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Index of Authors, Titles, and
Reviewers
Peninsular
Powell, James M.,
editor.
Muslims under Latin Rule,
1100-1300. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 221
pp.
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 Keller, Jean Paul.
The Poet's Myth of Fernán
González. Scripta Humanistica, 81. Potomac, MD:
Scripta Humanistica, 1990. iii + 168 pp.
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
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 Giles, Mary E.
The Book of Prayer of Sor María of
Santo Domingo. A Study and Translation. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1990. ix +214 pp.
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
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 Aldaraca, Bridget,
Edward Baker y John Beverly.
Texto y Sociedad: Problemas de Historia
Literaria. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1990. 282
pp.
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
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 Lo Ré, A. G.
Essays on the Periphery of the
Quijote. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1991. 124
pp.
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, William H.
Language and Ideology in the Prose of
Quevedo. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1991.
xii+210 pp.
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
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 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
Edward V. Coughlin Kirkpatrick, Susan.
Las Románticas: Women Writers and
Subjectivity in Spain, 1835-1850. Berkeley: University
Press of California, 1989. 355 pp.
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 Sieburth, Stephanie
H.
Reading «La Regenta»:
Duplicitous Discourse and the Entropy of Structure.
Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamin, 1990. 127 pp.
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
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 Valis, Noël,
editor. «Malevolent Insemination» and Other Essays
on Clarín. Michigan Romance Studies 10. Ann
Arbor: Department of Romance Languages, The University of Michigan, 1990. 222
pp.
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
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 Pardo Bazán,
Emilia.
Cuentos completos. 4
vols. Estudio preliminar, Edición, Bibliografía, Notas y Censo de
personajes by Juan Paredes Núñez. La Coruña, Spain:
Fundación «Pedro Barrie de la Maza, Conde de Fenosa», 1990.
Vol. 1: 498 pp.; Vol. 2: 458 pp.; Vol. 3: 531 pp.; Vol. 4: 474 pp.
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
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 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,
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 Vásquez, Mary
S., editor.
The Sea of Becoming. Approaches to the
Fiction of Esther Tusquets. Westport Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1991. 236 pp.
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
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 Amell, Samuel,
editor.
Literature, the Arts, and Democracy: Spain
in the Eighties. Translations by Alma Amell. London and
Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1990. 144 pp.
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 wo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
