition» aura of Paredes Núñez's edition is that he does not republish -as collections- La dama joven (1885), Cuentos escogidos (1891), Lecciones literarias (n.d.) and Arco iris (n.d.). This seems to be because the first and third collection also contain short novels and essays respectively, and the other two contain stories already collected by or often republished by Pardo Bazán herself in other volumes. The contents of these volumes, though, may be easily known by consulting the complete sixteen lists of stories which Paredes Núñez offers in his «Índice de colecciones publicadas por la autora» (IV: 427-31).

The final criticism of this edition of Pardo Bazán's complete stories is of the sometimes large number (four or five) of errata per page in the text of the stories and of the editorial apparatus. Normally these errors are easily resolvable, but once in a while would require the academic reader to consult earlier editions and/or periodical sources to correct.

The virtues of Paredes Núñez's work in editing the short stories are many. He has created, in the fourth volume, the index already mentioned and four more; they are: alphabetical by title, accompanied by periodical source and date; chronological by year, but not day or month; by source of periodical publication, subordered by year and, according to the publication in question, by day and month and/or number; and, alphabetical by title with volume and first-page reference in the Paredes Núñez edition. These indices should help locate stories more clearly remembered for their plot and character than for their bibliographical source information. This work is aided by the editor's forty-five pages of «Censo de personajes» (IV: 377-42 4). Together with Paredes Núñez's notes, the «Censo» draws reader attention to recurring characters and themes throughout Pardo Bazán's short and long fiction, as well as her theater. Perhaps benefiting from the great amount of scholarship dedicated to the work of Pérez Galdós or from the kind of exhaustive cross-referencing notes Juan Oleza organized for his Cátedra edition of La Regenta, Paredes Núñez's notes give the reader a very special feel for the density and interrelatedness of Pardo Bazán's world by interrelating the themes of her fiction and her articles on contemporary events for newspapers and magazines.

In conclusion, then, it must be stated that Paredes Núñez and the «Pedro Barrie de la Maza, Conde de Fenosa» Foundation have done a great service in collecting, editing, indexing and publishing these Cuentos completos. Easy access to reliable texts is the basis of the broadened appreciation of any writer. And when this task is accomplished for the work of a major author, it is much more important and useful. This said, though, it is my personal judgment that the perusal of these stories from forty years of the creative life of Pardo Bazán will not change critical opinion of her contribution to Spanish literature. If anything, the stories, as a whole, seem less responsive to the changing socio-aesthetical world than do the novels. It is hard to find weighty equivalents in Pardo Bazán's short stories to such novels as Insolación (1889) and La quimera (1905), or to short novels such as La dama joven (1885). Moreover the greatest virtue of the stories may well be to continue to provide two decades into the twentieth century an authoritative realist/ naturalist recreation of Spanish national life manifesting itself in Madrid and Galicia.

Stephen Miller
Texas A&M University

Not withstanding the fact that the secondary bibliography on Juan Goytisolo includes several recent books so derivative as to border on plagiarism, the present study of this distinguished Spanish author (described by Carlos Fuentes as the best living Spanish novelist) is rather refreshing in its treatment of «The Mendiola Trilogy» (Señas de identidad [1966], Reivindicación del conde don Julián [1970], and Juan sin tierra [1975]), Makbara (1980) and Paisajes después de la batalla (1982). Las virtudes del pájaro solitario (1988) is dealt with briefly and somewhat hurriedly in an afterword because the novel came out too late to be examined thoroughly.

The monograph comprises an introduction, six chapters, a conclusion, an afterword and a highly selective bibliography. Although Six's intention is not a chronological study of the development of Goytisolo's oeuvre, Chapter 1 («The Seeds of Chaos: Genesis of Goytisolo's Ideology») presents a historical overview of Goytisolo's earlier works. Chapter 1 is used as a foundation for what Six calls the «new reading» of the works examined in the chapters that follow. It is her intention to get away from a study of the motifs and themes and go «inward or downward,

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in search of the heart or bedrock» (3) of the ideology of Goytisolo's texts. Chapter 2 («Esquizofrenia colectiva: The Attack on Duality») examines a number of opposites in the novels: black and white, sinner and saint, victim and executioner, etc. However, Six does not limit herself to their enumeration, as have some previous studies, but rather shows how Goytisolo has subverted/reversed traditional correspondences, so that white is no longer good and black is not associated with evil. Thus, a totally new perspective of the texts is obtained. Chapter 3 («The Pariah: Outsider or Uplifter?») elaborates and illustrates how the reversal of values of the binary oppositions has taken place. This chapter serves too as stepping-stone to Chapter 4 («Reivindicación del caos: Depictions of the Good Place») where Six demonstrates how the Spanish author undermines concepts of ordered hierarchy by rejecting the idea that order is good and chaos is evil. Six reminds the reader of how the word Utopia has been misunderstood as a result of misreadings of Thomas Moore. She stresses that for Goytisolo «the methodical form of the utopian novel, clearly and logically describing the ideal society, is itself a threat to freedom» (129). Thus, the chaotic structure of Goytisolo's novels underscores the fact that creativity need not be ordered. Chapter 5 («Todo es posible en la página: Metamorphoses») analyzes what is understood by chaos and how it relates to the notion of fluidity and metamorphosis. The last chapter («El impacto lustral de la sangre: Blood Symbolism») studies the recurring motif of blood in Goytisolo's fiction, showing how all the analyses of the preceding five chapters lead to the specific symbol of blood which, in Six's reading, represents Goytisolo's ideal: «chaos-unity of formless flux» (189).

Six's prose is concise and lucid without the rhetoric so fashionable in the past two decades -jargon which does not produce serious inquiry but gives the impression of complexity and depth without making a substantial contribution to scholarship. She obviously agrees with Ortega's dictum that «la claridad es la cortesía del autor con el lector».

The monograph is recommended to all those interested in Goytisolo's oeuvre and should be a great help to future scholars of this important Spanish writer.

Genaro J. Pérez
University of Texas of the Permian Basin

The relatively small number of books written by Esther Tusquets has already generated an unusually prolific critical response. Her major works appeal to a wide variety of tastes: those who seek a feminist perspective, postmodern tendencies, or sociocultural reflections on contemporary Spanish life -to mention three of the most predominant themes- are not disappointed with her fiction. Given this context, it is surprising to learn that no full-length study on her works has been published until now. The Sea of Becoming makes up for this deficiency with studies on all book-length works except La conejita Marcela, a book for children.

Two articles focus on her first (and best known) novel. Kathleen M. Glenn presents the various functions of art in El mismo mar de todos los veranos and points out the various literary techniques which join art and the narrator's life. Roberta Johnson («On the Waves of Time: Memory in El mismo mar...») studies the constant presence of the sea in this novel: the sea metaphor has both spatial and temporal functions and serves as an apt vehicle for female experience. Stacey L. Dolgin interprets the aesthetic of eroticism in Tusquets's second novel, El amor es un juego solitario: sexuality and fictional process interpret in their techniques of game-playing and liberating elements. Janet Pérez continues the debate on whether Siete miradas en un mismo paisaje should be considered as a novel or a collection of short stories. A psychic identity joins the main characters (who are different females in each piece, but who share the name of Sara); autobiographical elements and repeated literary devices further link the females.

By far the greatest attention is lavished on Para no volver (1985): five different perspectives on this latest novel engage in a fascinating dialogue on Tusquets's evolving novelistic art. Luis F. Costa's interpretation of this novel as a mirror of social reality also offers an excellent introduction for those unfamiliar with Franco's policies and their effect on women; Gonzalo Navajas's study of «Civilization and Fictions of Love in Para no volver» is a fine companion piece in the consideration of the artificial construct of civilization, which constrains individual spontaneity. Robert Spires's «The Dialogic Structure of Para no volver» analyzes double-voiced discourse, gender roles and reader participation. Tusquets's use of intertextuality extends to both the title and epigraph of Para no volver (from Rubén Darío's «Canción de otoño en primavera»). Two studies take the lines from the epigraph as a point of departure: for Catherine G. Bellver, intertextuality is used to characterize the protagonist and to engage the reader in elements outside the novel; in «Through the Mirror and Over the Threshold of Desire», Elizabeth J. Ordóñez discusses the character's mid-life crisis and subsequent reclamation of her own desire.

Only one article (Mary S. Vásquez's «Actor and Spectator in the Fiction of Esther Tusquets») works with the whole body of fiction, selecting and explicating the many examples and functions of the theater which fill these books. The collection closes with a condensed version of two interviews with Tusquets conducted by Mercedes Mazquiarán de Rodríguez. Elizabeth Espadas's annotated bibliography and Mary Vásquez's brief introduction to Tusquets's life and works are useful tools for reference and further research.

Both the text and the quotations of this collection

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are in English, making the book completely accessible to the non-Spanish speaker. This feature may introduce Tusquets to a wider audience, encourage scholars to study her as a fine example of contemporary writing and hence to give her a rightful place in international letters as well as to incorporate her works in women's studies courses.

This collection will be a valuable asset for anyone interested in exploring Tusquets's literary world in particular or in pinpointing some of the issues of concern in contemporary letters. Since many of this author's themes tend to surface time and again, the reader will profit by all the material in these studies, which serve both as an excellent introduction and as a serious scholarly contribution to the study of Tusquets's literature.

Margaret E. W. Jones
University of Kentucky

In this collection of studies presented at an Ohio State University symposium ten years after Francisco Franco's death, the outstanding scholars disagree about several aspects of the transition from dictatorship to democracy, including when it started and how much has changed. As Amell states in the introduction, «the change is seen mainly as an evolution rather than as a rupture» with the past (12). Two key factors have influenced the arts in Spain: the end of the dictatorship with its concomitant abolition of censorship, and the expanded role of the «cultural industry», (13, 15), including government aid to theaters and artists, publication of a greater variety of literature (including revisions of historical texts), and the sponsorship of more literary prizes.

José Carlos Mainer's study provides historical perspective on both politics and literature, pointing out that important changes in literature began long before 1975. Obviously, the range of subjects treated expanded after the dictator's death, as did the literature from what were later called the autonomous states. While he praises such plurality, Mainer criticizes the search for Spain's non-existent «magical history» (32). Instead, he suggests a comprehensive review of all aspects of Spanish nationalism. Pilar Miró's overview of the Spanish cinema during the period of transition is optimistic while pointing out problems which still remain. She attributes much cinematic success to new policies which ended censorship, provided government subsidies to the Spanish film industry, and increased the distribution of Spanish films abroad. Ruiz Ramón similarly studies the problems and attempted remedies for the theatre of the same period, believing little real transition occurred before 1982. He praises Operation Rescue, which staged earlier twentieth-century works which were prohibited after 1939, and Operation Recovery, which recovered works written and prohibited during Franco's regime. Rodríguez Méndez, on the other hand, views the efforts of the socialist government to stimulate Spanish theater as ignorant and misguided. This, in his view, has exacerbated problems and lowered the quality of theatrical productions.

Overviews of the novels, poetry, and painting of transitional Spain were written by Ignacio Soldevilla Durante, Philip Silver, and Vicente Cantarino, respectively. The novel lost ground to informative historical texts and the print media, as people were able to read uncensored reports of events. Silver discusses the these directions poetry has taken: classical, surrealist, and confessional. Trends in the plastic arts are also eclectic, and there is less interest in figurative art.

Three articles, although enlightening and quite interesting, seem out of place among the broad perspectives on genres: Summerhill's study of Antonio Colinas's poetry, Randolph Pope's article on Juan Goytisolo's Paisajes después de la batalla, and Carlos Rojas's explication of Salvador Dalí. The inclusion of the latter is particularly puzzling, since the works studied were produced prior to the Spanish Civil War. This belies the collection's subtitle «Spain in the Eighties».

While the translations from Spanish to English are generally adequate, they are sometimes awkward and on occasion include confusing Latinisms or are grammatically incorrect.

These minor shortcomings are far outweighed by the perceptive views expressed. This book, an important contribution lo the literary and artistic history of the 1980s, will appeal to Spanish majors, to their professors, and to historians alike.

Eunice D. Myers
Wichita State University

Claudio Rodríguez is surely one of the most difficult of contemporary Spanish poets; his work at least gives rise to diametrically opposed interpretations. Initial readings of his books present him as a romantic seer or pastoral bard whose visions appear -spontaneously and unmediated- as he communes ecstatically with nature. More recent readings find in his texts an awareness of the fickleness of language, and a sense that its structure and figural deferrals form a cul-de-sac from which there is no escape. In Jonathan Mayhew's reading- an intellectually sophisticated, poststructural interpretation of Rodríguez's major poems- the poet is a Spanish mystic with a twist: a visionary idealist who nevertheless is sufficiently contemporary with this postmodern age to know that language unravels all mystic visions even as it might create them.

Mayhew has set himself two goals. On the one

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hand, he intends to show that Rodríguez is not a naive but a self-reflexive poet who struggles against language's snares and traps; accordingly he constructs a poetics for Rodríguez from Rodríguez's major poems. Mayhew's is a philosophically elaborate explication which will be of interest to specialist readers of Rodríguez's work for the profundity of its observations and the stern (if offensive) logic of its arguments. On the other hand, Mayhew throughout his study is analyzing the linguistic «sing» -the relationship between the «signifier» and the «signified». As he teases out the possible permutations of «arbitrariness» and «motivation» in that relationship, Mayhew offers a stimulating meditation for critical theorists who are interested in how this aspect of modern linguistic theory affects contemporary poetry and relates to modern poetics. In this respect, I wholeheartedly recommend Chapters 1 and 6 for their clarity, breadth and freshness.

The core of the book, Chapters 2 through 5, devotes a chapter to each of Rodríguez's books: Don de la ebriedad (1953); Conjuros (1958); Alianza y condena (1965); El vuelo de la celebración (1976) and later poetry (1976-83). In each chapter, many of the important poems of each book are analyzed in detail. (The titles or first lines of these poems will be found in the Index). No brief comments can do justice to the complexity of Mayhew's arguments, but suffice it to say that Rodríguez is first a visionary whose quest for transcendence and thirst for a timeless poetics ultimately alienates him from nature. He is then a linguistically sophisticated «social» poet who surrenders his self in order to achieve (the illusion of) a participatory poetics. Rodríguez, Mayhew argues, subsequently becomes less optimistic and more critically self-aware; with a bleaker vision of reality, he struggles to create polyvalent signs which are both negative and positive in their meaning. The later poetry synthesizes these various impulses, at times even creating «an autonomous signifier severed of its connection with the signified» (128).

Mayhew's readings of the poems he has selected for analysis are always dense and challenging. In all, he has produced a very serious interpretation, not only of Rodríguez but also of contemporary poetics. It is therefore a pity that the finished product is marred by such sloppy proof-reading of spelling, syntax, and translation.

John C. Wilcox
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)

El cuento español, 1940-1980 perteneciente a la colección Castalia Didáctica está dividido, como ya es costumbre en esta colección, en diversas partes. De la pluma del antólogo viene la amplia Introducción en la cual Barrero Pérez presenta una visión panorámica del cuento español y su relación con la novela entre los años 1940 y 1980; una Bibliografía general breve, pero básica, sobre la novela y el cuento español (1940-80); y la mención de dos antologías de cuentos, esenciales para este período: El cuento español de posguerra, editado por Medardo Fraile y la conocida Antología de cuentistas españoles contemporáneos, editada por Francisco García Pavón. El cuerpo central del libro está compuesto por doce cuentos: «Marcelo Brito», de Camilo José Cela; «Así vivimos», de Tomás Borrás; «El aprendiz de cobrador», de Ignacio Aldecoa; «Vida nueva», de Ana María Matute; «La vocación», de Jesús Fernández Santos; «Lo que queda enterrado», de Carmen Martín Gaite; «El conejo», de Miguel Delibes; «El mundo transparente», de Francisco García Pavón; «Descubridor de nada», de Medardo Fraile; «Con la mejor voluntad», de Alonso Zamora Vicente; «Reicheneau», de Juan Benet y «Mozart, K 124, para flauta y orquesta», de Jorge Ferrer-Vidal.

Como ocurre con todas las antologías, la selección de obras resulta siempre subjetiva y así lo admite el editor de la presente colección. Barrero Pérez señala además otros criterios para la selección de cuentos a incluir, como son la representatividad, la calidad literaria, el dominio formal del género y la variedad temática, así como «la posibilidad que estos [cuentos] ofrecían de seguir con ellos los pasos de la narrativa española de los últimos decenios y su variedad de tendencias, que de alguna forma ... se ve reflejada en la presente antología» (53). Barrero Pérez incluye dos tipos de notas a pie de página; el primer grupo es exclusivamente lingüístico y ofrece notas sobre el significado o la aclaración de ciertas palabras de vocabulario; el segundo es de carácter temático, con comentarios de texto útiles para la comprensión del relato.

A los cuentos sigue una sección denominada «Documentos y juicios críticos» que recoge textos breves en los que los doce autores representados comentan algún aspecto de la literatura, o sobre los años de la posguerra. La última sección del libro, «Orientaciones para el estudio», ofrece una serie de comentarios textuales sobre los cuentos presentados, así como ejercicios destinados a una mayor comprensión, por parte del estudiante, del proceso de análisis de texto.

Como ya lo indica la colección a la que pertenece, el valor principal del libro es didáctico. Está diseñado para su uso en clase, ya sea ésta una clase de literatura española en una universidad extranjera, con alumnos de tercero o cuarto año, o en un instituto español de enseñanza media.

Barrero Pérez consigue dar una buena visión de conjunto sobre la situación de la ficción en general y del cuento en particular, en la posguerra, y logra su objetivo al seleccionar cuentos representativos de las distintas tendencias de la literatura de la época: tremendismo y neorrealismo principalmente. Si algún defecto tiene el libro es que, en un afán de aclarar conceptos o situaciones a lectores no muy versados en la literatura o la historia del período, el autor incluye gran número de comentarios parentéticos en su Introducción,

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que rompen el ritmo de la lectura. Sería preferible expresar dichos comentarios de forma distinta -a veces bastaría quitar el paréntesis-, o simplemente dejarlos fuera del texto.

Isabel Guerra McSpadden
Texas Tech University

The untimely death in 1984 of the founder of the «Asociación de Literatura Femenina Hispánica» and its official journal Letras Femeninas, Victoria Urbano, stilled the voice of one of women's literature's most active and effective supporters. Adelaida López de Martínez, current editor of Letras Femeninas, has prepared for publication this final manuscript by Urbano with an admiring prefatory acknowledgement of the value of the author's scholarly contributions, correction of mechanical and format errors in the manuscript's original form, useful explanatory endnotes, and specific clarifying subdivisions of the three large sections in which the manuscript reached her. The result of Martínez's conscientious curatorship of Urbano's manuscript is a significant and perhaps controversial addition to Sor Juana scholarship.

As Martínez states in her prologue, «Victoria descubrió en Sor Juana a la poeta del amor. Este es el gran hallazgo y el gran acierto de Victoria» (xi). And the love that Sor Juana displayed, in Urbano's plain and consistent declarations, was her love for the Marquesa de Mancera, Leonor de Carreto, the wife of Mexico's viceroy, and the «Fabio» of her poems. After the Marquesa's death, Sor Juana was able to transfer this deep and troubled affection to a succeeding viceroyal wife, the Condesa de Paredes. Indeed throughout the book, Urbano insists on the very secular, often physical, nature of the love that Sor Juana expressed in her poetry. Urbano even reaches the conclusion, by means of theological demonstration, that Sor Juana's «romances de amor divino» were not mystic poems at all, as commonly held. And among other challenges to this contemporary Mexican critic, Urbano summarily condemns Octavio Paz's belief stated in his 1982 study, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o Las trampas de la fe, that Sor Juana's lovers were imaginary. Urbano further disputes previous criticism by stating that the love poems to the «esposo muerto» were not an attempt to come to terms with the father of her illegitimacy, but liras occasioned by the death of her beloved Marquesa de Mancera.

The book invites, sustains, and rewards a reader's attention on many other counts as well. The authority and conviction with which Urbano writes lead her to stress certain well-known facts of Sor Juana's life and baroque consciousness in ways that solidify the book's central thesis: Sor Juana's love of learning could only be cultivated in a convent, and her unconventional human love could only be expressed in poetry. As for the landmark Primero sueño, Urbano believes that Sor Juana here justifies and exalts her pursuit of erudition by demonstrating that while shadow obscures the divine presence, God is readily experienced through the light of intelligence and knowledge, «'por los medios naturales' del entendimiento humano y del estudio» (183). Steadily infusing her argument with historical and cultural observation on colonial Mexico, Urbano writes with a tone now challenging and scolding, now personal and fond. Be it said finally that Martínez has performed for students of Hispanic literature a valuable service by molding Urbano's highly readable, well-researched, and persuasive manuscript into this present book form.

Bart L. Lewis
California State University at San Marcos

La obra de Capote evidencia el creciente interés que este poeta ha causado en los últimos años. Otros críticos, como Richard Callan, Aldo Forés, José Sánchez Boudy, José Olivio Jiménez, Luis Mario, Óscar Fernández de la Vega, Jesse Fernández y José B. Fernández también se han ocupado de Acosta. El modernista y su isla incluye obras inéditas y poesías editadas entre 1976 y 1979; es decir, obras que no habían sido analizadas o presentadas en los estudios críticos de Callan (1973) y Forés (1976).

Hay siete capítulos, a saber: «La vida del poeta en su marco histórico», «El modernista y su obra», «Intimismo y poesía», «Martí y Acosta», «'La zafra': poema de combate», «Análisis de poemas» (el más extenso y de más valor crítico-literario) y «Opiniones sobre la lengua: consejos a Florén» (capítulo basado en prosa inédita, proporcionada a la autora por la viuda del poeta, Consuelo Díaz Carrasco). En la «Introducción» se ofrece un detallado sumario del modernismo, con referencias al inicio y evolución de ese movimiento en Cuba. Los apéndices incluyen poesías no recogidas en volumen, prosa inédita y epistolario. Como colofón, hay un conjunto de citas en prosa y verso de Acosta y de su poesía, «Acosta ante la crítica».

De gran utilidad en El modernista y su isla son: los comentarios sobre el modernismo en Acosta; el análisis crítico del largo y combativo poema «La Zafra»; la discusión de temas específicos (como la libertad, la fraternidad, la religión, la patria, el hispanismo, el amor, la naturaleza) y la comparación que se hace entre la poesía de Martí y la de Acosta.

El modernista y su isla es una edición bien cuidada. Contiene fotos del autor ya sea solo o acompañado de alguien: su esposa, el ex presidente Mendieta, el científico Carlos de la Torre y el escritor cubano-italiano, Gustavo Pitaluga. He encontrado pocas erratas:

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«Hermanifa» (34), en vez de «Hermanita»; «Apóstol y su isla» (40), en lugar de «El Apóstol y su isla»; «el machado» (42) que debió ser «el machadato» y «Santo Domingo» (255). Hay algunos datos inexactos, que deben ser advertidos: «Trigo de Luna» no fue publicado después de su muerte sino un año antes (1978) y la entrevista de Loló de la Torriente a Acosta fue efectuada en 1968, como lo indica la cita número 25 (84) y no en 1978 como se indica en otra parte (256).

En cuanto a la bibliografía, hay que advertir que la obra poética de Acosta no consta de diez libros (255) sino de once. Falta Poema del Centenario (Santa Clara: Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de Santa Clara, 1953). La sección «Escritos sobre Agustín Acosta» no incluye las monografías de Aldo Forés y de Richard Callan. La obra de Forés sí aparece, sin embargo, en la sección «Bibliografía General». Aparte de estas advertencias, El modernista y su isla resulta indispensable para los interesados en la vida y obra de este autor, que fuera consagrado «Poeta Nacional de Cuba» en 1955.

Jorge J. Rodríguez-Florido
Chicago State University

Long Brazil's best selling novelist at home and abroad, Jorge Amado (b. 1912) has, until now, had no book-length study of his narratives published in English. Thus, the present volume fills a very real void, symbolically blending this longstanding need with a selective, chronological analysis, characterized by clarity of exposition, critical balance and a sharp awareness of the extratextual relevance of the author's life and times. Emphasis is on Amado's later works, which coincide, as well, with those translations best known to his English-language audience.

Once past preface and chronology, Chamberlain presents his corpus in seven straightforward chapters, often subdivided by qualifying headings. The first chapter is introductory, overviewing all the author's fiction (most germane of which are his twenty-one novels) in a biographical and bibliographical context. Chapter 2 highlights Amado's early pieces and their varying adhesion to social realist tenets, concentrating on Jubiabá (1935) and Terras do sem fim (1943). Chapters 3 to 6 focus on five books belonging to the novelist's later period, whose different style is specifically examined at the outset. Chamberlain then delves into particulars, initially around the watershed Gabriela, cravo e canela (1958), its use of chronicle parody and the portrayal of the numerous female personages around whom the novel is structured. Chapter 4 encompasses Os velhos marinheiros (1961), a pair of novelettes published under one cover, where the author's increasing use of double perspective is scrutinized. The next chapter centers around Dona Flor e seus dos maridos (1966), its sociopolitical symbolism and possible allegory. In addition, Chamberlain analyses Amado's stylized inclusion of recipes and menus, his mention of numerous real-life figures in this and later novels, as well as his frequent recourse to supernatural characters and events. Chapter 6 goes en to decipher the role of parody and stylization of cordel literature vis-à-vis Tereza Batista cansada de guerra (1972), paying special attention to its effects on female characterization.

In chapter 7, Chamberlain synthesizes his findings, and those of others, intent on drawing some tangible conclusions with regard to the controversy surrounding Amado's later pieces, a factor central to the appreciation of his overall fiction. The question, in essence, is whether Amado abandoned meaningful social criticism or retread it more ingeniously, through increased use of humor, irony and satire; or, put in another way, if reliance on parodied chronicle, coinciding with the emergence of the «new» Amado, is more an excuse for creative lethargy or, instead, an innovative breakthrough in eliminating conventional narrative restraints. Chamberlain astutely leaves the question open-ended, concluding with an appeal for continued reevaluation of the controversy and modestly offering the present study, not in definitive terms, but rather as groundwork for future investigation. An ample note section and annotated bibliography, the latter broken down into book, article and unpublished dissertation sources, ensue, followed by the closing index.

From my perspective Jorge Amado is a unique and objective tool for specialist and aficionado alike. For the first time, it coherently brings together, in English and in an accessible, professional yet nonpedantic style, both the most salient observations of Amadian critics worldwide as well as Chamberlain's own fascinating views. The result of such exhaustive research is easily the best single piece of Amadiana so far published, in any language, and one sure to encourage increased interest, as much in the novelist's works as in the critical debate surrounding them.

Malcolm Silverman
San Diego State University

Although Borges has been the subject of many bibliographies, other reference books in regard to his life and work have been slow to come. Now with his death and the number of his writings known, more reference books will be created to facilitate the apprehension of this often-puzzling author. One guide of this nature, the present volume, portends the emergence of further scholarly tools.

The compilers, anticipating user needs, define the limits of their work. «The main purpose of this Dictionary is to explain... allusions, both for the general reader, by providing comprehensive information to make the text more immediately accessible, and for the specialist. The references, real and imaginary,

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with which Borges's fiction is interwoven form an echoing subtext, supporting and enriching the surface plots of his stories» (1). Unfortunately, the authors, unable to encompass the entirety of Borges, applied these guidelines only to Ficciones (1942), El Aleph (1949) and El informe de Brodie (1970).

Over 1,000 entries including «names of, or allusions to, personal, or fictional characters, places, titles, quotations, and philosophical and religious movements», are noted under the English/American versions and also the original Spanish. The compilers have added the caveat that they only try to provide factual information and make no effort at interpretation. Consequently the terms defined run from the quotidian, «Ezeiza -Argentina's main airport, near Buenos Aires» to the more abstruse «Tlon -One of two regions in an imaginary planet referred to in the literature of 'Uqbar', the other being Mlejnas...» Thus the reader is now equipped with an aid to reading three of the major works of Borges.

However, much is left for contemporary or future scholars. As was suggested earlier, the main corpus of the author's work is yet to be explained in a dictionary format. A forerunner to this ideal reference book is Daniel Balderston's The Literary Universe of Jorge Luis Borges (1986), an index to persons, titles and places. And although Balderston gives much less information per item than the present reference, he has included many more of Borges's titles and has over 11,000 entries.

Fischburn and Hughes, along with their predecessor Balderston, have indeed been seminal in regard to non-bibliographical reference books on Borges. However, given the Argentine's influence and even predominance in the twentieth century, a reference book of much greater scope is needed.

Richard D. Woods
Trinity University

Edna Alzenberg gained notice in 1984 with her The Aleph Weaver: Biblical, Kabbalistic and Judaic Elements in Borges. This brief study usefully brings together information on all matters in the area of overlap between Borges studies and Jewish studies. After The Aleph Weaver, Alzenberg turned to the set of issues that was at one time dealt with through the critical conventions of influence studies. This area of studies had lately been enlivened by, on the one hand, the concept of intertextuality, with texts engaged in a perpetual conversation, and, on the other, Harold Bloom's vision of literary history as an increasingly tortuous struggle by new writers to wrest a space for themselves from their all-too-present predecessors. In several articles, Alzenberg worked variants on some of Bloom's leads, making good use of her knowledge of Jewish concepts of the text, and it is to be hoped that she will produce a book-length study along these lines. Meanwhile, she has edited Borges and His Predecessors, essays ranging in approach from influence and precursor studies to examinations of intertextuality and the questions raised by (most famously) Bloom.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, the most satisfying essays in the volume are by old Borges hands: Jaime Alazraki, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Ana María Barrenechea, Marta Morello-Frosch, Malva E. Filer and, of more recent vintage, Alzenberg. Morello Frosch and Filer both had the excellent idea of looking at Borges's relation to the work of authors whose resemblance to him is not immediately apparent. Analyzing uses of Borges by Argentine writers of the 1960s and 1970s, Morello-Frosch combines acute observations on particular texts with a broader meditation on historically motivated shifts in the outlook of Argentine intellectuals, particularly in their critical assessment of the nation's culture. The authors selected are, in general, offering ironic reprises of familiar thematic and stylistic Borgesisms. Filer is less concerned with cultural context than with texts' implied statements about textuality as she looks at Borges in the work of two non-Argentines, Salvador Elizondo and Severo Sarduy. Like Morello-Frosch, Filer obtains fine results working from the premise that later writers confront Borges whether they opt to continue his project, to attempt to abort it, or to use elements of that project against Borges's original intentions. Barrenechea's lead article, though a bit brief, usefully sketches out aspects of Borges that mostdraw successors. Alazraki gives a laudably plain explanation of the much-remarked parallelism between Borges's implied theoretical propositions and twentieth-century formalisms. Rodríguez Monegal's piece splices together his view of Borges's reading and writing as a father-son tangle with discussion of Borges as Derrida's forerunner. (Though Rodríguez Monegal denies that his is a precursor study, Suzanne Jill Levine's lead-in sensibly affirms it.)

Other essays rest less on the critics' all-around grasp of Borges than on knowledge of recent theory: those by Gerry O'Sullivan, Herman Rapaport, Christine de Lailhacar, and Françoise Collin. Rapaport deserves praise for his step-by-step, unpretentious examination of Borges and Paul De Man; O'Sullivan, too, shows respect for logic as he views Borges and Michel Foucault. Lalhacar and Collin will be best appreciated by those with a taste for poetic ambiguity in criticism.

Inevitably, there is some unevenness. Jerry Varsava and Geoffrey Green are conscientious analysts, but face the inherent disadvantage that the writers they juxtapose with Borges (Italo Calvino and recent U.S. authors, respectively) are so obviously Borges-like. Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot, while focusing en Borges's reception in Germany, launches into a bitter, but well-documented, jeremiad, in which he excoriates the venality, opportunism, and mindless trend-following of much literary life. But beyond doubt the volume is

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enriched by these essays and others by Robert Ross (Borges and Peter Carey), Richard Peña (Borges and recent film), and Jules Kirschenbaum (Borges and a painting by Kirschenbaum, here reproduced).

The final section allows Alzenberg to combine her familiarity with Jewish styles of thinking about textual issues with her knowledge of Borges. She coordinates the ideas Borges derives from Judaic tradition with the idiosyncratically Jewish thought infused into literary theory and criticism by Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, Bloom, et al. This fine piece opens, rather than exhausts, its topic. The volume closes with two Borges essays that may take some imagination to see as being about successors: on Job and Spinoza.

Borges and His Successors manages the unusual feat of being unfailingly interesting throughout its diverse parts. Beyond its contribution to Borges scholarship and studies of literary relations, it can be recommended as simply a great read.

Naomi Lindstrom
University of Texas at Austin

Menton nos anuncia en el prólogo que el propósito de esta colección de artículos es darle un repaso a más de cuarenta años dedicados al estudio de la literatura mexicana. Comienza esta miscelánea con «Texturas épicas de Los de abajo» (1967). Si en aquel entonces lo novedoso del estudio fue apuntalar la organicidad de la novela de Azuela, veinticinco años después, al haberse naturalizado el propósito primero del trabajo, son las referencias intertextuales, el diálogo de libros que orquesta Menton el que justifica la (re)lectura de esta amplificación. El segundo capítulo se titula «Martín Luis Guzmán y Rafael F. Muñoz: los pares mínimos y las diferencias generacionales» en el que acertadamente se cotejan dos textos sobre el general Rodolfo Fierro. Lo interesante en este caso es el sincretismo epistemológico: el uso que se hace del estructuralismo, los pares mínimos; más aportaciones extratextuales, las diferencias generacionales muy eruditamente basadas en la biografía de los autores, y todo ello en función de justamente reivindicar dos obras como El águila y la serpiente de Guzmán y Si me han de matar mañana... de Muñoz.

El tercer capítulo: «Asturias, Carpentier y Yáñez: paralelismos y divergencias» (1969) sigue un modelo parecido al segundo, establecer en primer lugar las más interesantes semejanzas biográficas, esbozar las literarias y profundizar en estas últimas diferencias. «En busca del cuento dialógico: José Revueltas» es un buen ejemplo del hacer de Menton, es decir, la continua búsqueda de la verdad científica en el análisis literario. Este capítulo se centra en el fenómeno postmoderno a partir de la teoría bajtiana y la cuentística de Revueltas, concretamente «Hegel y yo». Destaca el autoanálisis: «mi vieja manera formalista» (128) y la identificación del crítico con el objeto de estudio: «proyecta ['Hegel y yo'] una visión del mundo que he estudiado y con la cual me identifico» (127). Menton busca la ambigüedad y la subjetividad del texto de Revueltas a partir de la deconstrucción de sus propias herramientas críticas, adecuando su discurso postmoderno a la postmodernidad del objeto de estudio. «Juan José Arreola y el cuento del siglo veinte» (1959) y «Las cuentistas mexicanas en la época feminista (1970-19 88)», (1990) son inventarios con pequeñas pinceladas críticas. Destaca en este último la importancia que se le concede a Ethel Krauze, en palabras de Menton: «la mayor responsabilidad del crítico actual es arriesgarse para señalar quiénes son los autores dignos de ser leídos» (133).

En «Noticias del imperio y la nueva novela histórica» Menton pide justamente «la canonización inmediata» (150) de la novela de Fernando del Paso, y para ello profundiza en el proyecto del novelista: retar a Usigli, Borges y Lukács para demostrar que poesía e historia no son incompatibles. Otro artículo es «Tres miniponencias sobre Juan Rulfo». A modo de apéndice se incluye también «El teatro de Federico Gamboa» (el autor estudiado en su tesis doctoral) y una bibliografía de lo escrito por Menton acerca de México. En definitiva, esta colección de artículos nuevos y clásicos ejemplifica una vocación de la que no podemos olvidar las referencias a otras obras de la literatura, probablemente menos conocidas y que abren el apetito a su lectura, la precisión en la crítica textual, el manejo magistral de la cita de apoyo, y lo de más de agradecer para el lector: la amenidad. Por todo ello este libro es lectura recomendada.

Salvador A. Oropesa
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Edited interviews, conducted by Joseph Vélez, of Mexican playwrights in Dramaturgos según ellos mismos, and mostly narrators in Escritores..., comprise these two new texts which serve as ancillary references for either initiates of Mexican literature or for those already familiar with the Mexican literary context. Although several generations are represented among the writers Vélez has chosen, many of the authors were born in the thirties; the range is wider in the Escritores... text, with more emphasis on those born earlier. Both known and lesser-known writers are interviewed. Escritores... includes thirty six authors; Dramaturgos..., sixteen. The value of the works lies principally in the attention to biographical information offered both by the authors and by Vélez, as well as in the opportunity to hear the writers tell their own stories within their own organizing schemes. The interviews were conducted over a lengthy period of

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time, from the seventies through 1987. Updating information through the mid-eighties, Vélez adds, sometimes at the beginning and sometimes at the end of the interview, brief lists or statements about works which are not discussed by the author during the interview.

Vélez's intention is to give readers a sense of the authors' lives and works, from their own perspective; for this reason, he has purposely not imposed his own conceptual ordering on the flow of the authors' comments nor has he ordered the presentation of interviews in the text according to any particular scheme (i.e., neither conceptual, chronological nor even alphabetical). Open interviewing structures of this kind have obvious advantages, one being the relative lack of ideological superimposition. Another exists in the relaxed nature of the informal discourse Vélez encourages, a style that communicates Vélez's own emotional commitment to the writers and which, thus, creates an atmosphere of positive exchange. Since care is taken to fill in biographical information, the interviews provide good reference to the chronology of the writer's life and works.

So much critical work has remained to be done in Mexican theater that it is a pleasure to see the appearance of a book dedicated solely to playwrights' voices. Dramaturgos... may even be the more useful of the two texts, particularly for students, in that interviews are natural forums for discussions of theater, uncovering the multifaceted sphere in which the written text of theater is produced and functions. Similar exposure of the public element -professional affiliations, editorial considerations- may also be found in Escritores..., but is more related to an understanding of the author than of the literary works under discussion.

The writers in Escritores... are generally more conscious of articulating some facet of their own creative processes than are those in Dramaturgos... but, in both cases, Vélez's focus as interviewer is explicitly autobiographical and open-ended, not intended to form part of a critical analysis or placement except, of course, insofar as he has chosen these particular authors as representative. His opening and principal question to the authors is that they tell their «trayectoria literaria» in whatever way they choose to tell it, which works both for and against the cohesion and interest of the author's remarks. In order to maintain the flow of the author's narrative, Vélez edits out some of the questions he asked, and leaves others in, but always as a participant in the course the authors themselves have established. Vélez's interviewing focus works best for writers who, for whatever motivation, decide to voice specific preoccupations or tendencies reflected in their works or in their literary milieu. Hugo Argüelles, for instance, in Dramaturgos..., speaks at length of his concern for the «proceso del mestizaje» (9), defines the elements of mexicanidad which he sees at work in his plays, as well as identifies himself within a context of Mexican theater noting those to whom he is indebted and why. Argüelles's own breadth and understanding of the framework that he brings to the interview, and which Vélez encourages, give the reader not only a sense of Argüelles as writer but also a clearer view of Argüelles as a person. The same may be said, for very different reasons, of other authors such as Juan García Ponce who, in his interview, focuses on the writing process as a function of the impulse to read (Escritores..., 144-45). The conceptual nature of his framework leads to comments which are indeed personally revealing and compelling, with or without autobiographical commentary.

One example of an interview in which the open-ended question works more against the author than for her is with Elena Poniatowska who, in an effort to record the facts, verbally lists the titles, historical referents and characters or story lines of all her books. On one hand, the very fact that she responds with a list of historical referents reveals a significant characteristic of her literary focus; on the other hand, the reader gleans very little else from the story about this woman who is herself a dedicated and provocative teller of other people's stories.

Vélez states that he hopes the texts will introduce these writers to a wider public. Precisely because of the focus, however, the resulting anecdotal style and the relative lack of conceptual framework on the part of both the interviewer and interviewee may ultimately be somewhat disadvantageous for the reader unfamiliar with the Mexican works discussed here. First, Since the writer's literary contexts are extremely varied, from Luis Spota to Salvador Elizondo in Escritores... for instance, the lack of critical framework may hinder rather than aid understanding for the initiate. Second, the question arises as to whether the specific comments imparted in these conversationally-styled autobiographies are persuasive or engaging without some prior conceptual understanding of or empathy for the authors interviewed. These are ultimately considerations of intended audiences and easily redirected, particularly in the classroom where Vélez hopes the texts will have most benefit, by selecting interviews or, better, portions of interviews to be read in conjunction with primary texts and with some guidance toward author placement.

Whatever the considerations one might raise here, both Dramaturgos... and Escritores según ellos mismos serve the field well in that, either as partial, introductory views read in conjunction with other critical texts or as ancillary reference to critical study, they open onto authentic stories of entwined professional and personal contexts within an expanding Mexican literary sense.

Alice Ruth Reckley
University of Missouri-Kansas City

Of the many monographs published on Mario Vargas Llosa's works, Roy Charles Boland's is one of the two or three most original and informative. Boland states that although Vargas Llosa has, in interviews, alluded to his fascination with Freud, and that although critics have mentioned Freudian elements in Vargas Llosa's novels, these elements have never before been treated in depth. After reading Boland's clear, perceptive analyses, most readers will wonder why this Freudian approach was not taken years ago.

Boland believes that an «obsessive and recurrent» theme which constitutes «the Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth» of Vargas Llosa's oeuvre is «the negative, resentful, critical attitude towards the role of the father in the life of an adolescent son» (5). The critic further explains that the Oedipal struggle between the Peruvian masses and the army, church, and oligarchy. Thus Vargas Llosa portrays Peru as a country trapped in the adolescent stage of development, a country in which the bitter disputes between collective «fathers and sons» have yet to be resolved. To capture this reality of machismo and violence in his native land, Vargas Llosa uses the technique of «doble fondo» (9), whereby the characters' consciousness is revealed through symbols.

Varga's Llosa, we are told, has three types of «demons» determining the thematic content of his works: personal, historical and cultural. Personal demons would include his traumatic experience at the Leoncio Prado military academy; a major historical demon is the Odría regime (1948-1956); and Freud, Sartre and Flaubert stand out as cultural demons.

Although all the chapters of this book are illuminating, especially so are those dealing with La ciudad y los perros and La tía Julia y el escribidor. Thus in the former Alberto and Richi lose the patricidal struggle and end up symbolically castrated, Alberto by the military establishment an Richi by his father, whereas Jaguar wins the struggle when he cuckolds his godfather. In La tía Julia y el escribidor Marito triumphs over his father in two ways: he marries Julia and becomes a successful writer.

There is very little to criticize in this excellent study. I do not entirely agree that Vargas Llosa intended to warn against the danger of Peru's «falling into the hands of such a dehumanizing technocrat as... Pantaleón Pantoja» (137). The author is, of course, vehemently opposed to Peru's military establishment, but I consider Pantaleón a hilarious absurd hero who, in Camusian terms, keeps the absurd alive to the end. In other words the humor and the existential overtones in Pantaleón's character outweigh the antimilitary stance he represents. Boland tends to repeat himself, increasing the lengh of his study -the number of pages in the book is misleading because the pages are large and the print small. But the end result is a highly recommended, brilliant analysis of one of today's most important writers.

George R. McMurray
Colorado State University

Autores tales como Vladimir Mayakovsky, César Vallejo, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Pablo Neruda, Ernesto Cardenal y otros, cuya carrera y obra literaria sobrepasan los límites esperados del quehacer literario convencional por la resonancia y la proyección histórico-política de sus ideas no solamente han ocupado su lugar en la historia de la literatura sino que también han suscitado el interés crítico de los más diversos puntos de vista. Ya sea para entender el papel de intelectual y del artista en el proceso revolucionario o para definir la función que le cabe a la cultura y al arte en la creación de una identidad nacional, su obra se ha prestado para un sinnúmero de discusiones y debates, algunos de valor relativo para la literatura y el arte mismos. En el ámbito caribeño y por motivos similares, la carrera y la obra literaria de Nicolás Guillén y Aimé Césaire han tenido una experiencia similar. Más allá del estudio de las características y los méritos literarios de sus respectivas producciones literarias la obra y el perfil intelectual de estos autores caribeños han suscitado discusiones extraliterarias tendientes a calibrar el grado de compromiso político y revalorizar los elementos étnicos de la cultura cubana, en el caso de Guillén, y a dilucidar las particularidades coloniales y el impacto de la cultura francesa y africana en el Caribe francés, en el caso de Césaire.

El libro de Ian Smart Nicolás Guillén. Popular Poet of the Caribbean, sobre el poeta cubano, y el libro de Josaphat Kubayanda, The Poet's Africa, un análisis comparativo de la obra poética de Guillén y Césaire, son estudios que amplían el espacio habitual de las discusiones literarias sobre la obra de estos poetas caribeños al examinar el grado de influencia ejercido por formas artísticas populares de la tradición oral y musical en la poesía de Guillén y dilucidar el concepto de África en la poética afro-antillana que deviene de la obra de Guillén y Césaire. Aunque con estilos diferentes, estos estudios de índole cultural se proponen rectificar los modelos de representación del sujeto colonial en la literatura afro-caribeña tradicionalmente eclipsado por lo que ambos autores denominan la crítica y la historia literaria de factura eurocentrista. Tal como lo reconocen sus autores, su enfoque afrocentrista y sus métodos de análisis y sus conclusiones difieren de lo que la crítica establecida ha reservado para el análisis de la cultura africana en

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su dimensión caribeña.

Nicolás Guillén. Popular Poet of the Caribbean está dividido en seis capítulos seguidos de una brevísima bibliografía selecta. En los primeros capítulos se describen la vigencia pancaribeña y la base africana de algunas formas musicales, instrumentales y orales de la cultura popular del Caribe inglés, francés y español y se destacan los vínculos culturales y lingüísticos que hay entre esas fuentes populares y algunos aspectos de la poesía guilleneana. Después se rastrea el origen popular del humor y la ironía guilleneana y se examina el valor arquetípico y simbólico y las dimensiones heroicas de algunas figuras populares que fueron materia poética para Guillén. En los dos últimos capítulos se insiste una vez más sobre el carácter neoafricano y sobre la raigambre popular y pancaribeña del discurso poético guilleneano. Al concentrarse en el comentario de unos pocos poemas de libros escritos en la década del treinta y el cuarenta, al privilegiarse el análisis de los referentes pancaribeños de origen africano y al no hacerse una distinción clara entre la poesía del Guillén prerevolucionario que escribió desde la perspectiva del negro o del mulato desposeído y la poesía del Guillén Poeta Nacional de Cuba, alto jerarca político y uno de los dirigentes máximos de la política editorial y cultural de la Cuba revolucionaria, se tiende a dar una visión parcializada del auténtico poeta popular que fue Guillén.

The Poet' s Africa es un estudio comparativo de la poesía de Guillén y Césaire que incluye un prefacio explicativo, seis capítulos y una conclusión y que va acompañada de una completísima y bien pormenorizada bibliografía selecta de fuentes primarias y secundarias sobre la obra de ambos poetas. A través del libro y en especial en el primer capítulo se traza un cuadro evolutivo del legado cultural africano y del desarrollo de la tradición retórica negra que ha de desembocar en la obra de ambos poetas. Después se examinan y se cuestionan los presupuestos teóricos en los que la cultura occidental ha basado sus mecanismos de sujeción y control hegemónico de los modelos estéticos y de los agentes de producción cultural para así imponer un modelo universal que relegue a culturas tales como la africana a los espacios marginales de la otredad. Se evalúan la función pionera de la poesía de la Negritud de Guillén y Césaire como evidencia de la materialización de un discurso contestatario de esos modelos hegemónicos en el contexto de la cultura afroantillana. Por último, se subraya la importancia de la tradición oral, musical e instrumental inherente a la cultura africana, su impacto en la poesía de Guillén y Césaire y el valor que estos elementos tienen en la búsqueda y en la gestación de una identidad cultural africana en el nuevo mundo. A pesar del abundante acopio de referencias teóricas y de los obvios aciertos metodológicos que caracterizan a este estudio, no queda satisfactoriamente resuelta la disyuntiva de cómo medir (a riesgo de sobrevaluar y quizás distorsionar) la verdadera importancia de etapas o aspectos específicos en el desarrollo evolutivo de la obra total de autores como Guillén y Césaire. Esta disyuntiva se hace doblemente problemática y riesgosa si se pretende elaborar «una teoría literaria antillana» y una poética de la Negritud y de la africanidad con elementos parciales de la obra de autores cuya visión social y racial (factor que hidalgamente reconoce Kubayanda en su conclusión), cuya lealtad a un proyecto político-cultural determinado y cuyo estilo literario han cambiado con el correr de los años.

Por la perspectiva estrictamente afrocentrista de ambos estudios y por la abundancia de datos y observaciones sobre la influencia de la cultura africana, estos libros serán de gran valor para especialistas y estudiantes interesados en los estudios africanos y del área del Caribe. Ambos libros hacen una contribución importante al estudio general de la poesía hispanoamericana; sin embargo, los lectores y especialistas interesados en los aspectos literarios de la obra de Nicolás Guillén notarán que en estos libros se han desvirtuado sistemáticamente la mayoría de los enfoques críticos y las conclusiones que la crítica literaria establecida ha sacado sobre la producción poética del poeta cubano, disminuyéndose la importancia de la llamada poesía negrista e ignorándose todo nexo cronológico, lingüístico e histórico-literario con los movimientos de vanguardia hispanoamericanos que fueron contemporáneos al período en discusión.

Ramón Layera
Miami University

Cocuyo demands much of the reader. It follows in the same kaleidoscopic, experimental tradition seen in earlier Sarduy fiction, but it is less chaotic than his 1972 novel, Cobra. Set in pre-Castro Cuba, it recounts the initiatory journey of the adolescent Cocuyo (firefly) from the moment he attempted to liquidate his entire family by putting rat poison in their tea, through trials and tribulations caused by inquisitorial physicians named Caimán (alligator) and Isidro (patron saint of Madrid), and finally through the episodes of his early experimentation with sex and his first love for Ada/Hada while under the tutelage of a «generous» guardian named La Bondadosa. Along the way the reader witnesses his first attempt to use tobacco, his first visit to a brothel, and ultimately the final scene of the novel when an exhausted Cocuyo is again persecuted by Caimán and Isidro as he collapses on a dock beside a putrid swamp.

While Sarduy would argue that the «message» of his fiction is the medium of language itself, he does feel compelled at the end of this novel to state clearly and categorically what he has attempted to show: «El hombre es la mierda del universo» (205); «Todos traicionaban. Todo asqueaba. Pero en el fondo... les quedaba agradecido: le habían mostrado el verdadero rostro del hombre, su esencial doblez, su necesidad, tan insoslayable como el hambre o la sed, de trampa

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de mezquindad» (208). The novel, typical of Cuban «Gongorism», employs a rich vocabulary and invents such expressions as «blasones flordelisados» and «parkinsonado». There are moments of chronological disorder, especially in Chapter 11, when a Spanish colonial slave market takes place while Soviet experts disembark in Havana's harbor.

Cocuyo is one of Sarduy's most accessible novels. It moderates his earlier tendencies and provides recognizable experiences that anyone who has passed through puberty can identify.

Harley D. Oberhelman
Texas Tech University

The forging of a new category of magical realism is one of several perspectives from which Hart approaches her presentation of the fiction of Isabel Allende. After an extensive overview in the introductory chapter of standard definitions of the much-abused term, Hart coins the expression «magical feminism». This category of magical realism, suggested to Hart by Ellen Morgan's Humanbecoming: Forms and Focus in the Neo-Feminist Novel (32), fully materializes in the definition offered at the conclusion of the book: «magical realism used in a femino-centric novel, or to make an authentic observation about the behavior and condition of women in the sociohistoric conditions depicted in the novel» (174). Hart admits the difficulty of defining feminism within a Latin American perspective, and thereby avoids using the word «feminism» in her definition for fear of indulging in «femino-cultural imperialism» (32). While Hart's attempt to avoid a slanted perspective as well as unnecessary jargon is most helpful to the student of Allende's fiction, theoretical evasion may present a few quandaries for the critical/feminist scholar.

Chapters 2 through 8 deal with Allende's La casa de los espíritus (1982), Chapter 9 examines the role of magic in Allende's second novel, De amor y de sombra (1985), Chapter 10 does the same for the children's book, La gorda de porcelana (1983), and Chapter 11 looks at narrative magic in Allende's Eva Luna (1987). Running parallel with the attempt to unravel Allende's unique presentation of narrative magic is Allende's endeavor to refute critics' views that her work is a slavish imitation of Gabriel García Márquez. While the reader is alerted to this dual objective in the introductory chapter, the «thread of comparison» is maintained not only in the initial eight chapters (36), but throughout the text. The sharpest contrast with Cien años de soledad is perhaps presented in Chapter 4, when Hart points to one of the essential concerns of Allende's novel as the writing of history, a history which cannot, «ultimately, be written magically... [but] compiled by the work of the last person in the chain.. .and told through his or her perspective» (89). This chapter, entitled «Magic Books and the Magic of Books» is also noteworthy in its critical attempt to distinguish between storywriting as individual enterprise and story-telling as motivation for action, specifically as a force for political and social change (77).

The failure of narrative magic in Allende's De amor y de sombra, as analyzed in chapter 9, is attributed to several factors, with the incongruity of narrative voice (148), and the derailment of «magical feminism» (149) as the more significant. Surprisingly Hart concludes that De amor y de sombra remains a magically feminist novel given its use of magic to call into question the role of women in Latin America (157). But the argument is diluted by another of Hart's contentions, namely that throughout Allende's work, magic is used to question the entire concept of magical realism as a vehicle for discussing the problems of Latin America. The real is used to undercut the magical, a suggestion which appears to climax in Evangelina Ranquileo's «magical epilepsy» and death (151) in De amor y de sombra. An «unmagical» feminist reading of Allende is also suggested in Chapter 11 which treats Eva Luna: «With all its strengths and weaknesses, the book represents a new brand of fiction -books that show women as they see themselves, not as men see them (whether as impossible ideas or perhaps negative stereotypes), and books that try to outline new options, and give women new ways of looking at themselves and their problems» (171).

Hart's attempt to refute critics who see in Allende's novel a replication of Garciamarquian narrative strategy, as well as her contention that throughout Allende's work the real is used to undercut the magical, while significant speculations in themselves, forestall any adequate conclusions as to «magical feminism» in the works of Isabel Allende. The hypothetical readings of Allende's texts, and the rhetorical questions raised (29) are, by far, too conjectural and lacking in theoretical support (suppositional markers such as probably, perhaps, if, surely, may be abound) to resolve postulates. Perhaps the most serious problem presented in the text, however, may be summed up in the frequent incursions into authorial intentionality. While Hart herself cites the «Intentional Fallacy» argument to contest Allende's literal reading of clairvoyance in La casa de los espíritus (56) and again on page 108 when she alludes to Wimsatt and Beardsley directly, several contradictions present themselves. In the concluding Chapter 12, for example, Hart turns the contention of influence on its ear by surmising the influence of Isabel Allende on Gabriel García Márquez. In this chapter, she concludes that García Márquez's novel, El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985) «shows a compassion that the Colombian might well have learned from Isabel Allende» (175). Fortunately, Hart also concludes by «welcom[ing] further discussion on the subject» (177). Despite some unresolved problems, Narrative Magic in the Fiction of Isabel Allende is a provocative text with substantial pedagogical

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potential. This is a work, however, that a student might best read as an introduction rather than as a culmination to studies in the fiction of Isabel Allende.

Sandra M. Boschetto
Michigan Technological University

Splintering Darkness: Latin American Women Writers in Search of Themselves represents a welcome addition to the growing bibliography of works focusing on the increasing importance of Third World women writers. It should be read in conjunction with Susan Bassnett's compilation of essays, Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America (Zed Books, 1990). While Bassnett emphasizes the historical contribution of women to Latin American culture, the Guerra Cunningham compilation is, instead, theoretical. It marks a conscious attempt to develop an alternative feminist critical discourse as opposed to hegemonic discourse and to deconstruct the mechanism and myths of the dominant system. Within this critical context, the eleven essayists' analyses fall into two patterns: they describe the authors' subversion of the traditional heroic chronicle/testimonial mode, and their de-authorization of patriarchal concepts of woman's voice, woman's space, and woman's body.

Lillian Manzor-Coats analyzes the Argentinian Alicia Partnoy's use of the chronicle. Paradigm of the primal colonial literary scene, it is inverted by Partnoy in order to privilege the colonized. Manzor-Coats shows how Partnoy questions both the privileged place of the traditional Chronicler-Narrator of the Other and intra- and extra-textual power relations. Although the essay focuses on Partnoy, its insights work very well for the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú, the Bolivian Domitila Barrios de Chúngara and, to a qualified extent, the Mexican Elena Poniatowska. These writers, too, create a plural «I» as the voice of a feminist witness to a situation of imprisonment and subalternity. The inversion of the chronicle/testimonial thereby transforms physical pain «into writing through the voice of the reconstructed subject and not through the voice of the Other» (169).

Gabriela Mora's essay on La nave de los locos shows how the Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi revalorizes marginal voices. Through an Erasmian inversion of the conventional meaning assigned to folly and madness, Peri Rossi defamiliarizes traditional concepts of masculinity, power, and authority. As Mora suggests, Peri Rossi argues that in a society where torture and degradation are authoritatively sanctioned, it is the marginal, the ex-centric, the fool who must sail, however painfully, in search of harmony.

María-Inés Lagos-Pope discusses the work Celina o los gatos of the Cuban/Mexican Julieta Campos. She shows how Campos de-authorizes her male narrator's perspective and mode of narration. The result is a parodic inversion of the supposed objectivity he proffers against Celina's devious intuition. Although Lagos-Pope limits herself to the analysis of Celina, her insights work very well for Campos's other novel Tiene los cabellos rojizos y se llama Sabina. Campos here pinpoints the arbitrariness of her fictional male author who chooses whether or not he will even include the women he watches in his narrative. Campos contrasts this arbitrariness, which masks as objectivity, with her fictional female author's rejection of mimetic illusion as a logocentric falsification of reality. This undermining of the traditional privileging of the male voice is seen by Sharon Magnarelli to be a subversive strategy in the works of the Chilean Isabel Allende and the Argentinian Luisa Valenzuela. Magnarelli discusses how these women pinpoint the disjunction and weakness of logocentric discourse by framing the male narrative voices by female voices; and Eliana S. Rivero shows that Isabel Allende even invents mythical ancestral female storytellers as models for her narrators. Mara Gálvez Bretón and Elizabeth Lowe focus on how radical is the literary revolution waged by the Brazilian Clarice Lispector. Through minimalist language, disruptions, inconsistencies, gaps and silences, Lispector dismantles logocentrism (Lowe), and her revolution is «post-feminist in the sense that it is neither feminine nor masculine» (Gálvez Bretón 70).

The domesticity of woman's space is also revalorized in the work of contemporary Latin American women writers. The Mexicans Amparo Dávila and Rosario Castellanos present women's traditional cooking manuals as models of hegemonic social discourse. The women deploy the literary image of cooking «in carrying out a daring textual short circuit of the long oedipal trajectory of colonial («Western») and neocolonized («Third World») literatures» (Kemy Oyarzum 87-88). For Ivette López, the Puerto Rican Magalí García López inverts the patriarchal view of the house as representing the security of the maternal womb. She shows that it becomes, instead, for García López, an impetus for memories that set forward a necessary awareness of the difference between indigenous and imposed mores.

Helena Araújo discusses the revalorization of sexuality in the works of the Chilean María Luisa Bombal, the Colombians Albalucía Angel, Marvel Moreno, and Fanny Buitrago. Araújo shows that the Female Subject is described here as re-constituted through the language of her body. The open eroticism in these works thereby represents a menacing power to the patriarchal emphasis on feminine modesty.

Splintering Darkness will provide an important complement to literature classes. The uniformly high quality of the essays and their diversity make a significant contribution to the understanding and appreciation of contemporary Latin American writers.

Yvonne Jehenson
State University of New York College at Oswego

It would be difficult to inflate the importance of this volume. Marting has assembled fifty essays on individual Spanish American women writers, plus two essays, one each on «Indian Women Writers of Spanish America» and «Latin Writers of the United States». It would be futile to quibble with the names chosen for inclusion, as they range from important premodern figures to the leading voices of the twentieth century, including any reasonable inventory of Who's Who among a Latin American feminist consciousness, by whatever definition one wishes to propose. Concomitantly, the essays have been prepared by a distinguished roster of scholars who have worked diligently to speak forcefully and eloquently for the importance of the writers.

Each of the essays follows a similar format: Biography, Major Themes, Survey of Criticism, Bibliography (Works by and Works about). Although one can find reason to lament this lockstep approach, the important point to be made is that each essay is intelligently prepared and, in a substantial deviation from usual encyclopedic practice where only the editor oversees the content of each entry, all of the essays have been vetted by independent researchers. The result are exemplary pieces of scholarship, not the least of whose value is the bibliography.

Writers to be included have been chosen from among a wide array of criteria. In addition to pioneers like Delmira Agustini, Victoria Ocampo, Madre Castillo, there are current pacesetters like Elena Poniatowska, Rosario Ferré, Griselda Gambaro. Even a popular writer like Sylvina Bullrich, certainly a sine qua non point of reference as a potential nonfeminist women writer, is included. Radical feminists like Alejandra Pizarnik, María Luisa Mendoza, Armonia Sommers, and Julieta Campos are understandably present, as are more middle-class voices like Marta Lynch, Rosario Castellanos, and Josefina Plá.

Given the impressive scope of this compilation, it is truly to be lamented that Brazil is not included. This is unpardonable, both from the perspective of the standards with which this compilation has been executed (why, then, fail Brazilian literature?) and from the simple fact that Brazilian names could naturally complement the Spanish-language writers included: Rachel de Queiroz, Clarice Lispector, Lygia Fagundes Teles, Ruth Bueno, Cassandra Rios, Eiko Suzuki, just to begin the list.

The unfortunate absence of Brazil notwithstanding, Spanish American Women Writers is an indispensable reference work that should help to encourage important additional work on women writers.

David William Foster
Arizona State University

Though both seek to illuminate the politics of Central America today, these books could hardly be more different; one views politics from above, while the other views it from below. Stone's book is about the common colonial ancestry of the contemporary ruling classes in Central America. Through meticulous study of genealogical records, he establishes the kinship of the elite across national boundaries, and he traces their lineage back to a few prolific conquistadors. Stone's main theme is that, until very recently, there has existed a consensus on what families constitute the isthmian elite. His thesis is that the distribution of resources has, over time, shaped national values, that is, the values of the elite. Thus Stone explains differences between countries by arguing that scarcity of resources, as in Costa Rica, has tended to produce democratic values, more humane relationships between the classes, and a mild form of machismo. On the other hand, abundance of resources, as in El Salvador, has produced more authoritarian regimes, rigid class divisions, and a particularly brutal machismo. This argument is provocative but not persuasive.

Moreover, the author seeks to impose his theme everywhere, at times forcing a resistant reality to fit his mold. For example, Stone views the Nicaraguan situation as nothing more than a conflict over «how to divide the political and economic pies between the two groups of the ruling class» [Sandinistas and Contras] (147). However, complex events cannot be reduced merely to squabbles among the Somozas, Chamorros and Ortegas. Curiously, the author seems to trivialize recent Nicaraguan history while simultaneously blaming Nicaragua for all Central American conflict, which he describes as a «violent eruption of economic and political differentiation within the Nicaraguan ruling class, as well as an extension of that struggle... into El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica» (45). Is the Nicaraguan problem an internal feud among greedy kin, or it is a grave threat to the security of the isthmus?

Such flaws detract from the many interesting things the author has to say about the Central American ruling elite, both in colonial times and today.

Beverley and Zimmerman are more agile in employing their theory, an eclectic marxism, where it works and in not pushing it where it does not. Their book is about the relationship between poetry and the revolutionary left in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The authors' thesis is that poetry is not just an inconsequential epiphenomenon, a reflection of something else really important, but rather that it is constitutive,

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at least in part, of social reality.

According to the authors, the ideological centrality of literature in Central America results from an uneven and incomplete process of economic and political development, which has left intact many early forms of cultural expression, such as storytelling, song and poetry. These have functioned as pockets of resistance to the imposition of Spanish print culture. The authors carry this tradition forward to today as they demonstrate the key role played by poetry in the formation of insurrectional groups in the 1970s and 1980s. They use the examples of Ernesto Cardenal in Nicaragua, where Rubén Darío, the father of modernismo was born, and where the romantic figure of Sandino has inspired the articulation of a national identity.

Poetry has been less central in El Salvador because of the extreme sectarianism of Salvadoran politics, the dogmatic marxist ideology of the guerrilla poets, and the traditional rural/urban dichotomy in that country. These factors have meant that poetry has been very much a minority discourse. In Guatemala, where the novel and theater have historically been strong and where the «India problem» has been a major preoccupation of intellectuals, poetry has also been the province of the few, though the authors show that cadre poetry has been an important component of the revolutionary process in both these countries.

As part of their thesis, the authors include a fascinating Chapter on testimonio, or testimonial narrative, whose roots they trace back to the eye-witness accounts of the sixteenth-century chroniclers. In testimonio, the expression of the narrator's personal, individual experience gives voice to that of the collectivity as well. In this way, the narrator speaks for the oppressed, diminishes the role of the author, and reaches out directly to the vulnerable intelligentsia, thereby evoking solidarity across class lines. Testimonio has been a very effective tool of the left.

Other important features of this book include the attention given to women's revolutionary poetry in all three countries, to the impact of liberation theology on the revolutionary consciousness, and to both the successes and failures of poesía de taller, or workshop poetry, in Nicaragua.

This excellent study clearly demonstrates that literature has been a mobilizer and not just a mirror of the revolutionary process in Central America.

Denis L. Heyck
Loyola University Chicago

Despite the continued and ascending importance of the theatre arts and their characteristic bond with the sociopolitical scenario in Latin America, critical commentary on the genre too often has been lackluster, even repetitive. This text by Diana Taylor, however, offers innovative and challenging insights. It is not an exaggeration to assert that Theatre Of Crisis: Drama And Politics In Latin America is a must-read analysis of the sociopolitical parameters of contemporary Hispanic American theatre in general, and the most important contribution yet to our understanding of the genre as written in the last half of the 1960s. These were the years, most critics will agree, during which Hispanic American dramaturgy began to respond to the social and political crises that were already jeopardizing the democratic processes in countries such as Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil.

This study deserves critical praise because of its unique approach to the relation between drama and politics in Latin America. Unlike preceding analyses of this theatre, Taylor's work elaborates a succinct discussion of how conflicts between society and the individual can lead to a state of crisis, then discusses how theatre mirrors the conflict, and finally it directs the discussion of the former two phenomena to analyses of selected drama of Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Cuba. Following the Introduction and Chapter 1, «Theatre and Crisis: The Making of Latin American Drama», come the chapters devoted to the works by individual dramatists, the Closing Remarks, extensive Notes, the Bibliography, and an excellent Index. In the first two divisions, comprising sixty-these pages, Taylor grounds the study in specific scholarship on drama and politics, defines those theatres that, as the theatre of crisis, represent different responses to varying forms of sociopolitical violence, and offers an intellectually impressive discussion of theatre of crisis. For the author, sociopolitical crisis is that point at which a people, a nation, is poised between «death and regeneration»; it is that time during which individuals suffer subjective alterations resulting from objective systemic shifts or disintegration of the sociopolitical body. Taylor goes on to show how theatre born of, and responding to, this crisis differs from other state expressions, including the so-called popular, people's, absurd, and even revolutionary theatres.

Chapters 2 through 6 are devoted to the works of the five authors under scrutiny. «Theatre and Revolution, José Triana» is primarily an essay on The Night of the Assassins and concludes with notes on the place of War Ceremonial within Triana's career as a revolutionary dramatist. «Theatre and Terror» focuses on Gambaro's The Siamese Twins and includes significant insights into The Camp vis-à-vis the theatre of the Holocaust. «Theatre and Transculturation: Emilio Carballido» is limited to The Day They Let the Lions Loose and I Too Speak of the Rose. The latter is approached as a «discourse on discourse», with special attention paid to the role of the Medium. «Destroying the Evidence: Enrique Buenaventura» is perhaps the first significant discussion ever of the Colombian dramatist in the light of the theatre of crisis. Taylor draws particular attention to the brief pieces that comprise Documents from Hell, especially The Menu and The Orgy, to underline the role of violence in that country's recent period of crisis. «Conflation and Crisis: Egon Wolff» profiles Paper

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Flowers as a play constructed on various manifestations of crisis, ranging from those associated with the male/female to the lower class/middle class conflicts.

Aware that no review can adequately reflect the depth and breadth of academic expertise and critical acumen that Taylor brings together in this book, we can, nevertheless, assure readers of the clarity and precision with which the arguments are developed. And, whether one is a beginning or experienced student of Latin American theatre, the reader will profit from the manner in which Taylor clearly accomplishes the goal of the study -to analyze the «role and function of oppositional theatre in highly inflammatory sociopolitical contexts, focusing on the work of five playwrights between 1965 and 1970» (6). Moreover, Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America is one of those rare combinations of exemplary investigative preparations, a sense of a genuine understanding and identity with the cultural implications of the topic, and an impressive mastery of language.

Robert J. Morris
Lander College

Dos conocidos hispanistas han producido un nuevo texto muy útil para clases universitarias que introducen el alumno al estudio de las literaturas hispánicas. El primer tomo teórico, en conjunción con el tomo 2 (antología de la literatura española) o el tomo 3 (antología de la literatura hispanoamericana), forma un conjunto muy apropiado para un curso de índole bosquejo de una u otra de estas tradiciones literarias, o los tres tomos juntos podrían servir para un curso de introducción inicial al estudio de las literaturas hispánicas en general.

El primer tomo (248 pp) contiene una descripción del contenido de los tres tomos, una explicación de lo que es el texto literario, una guía para la lectura crítica de géneros literarios (poesía, novela, cuento, ensayo, drama) con textos-modelo que se analizan y otros textos para la práctica, una breve historia de las literaturas hispánicas, con una presentación de los movimientos literarios, y los contextos socio-históricos de las literaturas de España e Hispanoamérica desde los orígenes hasta mediados del siglo XX. Hay claves que remiten al alumno a las selecciones en las antologías de los tomos dos y tres.

El primer tomo termina con otros materiales de gran utilidad para el profesor y para el alumno: mapas (por cierto bastante no a escala) de España e Hispanoamérica, un apéndice con estructuras poéticas, un glosario de términos literarios y un índice alfabético de autores, obras y temas. Hay discretas ilustraciones y reproducciones de arquitectura y arte a lo largo del primer tomo, las cuales aparecen oportunamente durante la discusión de conceptos artísticos e históricos. También hay un número prudente de notas de pie para ayudar al alumno con vocabulario difícil y con conceptos literarios e históricos.

La presentación de los principales elementos de la prosodia es clara y muy práctica para la iniciación del alumno en el estudio de la poesía. La correspondiente exposición de conceptos teóricos en relación con la narrativa, tanto para la novela como para el cuento, es sólida pero marcadamente tradicional; hace muy poca referencia a las preocupaciones contemporáneas por los estudios narratológicos. Pero en vista de que las antologías no llegan apenas a lo actual y dado el público de alumnos novicios a que se destinan los tres tomos, quizás el enfoque tradicional es lo más apropiado.

El material sobre el ensayo es menos satisfactorio para mí, porque no entra mucho en la importante cuestión estética de lo que une y separa al ensayo de la narrativa ficticio. La última sección sobre drama, que distingue muy bien entre drama como literatura y teatro como función en vivo, es muy buena.

La última parte del primer tomo es una presentación rápida, escueta, y al mismo tiempo bastante completa de la historia literaria de España e Hispanoamérica, con un énfasis muy conveniente en los contextos sociales e históricos. Una novedad notable de este texto teórico es la manera no convencional pero muy eficaz en que presenta primero lo español seguido de lo hispanoamericano hasta la época del modernismo, cuando para ilustrar la realidad del cambio de relación literaria a partir de ese movimiento americano, presenta en adelante primero lo hispanoamericano y después lo español.

En general los criterios literarios de los dos autores reflejan los cánones establecidos. Pero de vez en cuando hay aseveraciones que sorprenden, como por ejemplo la categorización de la Celestina como novela dialogada (I, 115), sin mencionar siquiera las distintas teorías críticas sobre la muy debatida cuestión de su género.

Las dos antologías de los tomos dos y tres contienen en general todos los autores canónicos de ambas tradiciones literarias, con pocas añadiduras inesperadas. Pero se nota una notable diferencia en el número y extensión de las selecciones de las dos antologías, indicada en el número de páginas de cada una: (II, 345 pp, III, 398 pp). Un examen de ambas antologías revela que hay más selecciones de cada autor hispanoamericano que los españoles y que la extensión de las selecciones hispanoamericanas es en general mayor que las españolas. En cuanto a la naturaleza de las selecciones mismas, los antologistas suelen mostrar cierta idiosincrasia al optar por una obra en lugar de otra, pero todas las selecciones aquí tienen su razón de ser. No obstante lo dicho, parece raro tener por única selección de Garcilaso una extensa égloga sin ninguno de sus famosos sonetos, lo mismo que ocurre con Quevedo, de quien hallamos un breve trozo del Buscón

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y una extensa epístola satírica, sin un soneto siquiera. La breve selección de Calderón consta de dos breves soliloquios de Segismundo en La vida es sueño.

Todas las selecciones antológicas indican el libro de donde vienen y la fecha de publicación (a diferencia de otros textos semejantes que omiten tales datos básicos) y todas vienen precedidas por una introducción que contiene mucho más información biográfica que crítico-literaria.

Estos textos, solos o en combinación, constituyen una valiosa adición a los materiales disponibles para los cursos introductorios al estudio de las literaturas hispánicas, y debemos alabar a sus dos autores por los muchos elementos innovativos que han brindado.

Theodore Alan Sackett
University of Southern California

Canary Islands Spanish represents an important link between Spain and Latin America, a key player in what Diego Catalán has called el español atlántico. Beginning with the first voyage of Columbus, and continuing through the early decades of the 20th century, the speech of the Canary Islands has been influenced by the dialects of Spain, while at the same time contributing to the formation of Latin American Spanish. Both geographically and causally, Canarian Spanish is a linguistic link between Europe and the Americas. Surprisingly, although a number of descriptive monographs and lexical surveys of Canarian Spanish have appeared, almost no work has been done on the rich texture of sociolinguistic variation in the Canary Islands. To date, the bibliography consists of only a few articles, together with Manuel Alvar's monograph Niveles socio-culturales en el habla de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (1972) which, however, contains no quantitative or variational analysis. The book under review is the first attempt to apply contemporary sociolinguistic and variational theory to the Spanish of the Canary Islands, adding the islands' largest urban area to the list of Spanish-speaking regions for which comprehensive and empirically solid sociolinguistic descriptions are available. The study was originally carried out as a doctoral dissertation, under the supervision of the noted sociolinguist Humberto López Morales, and closely follows the methodology and theoretical approach undertaken in the latter's sociolinguistic surveys of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The results are presented in the form of variable rules, whose coefficients represent the relative importance of numerous factors in inhibiting or favoring the processes in question. The statistical analysis was carried out using the familiar VARBRUL package, thus ensuring comparability with a wide range of contemporary variational studies.

The sociolinguistic variables studied in the speech of Las Palmas are exclusively phonetic: realization of /s/, /n/, /l/, /r/ and /d/ in a variety of positions. The author obtained recorded samples of free conversation with a group of informants chosen to represent the demographic profile of the urban area. For each phonological variable, the data were sifted for variation based on sex, age, and educational level, as well as for a range of phonetic environments and grammatical conditioning factors. The findings are compared -with a wide cross- section of data from other Spanish dialects, and from theoretical accounts of Spanish consonantal evolution. Many of the findings confirm patterns observed in other 'consonant-weak' Spanish dialects, although some aspects of Las Palmas Spanish stand out as relatively unique. In general, consonantal weakening, including erosion of /s/, interchange and loss of /l/ and /r/, and elision of intervocalic /d/, increases as educational level decreases. Age is of little significance in most of the processes, with the exception of /d/-dropping, which is more common among older speakers and appears to be receding among younger generations. Differences between male and female speech are also minimal; women tend to elide /d/ less than men, and aspirate /s/ more than men, while deleting the resulting [h] less frequently. In most instances, the differences have little statistical significance.

The consonantal weakening processes in Las Palmas Spanish occur in the same phonological environments, and with the same implicational relationships, as in other Spanish dialects. The grammatical status of the consonants involved is frequently of importance, but a strong functionally-based retention of consonants in correlation with the grammatical information they represent is not fully justified. For instance, when final /s/ is redundant, through signalling of plurality, second person singular, etc. elsewhere in the sentence, reduction is much more frequent. There is also evidence that subject pronouns, particularly tú, are used more frequently to compensate loss of /s/, but the quantitative data do not readily yield themselves to a comparison with other dialects.

Throughout the book, Samper Padilla gives detailed information on the phonetic contexts in which the various consonantal modifications occur. Although the study is not primarily aimed at the phonetic details which shape consonantal reduction, but rather targets the sociolinguistic distribution of consonantal variation, the descriptions are thorough and accurate, and can be used to expand theories of the phonological structure of Spanish consonants. In addition to the quantitative data, qualitative descriptions of some features of Las Palmas Spanish are potentially of significance to dialectology and phonological theory. For example, a unique property of Las Palmas Spanish is the occlusive pronunciation of /b/, /d/ and /g/ following an elided /s/, thus creating minimal pairs e.g. between la vaca [labaka] and las vacas [labaka]. When the /s/ is realized as an aspiration [h], however, the voiced obstruents are given fricative pronunciation. This process poses a challenge to theories of the internal structure of phonological elements. When

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combined with the frequent voicing of intervocalic /p/, /t/, and /k/ in Canary Island Spanish, the above-mentioned trait is giving rise to an opposition based on tension rather than voicing, unique in the Spanish speaking world. Samper Padilla gives distributional data which suggest that the occlusive pronunciation of voiced obstruents is of rural origin, a possibility which had been raised in earlier studies.

The book under review is a tightly structured sociolinguistic description of an important dialect zone, useful to sociolinguists, dialectologists and phonologists. Sociolinguistic patterns which have been observed in other Spanish dialects are given additional confirmation, at the same time that the first quantitative account of any variety of Canarian Spanish is given. It is to be hoped that the author will eventually offer a sequel in which the equally important syntactic variation of Canary Islands Spanish is considered. Other points which might be picked up in a subsequent analysis of Las Palmas Spanish are the retention of the palatal lateral ll, and possibly the realization of ch, which exhibits much diversity in the Canary Islands. The most important sociolinguistic indicators have already been treated. In summary, this is one of the most thorough variational accounts of a variety of Spanish, and is recommended to all readers interested in Spanish language variation.

John M. Lipski
University of Florida

This text is a revision of the classic grammar review first published in 1933. Intended for advanced grammar and composition courses, Lloyd's revision attempts to retain the spirit of the original while updating exercises and terminology to make it accessible to today's student.

The book is divided into two preliminary lessons, covering the formation of basic parts of speech; nineteen chapters, each with a primary topic and various secondary points; a thorough appendix; and a glossary. Grammar points are numbered consecutively throughout the test, and the index gives both section and page numbers. Typically, the chapters begin with an overview of the central theme, such as ser and estar, followed by detailed explanations illustrated with examples (and English translations). Many brief exercises, generally item-substitution drills, reinforce the grammatical concepts. Each chapter also contains a Verbos y modismos section that reviews various verbs, usually related by orthographic or radical-changing properties, and their idioms; for example, Chapter I reviews Class II and III radical-changing verbs, plus idiomatic expressions using servir (servir de, servir para, servirse de, sírvase) and entender. The main exercises in each chapter are English-to-Spanish translations, but the end of most chapters contains temas for guided composition. The book is thus suitable for various kinds of upper-level language courses.

It should come as no surprise that this text is rooted in classical grammatical terminology. It is designed for the serious student who is familiar with, or able to grasp readily, traditional explanations. Yet, as befits its longevity, A Graded Spanish Review Grammar has many more strengths than weaknesses. First, the explanations are thorough and punctuated with well-chosen examples. Second, it is a comprehensive text without being long-winded. Third, the excellent appendix is reason enough to consider the book as an indispensable reference manual; the lists of verbs governing infinitives and prepositions, for example, are among the most complete available. Finally, Lloyd has succeeded in subordinating some of the more obscure (to the student) grammatical terms to more familiar ones. «Conjunctive» and «disjunctive» pronouns become «verb object pronouns» and «pronoun objects of prepositions» (45). In this way the traditional term is retained but presented in a passive manner.

Minor problems detract from this otherwise sound text. The brief exercises following the grammatical explanations lack originality; likewise, the temas are unlikely to stimulate students' interest. Moreover, the Verbos y modismos section would benefit from organization according to lexical or semantic criteria, such as Spanish equivalents of «to miss» or «to take», accompanied by contrastive examples. Finally, the grammatical concepts -the preterit/imperfect contrast, for example- are not presented all at once but rather are interspersed with secondary topics.

Lloyd has successfully updated the classic Tarr-Centeno text without spoiling its original flavor. It should appeal to teachers who favor the traditional approach to language learning, although many will want to create their own exercises to supplement the translations. For those who would find its classical approach to grammar workable in the classroom, the book will nevertheless be an invaluable reference tool.

Alan S. Bruflat
Wayne State College

The Second edition of DeMello's Español contemporáneo is a significantly revised and updated volume. Designed for third- and fourth-year Spanish language classes, the test has retained the basic format of the 1974 first edition: a brief reading selection followed by questions, as well as observations on language difficulties and a grammar lesson, each followed by translation exercises. Eight of the original fifteen readings have been retained; the others have been replaced by short stories and two magazine articles from recent publications. The grammar and

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vocabulary explanations have been completely rewritten.

Each chapter opens with a brief reading passage representing a variety of styles and themes, from the touching Alacena para una sentencia by Sara Zimerman to the shocking La Sandía by Enrique Anderson Imbert. The stories are not glossed in the margins, though much of the vocabulary may be found in the comprehensive glossary at the end of the book. This glossary is especially handy, since Spanish and English entries are glossed simultaneously. The reading texts contain numbered phrases and structures which provide the substance of the «Observaciones» section.

Immediately following each reading selection are two series of questions related to its topic. The first set centers around the content of the reading and requires students to use specific vocabulary in each response: for example, in Chapter 6 a typical question directs: «usando las palabras hogar, puerta, solicitar, convencer, ama de casa, ventaja, enceradora y abono, describa Ud. el empleo del protagonista (147)». The second set of questions tends to be opinion-oriented and broad; thus these may be used in class discussion or as composition topics.

The second part of each chapter is called «Observaciones». This section uses fifteen items numbered in the reading passage as springboards to explore language difficulties common to students at this level. Highlighted are such items as false cognates («embarazado»), differentiation between terms such as «excepto», «menos» and «salvo», and regional phenomena such as the «voseo» to which students might not have been previously exposed. This is especially useful since the information comes at a particularly appropriate point in the learner's development. The explanations, in English, are well-written and detailed. The «Observaciones» are followed by twenty to thirty sentences to be translated from English to Spanish, utilizing the lexicon and structures studied.

The final section of each chapter consists of explanations of such late-acquired items as relative pronouns, the subjunctive and uses of «ser» and «estar». These sections have been rewritten for the second edition, and tend to be better delineated and organized, for example, the «por vs. para» section has been improved to mark more obscure or specific usages, such as «para con» as such. Explanations of such complex issues as verbal aspect are treated with clarity. All explanations are written in English, accompanied by abundant examples in Spanish, then frequently followed by further analysis of the examples themselves. Such clarifications are written in a straightforward, reader-friendly style.

The grammar exercises provided are limited to translation sentences. These tend to be a rather eclectic assortment. Sentences in Chapter 7, for example, range from «Did you thaw this bread? No, it thawed in the sun» to «when her beautiful new dress tore as she sat down, she almost had a heart attack (189)». Some sentences are also rather ambiguous, such as the following from Chapter 14: «He told the people about the way in which his company canned the king star, and they listened to him enthralled (383)».

A lack of contextualized and/or communicative exercises utilizing the points of language under scrutiny is the text's principal shortcoming. This is compensated for somewhat by the opinion-oriented questions following the reading selections. Some instructors may choose to supplement the text with activities involving contextualized, creative language use. Particularly if adapted in this way, Español contemporáneo is a useful and useable core text for an advanced Spanish language class.

Ann S. White
Michigan State University

A very widely accepted pattern for writing reviews of Spanish teaching and learning materials is to read whatever prefatory material may be supplied within the publication and then report to one's readers the degree to which an examination of the material itself indicates that goals set forth in the prefatory material have and have not been realized. That pattern will not work very well in this case because the publisher dedicates a grand total of fifty-two words to a description of the book that appears on the back cover. These include: «This book will provide the student and traveler with a firm grasp of the spoken language and the basic vocabulary needed to communicate in Spanish...».

The simple fact is that the publisher's back cover advertising claims more power for this publication than it could possibly have. That, however, does not make Spanish Grammar a book without a perfectly valid purpose, especially in view of its reasonable price ($8.95, paperback). An examination of the grammar explanation for such critical elements as ser and estar, imperfect and preterite, and por and para shows them to be adequate when one considers the intentionally small space dedicated to them.

Also, the book has a few practice exercises, two large glossaries, advice on verb conjugation and a lot of attention to cognates. If the learner expects to use Spanish Grammar to provide some of the direct teaching of grammar that may not appear in a course that stresses communicative goals (especially listening), the book may fit a particularly useful niche. If, on the other hand, one expects to learn Spanish as one might learn a series of commands to operate a computer, an important caveat becomes necessary. People who learn languages in such completely linear and analytic fashions do exist, but they are relatively rare. This reviewer has, by one means or another, achieved a significant level of communicative ability in Spanish without ever knowing that there were, as Spanish Grammar explains, twenty-two irregular verbs in Spanish (160). That fact somehow never mattered

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very much. People to whom it does matter are attempting to learn, it seems, by analyzing without ever taking the time to develop the other skills involved in successful language learning. If one can and does learn that way, Spanish Grammar is all one might need. If, on the other hand, one learns in a variety of ways, as it appears most people do, the book might be better left to the linguistic scientist who may only need to learn about Spanish in order to analyze it rather than to students who wish to listen, speak, read, write, and develop cultural appreciation in Spanish.

Alan Garfinkel
Purdue University

Publicado originalmente en 1983, esta segunda edición revisada (1991) actualiza los más recientes eventos sociohistóricos y artísticos, incluyendo además el movimiento de la liberación de la mujer (408-10) y la función de la teología de la liberación en la Iglesia Católica (410-11). Según precisa Chang-Rodríguez en el prefacio, el texto pretende seguir una coordenada diacrónica que correlacione el pasado con la marcha de aquellos sucesos actuales de más impacto humano en los países de la América Latina.

Dividido en veinte capítulos, el primero se ocupa de la unidad del mundo indoamericano. Hace hincapié en los hechos políticos, económicos, lingüísticos y sociológicos que sirven de vínculo histórico a los veinte países estudiados en la obra. El segundo discute someramente la geopolítica, y el carácter del «pueblo hispano», con sus diferentes matices regionales, clasistas y étnicos (28). Para el autor, el libro se perfila como los colores de un «arco iris indo-afro-latinoamericano», unos más claros que otros. De ahí, la inserción de dos naciones no hispanohablantes tan disímiles como lo son Brasil y Haití.

El capítulo 3 se concentra en las grandes civilizaciones precolombinas y su herencia cultural. Se añaden también evidencias arqueológicas descubiertas en la década de los años 80. El cuarto cubre los viajes de exploración, la conquista y su significado histórico. Los capítulos 5 al 7 abarcan la vida colonial desde el siglo XVI hasta el XVIII, tanto en el Brasil como en el resto de los otros países latinoamericanos. Analiza especialmente el papel de la Ilustración como una de las causas inminentes de las guerras de independencia que se discuten en el capítulo 8.

Los capítulos 9 al 15 están organizados por áreas geográficas: Brasil, los países del Plata, los andinos meridionales y septentrionales, México, las Antillas y Centroamérica. De esta última zona se omite arbitrariamente Belice que, a pesar de sus raíces hispánicas, no aparece ni en el mapa de la página 238. La información de casi todos los países se encuentra actualizada hasta 1990, lo que permite al profesor del curso familiarizar al estudiante con temas contemporáneos de gran interés sociopolítico.

Los capítulos 16 al 19 presentan el panorama literario y arquitectónico, las artes plásticas y la música. El último, «Nuevos desarrollos en la problemática cultural» se adentra en críticas e interpretaciones modernas. Trata asuntos pertinentes a la presencia de los orientales, los nuevos amerindios y los afrohispanos en Indoamérica, al igual que los hispanos que viven en las grandes urbes de los Estados Unidos. Incluye además otra cuestión que constituye el elemento organizador del libro: el acercamiento sincrónico utilizado por Chang-Rodríguez para sostener su proposición inicial sobre la unidad pluricultural de Hispanoamérica.

Todos los capítulos terminan con un resumen, una bibliografía mínima, un cuestionario y temas para informes optativos (orales y escritos). Las notas al pie aclaran palabras y expresiones difíciles para que el estudiante no traduzca al inglés. Al final del texto hallamos un apéndice de vocabulario español-inglés (421-68). En general, el libro está concebido con sentido temático, preparado metódicamente y escrito con claridad y precisión.

Latinoamérica: su civilización y su cultura es recomendable para un tipo de lector que el autor conoce bien, el estudiante universitario subgraduado de clases avanzadas que cursa la asignatura para obtener una visión global de la civilización y de la cultura hispanoamericanas. Más relevante aún: le enseña a apreciar los valores de las artes y de la literatura dentro de esta misma cultura.

Luis A. Jiménez
Seton Hill College

An engaging collection of press articles arranged in a distinctive format makes this volume a valuable complement to the intermediate-advanced language courses. The articles, culled from over twenty-five major Hispanic dailies and magazines, appeared by and large in 1987-88.

The text is methodically organized into fourteen thematic units, each with four to six adapted readings. Each unit is self-contained in that no explicit vocabulary from one section should be required for successful reading of another. Moreover, marginal glosses in English together with succinct cultural notes in Spanish facilitate in decoding the content.

Individually the articles conclude with a standard three-part exercise to check for different levels of understanding. Specifically:

1. Comprensión or comprehension questions that elicit main ideas and supporting details. For variety, a few more multiple-choice items should have been included.

2. Práctica or a vocabulary-matching exercise that leads to a scanty guided-writing activity.

3. Ampliación or in-depth questions that aptly delve into the experiences and opinions of the readers.

For the instructor who prefers sustained speaking

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and writing exercises, vis-à-vis disjointed questions, the author has skillfully included at the end of each unit three detailed, thought-provoking activities that synthesize the language and content of each section. These activities revolve around role-playing, oral and written reports and suggested projects.

To be in consonance with current reading strategies the author could have prefaced the readings with preview questions and vocabulary exercises. These activities not only provide background but more importantly help intermediate students decipher the intended meaning from the outset. In fact, the author on several occasions asks the readers to refer to the cultural notes at the end of the passages before beginning or continuing the reading. To the author's credit, however, he has headed each article with questions to pique interest in the material.

While the range and interest of topics is impressive, a couple of overlapping articles could have been substituted. In their place customary reviews on movies, books, and art or an article on international business and trade would have been a welcome inclusion. Elsewhere, the wealth of realia could have been better coordinated with the content of the articles. The numerous illustrations should serve for more than page fillers. Adding two or three questions as part of a caption could further pave the way for more effective interpretation of the readings.

Careful proof-reading of the manuscript has produced an almost error-free text. Oversights include omission of a few accent marks, lack of numbering for the comic strip on pages 90-91 to facilitate answering the follow-up questions, and the exclusion of the word drama in explaining Goethe's Faust. In addition, the vocabulary entries in the back matter are sparse given the range and depth of articles covered. Notations on usage acceptability, e.g. ¿En dónde? and (él) alcanza el río ...would be useful.

In retrospect, this fourth-edition of Lecturas Periodísticas presents a high-quality sampling of recent press articles. Expertly adapted to varying interests, the articles and exercises stimulate critical thinking and student interaction on current salient issues.

Oscar Ozete
University of Southern Indiana

In this book, which is a collection of Bolinger's works published over almost half a century, some of the most lucid treatments of many important issues in Spanish-English contrastive grammar are conveniently gathered, and topics in Spanish (applied) linguistics that still invite debate among linguists are concisely synthesized. The book (with thirty-one articles) is divided into six parts followed by a list of Bolinger's publications between 1934 and 1989 (with 312 items). Author's introductory notes precede groups of related articles dealing with a particular topic. Most of the articles are contrastive in approach with many important observations from the pedagogical viewpoint of teaching Spanish to the English-speaking student, which makes the collection useful in both courses on Spanish grammar and applied linguistics courses (though the addition of comprehensive bibliography would also have been appreciated).

Since the space limitation precludes commenting on individual articles separately, I will only summarize the topics discussed in the collection. Part I (Words and Phrases) includes nine articles dealing with the discourse function of en efecto, norm-v. -non-norm distinction between ser and estar, the use of por and para with infinitives, and historical analyses of parecer (que), among others. Six articles in Part II (Governance) cover passive (of dative objects), impersonal -reflexive se, the use of que and de in comparative constructions, and the infinitival complement of N (after prepositions and in relative clauses), while three in Part III (Word Classes) discuss the use (and omission) of articles, «prepositionness» of some adverbials, and the use of personal a (as presentative) with existential verbs. Part IV (Word Order with four articles) takes up the problem of teaching the adjective position, functional (presupposed vs. new/ unpredicted/contrastive) aspects of word order, and «clitic climbing» phenomena. In Part V (Modality), subjective as the formalization of illocutions in defense of one underlying meaning, epistemic meanings of modal verbs and the future/conditional tenses, -ra and -se of the imperfect subjunctive, the future and conditional of probability and the categorial status of poder and deber are discussed in seven articles. Finally two articles (Postscript) on the reference of the preterit and qué tan(to) conclude the book.

First of all, the reader will be impressed by Bolinger's accurate descriptions of the linguistic phenomena and acute observations on details. The book is also full of intelligent remarks on general linguistic theory and has implications which extend beyond the area of Spanish (applied) linguistics. His style is never condescending.

Secondly, many of the currently popular analyses (in their early forms) are already discussed (with terminological differences) in his early papers suggesting that many of his analyses are «timeless». For example, it contains an early discussion of «raising» (with parecer (que)) and his analyses of todo foresees later generative analyses.

But most importantly the book deepens our understanding of the function of language and teaches us how to analyze and look for possible answers to complex linguistic phenomena. Without doubt, this collection is a welcome addition to the shelf of Hispanists and linguists alike.

Masataka Ishikawa
University of Hawaii at Manoa

This edition is a noble attempt to bring the work of Castro Alves, a Brazilian nineteenth century poet, to a wider readership. While the theme of these poems is of interest to the English-speaking public, several factors affect the accuracy of this generally readable and accessible presentation. For example, the preface claims that Castro Alves is a «non-traditional» author (x), yet in the Brazilian literary canon he is widely acknowledged and anthologized as one of the hallmark poets of the Brazilian Romantic period. The preface also refers to the poor quality of the paper used in the popular nineteenth-century editions of Castro Alves's works which threatens to destroy them for future generations. This would seem to ignore a more recent edition of Castro Alves's Obra Completa (Aguilar, 1986) which not only preserves his works but also updates the spelling from nineteenth-century usage. One of the major flaws of this bilingual edition is the use of nineteenth-century Portuguese without significant justification or annotation. This orthography is distracting to readers of Portuguese and misleading to non-readers of the language.

The introduction is limited in scope. While it refers to the differences of class and racial barriers faced by blacks in the U.S. and Brazil, it devotes little discussion to how the Brazilian Abolitionist movement «followed quite a different path than that of the United States» (xvi) and does not mention the year slavery was abolished in Brazil (1888). The introduction also refers to Castro Alves's capacity «to imagine the voice of Africa within his own voice» (xvii), yet omits the influence of the French Romantic ideals of the noble savage and the misunderstood Romantic hero which made such an identification possible.

While the choice of poems is appropriate, there are several basic errors in the translation. For example, «a Mancha», the English Channel, is translated as «La Mancha», a region of Spain. The line, «Tendo por peste jaguar», which clearly refers to the slave who now must battle pestilence in the slave ship instead of the jaguar, is erroneously translated as «a fine tent of pestilence for the jaguar» (20). The word «mimosa», an adjective in Portuguese, is also mistranslated as the mimosa plant (27-31).

The notes to the edition provide detailed information about flora and fauna, but are difficult to use because they refer to the poems by title and line number, and the poems have no line numbers in the text itself. The notes on the largest runaway slave community, the «Quilombo dos Palmares» confuse several terms. «Quilombola», the word for an inhabitant of the «quilombo», is given as the word for «quilombo» (147), and «Palmeiras» is given as the name for the «Quilombo dos Palmares» (162).

Although these errors may not spoil the translation for a non-Brazilianist, they clearly interfere with its historical and linguistic accuracy. While the translation has its merits, careful editing might have avoided the errors that mar this otherwise admirable undertaking.

M. Elizabeth Ginway
University of Georgia

While Los heraldos negros (1918) was César Vallejo's first volume of poetry, it has been the last to be translated into English. With their bilingual edition, The Black Heralds (1990), Richard Schaaf and Kathleen Ross reveal Vallejo's rich lyrical tapestry to the anglophone community.

In the difficult task of translation, Schaaf and Ross give a faithful rendering of the original text. Vallejo's powerful poetic spirit emerges in the translation, yet his cadence is sometimes lost: «Cual hieráticos bardos prisioneros,/los álamos de sangre se han dormido./ Rumian arias de yerba al sol caído,/ las greyes de Belén en los oteros». (40) «Like imprisioned priestly poets,/ the poplars of blood have gone to sleep./ On the hills the flocks of Bethlehem/ chew arias of grass as the sun sets» (41).

Like its Spanish counterpart, The Black Heralds is divided into six sections preceded by the opening poem «The Black Heralds». The translators include a brief but telling chronology of the poet's life and literary career. They also provide useful explanatory notes in the fourth section, «Imperial Nostalgias». In the main, these notes clarify the many untranslated quechua terms that occur in this section.

Though Los heraldos negros is the earliest and most traditional of Vallejo's works, it is essential for understanding his development as a poet. This initial book of poetry contains the major themes that repeatedly appear in his later works. In the diligent hands of these translators, the suffering, despair, longing, loneliness, compassion, existential anguish -indeed, the entire range of Vallejo's poetic odyssey is presented to a new audience. With The Black Heralds, Schaaf and Ross have made a valuable contribution to the corpus of Hispanic literature in translation and have broadened the possibilities for a greater appreciation of the scope of twentieth century poetry.

Millicent A. Bolden
Clemson University

In Pablo Neruda's Canto general, America is more than the sum of its metaphors. Whatever the peculiar configuration of its plot, argument or structure might be, Canto general makes sense as a book about words and voices. This befits a book whose key elements are water and air. Water defines the space of America as continent, air allows the sounds to travel. These

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sounds are the multiplied tones of the poet, and they are all there in Jack Schmitt's translation of Neruda's voices and works. From the heroic to the encyclopedic Neruda, from the love poet, to the writer of political verse, to the one that eulogizes «The Life and Death of a Butterfly» (209) in the midst of an epic. Like all good translation's Schmitt is a re-discovery of the original.

Schmitt is particularly brilliant in sections whose innovative thrust has not been fully realized by the Hispanic poetic tradition. For example, the plays on voice in the testimonials from «The Earth's Name is Juan»: «Yes, Sir, José Cruz Achachalla,/from Sierra de Granito, south of Oruro./ And that's where my mother/Rosalía must still be living:/she works for some folks,/washing their clothes» (246). These translations allow us to read a Neruda that is not disfigured by a tradition that has only read him in his more oceanic modes. It is my opinion that in sections like «Let the Woodcutter Awaken», the English actually surpasses the Spanish. Maybe it is because Schmitt has avoided the rhetorical flair much used by Neruda, where to the first person pronoun a series of qualifiers is added, followed by the verb. Compare the Spanish: «Yo también más allá de tus tierras, América,/ando y hago mi casa errante, vuelo, paso, canto y converso a través de los días» with Schmitt's English: «Beyond your lands, América, I also wend my way/and make my wandering house: I fly about, pass through,/sing and chat for days on end» (261).

I leave for the end what must be Canto general's better known section, «The Heights of Macchu Picchu» and «Amor América», where translators have generally turned Neruda into a high-pitched Whitman. This is a sad mistake, for Neruda does not actually sound like Whitman, but more Like a Whitman filtered through Quevedo, or vice versa. Schmitt has heard these sections in their appropriate middle register, between speech and silence: plaintive, conversational, questing. We should celebrate that this voice is finally heard through the Américas in Jack Schmitt's sensitive rendition.

The book itself is of strikingly beautiful design and is prefaced by an insightful introduction by Roberto González Echevarría.

José Quiroga
George Washington University

This is Benítez Rojo's first long novel, originally published in Havana, in 1979, with the title El mar de las lentejas. Previously, he had won two literary prizes for his collection of short stories Tute de reyes (1967), which received the Casa de las Américas Prize, and El escudo de hojas secas (1969), recipient of the National Writers Union (UNEAC) Luis Felipe Rodríguez Prize. More recently, he was honored with the Pushcart Prize (1986) for his story «Heaven and Earth» («La tierra y el cielo», 1978). Benítez Rojo's other notable works include Los inquilinos (1976), a short novel; Heroica (1976), a collection of short stories; Fruta verde (1979), another collection of short stories; El enigma de los Esterlines (1980), a novel of adventure; in addition to a number of outstanding essays, like the notorious «La isla que se repite: para una reinterpretación de la cultura caribeña» (1986).

Two main themes are evident in the fiction of Benítez Rojo: the deformed manner in which the Cuban middle class confronts reality -both before and after the Revolution of 1959-, and the social and cultural history of the Caribbean basin area. Through these themes, the writer examines not only the Cuban national identity but also a Caribbean identity in which one of its main catalysts is the African presence.

Sea of Lentils recreates, freed of heroic myths, the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean basin region by way of four interwoven and parallel narratives told from several perspectives and divided into twenty-eight truncated chapters: (1) In the third person, the reminiscences and the agony of King Philip II of Spain at his deathbed in El Escorial, in 1598. This narrative opens the novel. Therefore, the putrefactive atmosphere in which the King is decaying sets the tone for the rest of the plot. Philip is presented as a tormented being distressed by his sickness and the disappointment of his reign, in particular the defeat of the Invincible Armada he had dispatched against England. Benítez Rojo uses the retrospection of the monarch as a means of characterization. Through his reflections, he reveals his religious fervor and the fear that the defeat of the Armada might have been a punishment by God. He also discloses his life-long effort to protect Spain and its empire from heresy. (2) Mostly in the second person, the Life of Antón Baptista from the time he left for America on the second voyage of Columbus in 1493 up to his death in Hispaniola. Antón Baptista is a fictional character symbolic of those conquistadores who had an illusory vision of the treasures the new land would provide, of those who exploited these lands for personal gain and who were responsible for the extermination of the natives. The natives, on the other hand, envisioned the Spaniards as demigods, just as the Indian Doña Antonia and Antón's natural son, Miguel, saw in him «an idol come down from the distant forests of heaven, a white angel molded from the sacred yucca's pulp...» (126). However, because of his cruelty, he is later despised by everyone, even by his son, the green-eyed mestizo youth of Spanish and Taíno blood, who murders him. (3) In the third person, the history of Cristóbal and Pedro de Ponte in the Canary Islands, and the business deal of the latter with the English merchant John Hawkins, which led to their clandestine African slave trade to the New World. Through Pedro de Ponte and John Hawkins, Benítez Rojo illustrates the tainted business practices and inhumanity which characterized

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the slave trade, also marked by deceit, sham and greed. The narrative ends with the first trip of John Hawkins and his English crew to «God's seas, the seas of all good Christians, the seas the Lord created so that Noah's sons might trade among themselves...» [199]. (4) In the first person, the voyage of Pedro Valdés with the army of his father-in-law, the Adelantado Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565. It describes the founding of Saint Augustine, the annihilation of the French Huguenot colony in Florida and the death of their general Juan Ribao (Jean Ribault). Here Benítez Rojo underlines the Adelantado's loyalty to the King and his faith, as well as his mercilessness toward those whom he considered enemies. He rejects Ribao's offer of two hundred ducats in exchange for the favor of letting him and his Lutheran friends remain in Saint Augustine; instead, he kills them.

The title of the novel comes from the cartographer Guillaume le Testu, who mistook the word Antilles for lentils. Ironically, lentils denote in the novel the disenchantment of the first conquerors upon not finding in the Antilles the gold which they so much yearned. The introduction, by Sydney Lea, stresses the liquid texture, the «continuities», of the novel's narrative flow.

James Maraniss, also the translator of Benítez Rojo's short stories «Gentlemen's Agreement» and «The Man in the Armchair», has rendered a splendid and vivid translation of Sea of Lentils, in which he has maintained in most instances the tone and style of the Spanish original. In the sections dealing with the life of Antón Baptista and the voyage of Pedro Valdés with Menéndez de Avilés, in which Benítez Rojo uses the language and style characteristic of the 16th century Spanish crónicas, Maraniss, however, opts to standardize the prose to a more modern form. He is to be commended for making accessible in due time to the English language readers one of the best Spanish American historical novels, on the eve of the Quincentennial.

Daniel Zalacaín
Seton Hall University

Rosa Margot Ochoa concealed herself behind the family cleverly depicted in the novel. So I find it difficult to separate the author from her fiction, to keep from anticipating what will happen. The novel becomes a social document filled with intrigue, plots and unexpected events: the death of a kitten, the dastardly attempt on the lives of Anita's mother and her sister -all cleared up in the final four pages of the epilogue. Undercurrents is truly a fascinating novel of labyrinthine mystery that besets an unfortunate family. Is Anita a child of evil deeds, insolent, jealous of those closely associated with her? Is her madness inherited from her grandmother who had spent many years shut up in her house, grieving for the loss of her daughter? Luisa loved Anita, but how long can she continue to do so with so many events arousing doubts about her conduct? Rosa Margot Ochoa is a Mexican author of nine more books, including three collections of poetry, two plays, two short stories, and newspaper editorials. Marie A. Wellington has made a truly superior translation of a unique book.

Harvey L. Johnson
Professor Emeritus
University of Houston

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CARMONY, NEIL B. and DAVID E. BROWN, eds. Mexican Game Trails. Americans Afield in Old Mexico, 1866-1940. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. 270 pp.

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CLARK, JOHN R. The Modern Satiric Grotesque and its Traditions. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1991. 212 pp.

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KISNER, RITA. Ejercicios estimulantes: Calistenia para el cerebro. Eau Claire, WI: Thinking Publications, 1991. Libro I, 106 pp. Libro II, 106 pp.

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PEÑARROJA TORREJON, LEOPOLDO. El mozárabe de Valencia. Nuevas cuestiones de fonología mozárabe. Madrid: Gredos, 1990. 514 pp.

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RICHARDS, JACK C. with JONATHAN HULL and SUSAN PROCTOR. Interchange. English for International Communication. Student's Book 3. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 134 pp.

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Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 75, Number 2, May 1992