Book reviews

Book reviews

EDITORIAL POLICY: Publishers and authors are invited to submit books for review in Hispania; in general, journal numbers will not be reviewed. Hispania cannot accept unsolicited reviews nor honor requests to review specific books. Members of AATSP who wish to be considered as reviewers may send copies of curricula vitae to the Book Review Editor. Those assigned books for review will receive a style sheet and a statement of editorial policy.

Peninsular Literature

Ackerlind, Sheila R., Patterns of Conflict: The Individual and Society in Spanish Literature to 1700 (Martínez) 984-85.

Acosta de Hess, Josefina, Galdós y la novela de adulterio (Sackett) 989-90.

Barrow, Geoffrey R., The Satiric Vision of Blas de Otero (Ugalde) 992-93.

Boehne, Patricia, The Renaissance Catalan Novel (Durán) 984.

Blue, William R., Comedia: Art and History (Williamsen) 986.

Brown, Frieda S., Malcolm Alan Compitello, Victor M. Howard and Robert A. Martin, eds., Rewriting the Good Fight: Critical Essays on the Spanish Civil War (Smoot) 991-92.

Carazo, Jesús, Los límites del paraíso (Glenn) 994.

Damiani, B. M. and R. El Saffar, eds., Studies in Honor of Elias Rivers (Naylor) 985-86.

Crispin, John, et al., eds., Los hallazgos de la lectura: Estudio dedicado a Miguel Enguídanos (Landeira) 988-89.

Ebersole, Alva V, Sobre arquetipos, símbolos y metateatro (Cazorla) 986-87.

Ellis, Robert Richmond, The Tragic Pursuit of Being. Unamuno and Sartre (Ouimette) 990.

Gilman, Stephen, The Novel According to Cervantes (Fiore) 987-88.

Gray, Rockwell, The Imperative of Modernity: An Intellectual Biography of José Ortega y Gasset (Mermall) 991.

Nichols, Geraldine C., Escribir, espacio propio: Laforet Matute, Moix, Tusquets, Riera y Roig por sí mismas (Bieder) 994-95.

O'Connor, Patricia W., Dramaturgas españolas de hoy: una introducción (Vosburg) 993-94.

Scanlon, Geraldine M., Pérez Galdós: «Marianela» (Sackett) 989-90.

Latin American Literature

Amilat, ed., Judaica Latinoamericana: estudios sociohistóricos (Lindstrom) 997-98.

Cuesta, Barbara de la, The Gold Mine (Vásquez) 1005-07.

Feierstein, Ricardo, ed., Cuentos judíos latinoamericanos (Lindstrom) 997-98.

Fitz, Earl E., Machado de Assis (Courteau) 996-97.

Gómez-Martínez, José Luis, ed., Anuario Bibliográfico de Historia del Pensamiento Ibero e Iberoamericano, 1986 (Donoso) 1002-03.

Hernández, Irene Beltrán, Across the Great River (Vásquez) 1005-07.

Kanellos, Nicolás, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Hispanic Literature in the United States. The Literature of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Other Hispanic Writers (Johnson) 1003-05.

Kanellos, Nicolás y Jorge A. Huerta, eds., Nuevos pasos: Chicano and Puerto Rican Drama (Aparicio) 1001-02.

Lindstrom, Naomi, Jewish Issues in Argentine Literature (Salgado Gordon) 998-99.

Maturo, Graciela, Fenomenología, creación y crítica: Sujeto y mundo en la novela latinoamericana (Lichtblau) 999-1000.

Mohr, Nicolasa, In Nueva York (Vásquez) 1005-07.

Ponce, Mary Helen, The Wedding (Vásquez) 1005-07.

Rodríguez, Teresita, La problemática de la identidad en «El señor presidente» de Miguel Ángel Asturias (Stabb) 995-96.

Schon, Isabel, Books in Spanish for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Guide (Woods) 1003.

___, A Hispanic Heritage: A Guide to Juvenile Books about Hispanic People and Culture (Woods) 1003.

Sosnowski, Saul, La Orilla Inminente (Salgado Gordon) 998-99.

Vallejo, Catharina V de, Teoría cuentística del siglo XX (Aproximaciones hispánicas) [Guerra McSpadden] 1000-01.

Linguistics and Pedagogy

Bjarkman, Peter C. and Robert M. Hammond, American Spanish Pronunciation: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives (Shreve) 1010-11.

Brod, Evelyn F. and Carol J. Brady, Viajemos 2001 (Amell) 1008-09.

Gass, Susan M. and Jacquelyn Schachter, eds., Linguistic Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition (Haynes) 1011-12.

Haro, María-Paz, Maria del Carmen Sigler and Christine Bennett, Cada vez mejor Español para nivel intermedio (Rodríguez-Florido) 1008.

Kittredge, Margaret A., Rumbo a Buenos Aires: Escenas Culturales Argentinas

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(Arrington) 1009.

Nunan, David, The Learner-Centred Curriculum: A Study in Second Language Teaching (Greenia) 1009-10.

Ur, Penny, Grammar Practice Activities (Wieczorek) 1007.

Translations

Baker, Edward, trans. of Roberto Fernández Retamar, Caliban and Other Essays (Stabb) 1013-14.

Catz, Rebecca D., ed. and trans. of Fernão Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto (Arrington, Jr.) 1012-13.

Wilson, Jason, An A to Z of Modern Latin American Literature in English Translation (Pérez) 1014.

The Catalan origins of the modern novel are often ignored even by our best Departments of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature. Yet several important steps have been made in recent years towards remedying this situation. An internationally famous novelist such as Mario Vargas Llosa has underlined several times the originality and high literary quality of Tirant lo Blanch (see his preface to the Alianza translation into Spanish, Madrid, 1969). The excellent translation of Tirant into English by David H. Rosenthal (New York: Schocken, 1984) has been a major contribution. Patricia Boehne's The Renaissance Catalan Novel is a solid scholarly contribution to the study of early Renaissance literature. It focuses on two novels, Curial e Güelfa and Tirant to Blanch, both recently translated into English. Chapters 1 and 2 describe accurately the main developments of Catalan literature during the late medieval and early Renaissance periods, as well as the development of fiction elsewhere, especially in France and Italy. Chapters 3 and 4 underline the modernity of Curial e Güelfa, a novel in which the use of current events and the psychological development of the main characters anticipate several of Cervantes's contributions to modem fiction. Boccaccio's youthful novel, Fiammetta, may have influenced the psychological-sentimental tone of Curial e Güelfa, while Tirant, with its many sensual, erotic, amoral love scenes may remind us of the Decameron. The appearance of these two novels at the close of the Catalan Renaissance (the end of the 15th century), seems to reflect and enhance the whole period. It was a time of real-life chivalry heroes whose lives seem more fictitious than the fiction that imitates them. The two Catalan novels analyzed in Patricia Boehne's book reflect an authentic social reality recorded without exaggeration.

Boehne underlines the difference between Catalan and Castilian literatures at the end of the Middle Ages. Castilian literature enters its Renaissance phase later, close to 1500, in part because of political turmoil. Catalonia and Valencia had closer contacts with Italy, both through trade and because of the Catalan-Aragonese presence in Naples. The Renaissance phase begins in Catalan literature around 1388, the date of Bernat Metge's Valter e Griselda, and produces novels, such as Tirant, that introduce details of everyday life accurately observed and interpreted, making them the forerunners of Cervantes and the modern novel; while the Spanish novels such as El Caballero Cifar and Amadís de Gaula are more contrived, more artificial, and therefore less pivotal in the evolution of the novel in Western European literatures. Patricia Boehne's fine study accurately depicts the contribution of Catalan literature to modern fiction and gives a balanced overview of literary influences that should be useful to anyone interested in comparative literature and the birth of modern fiction.

Manuel Durán

Yale University

Patterns of Conflict examines the theme of the individual in conflict with society in the Spanish medieval and Golden Age literature. In Part I Ackerlind underscores the importance of rigid social structure and problems of social ascent in Spain of that period. Numerous examples from literature demonstrate how each individual was confined to his/her own social group and responsible for carrying out ascribed duties. Although the social structure restricted individuals to their places in society, many aspired to a higher social class to improve their reputations as well as their economic condition. Golden Age theater frequently portrays the commoner who succeeds in acquiring noble status by winning the love of one of high rank, while the picaresque novel depicts the rogue striving to improve his/her social status to no avail.

Part 2 treats the destiny of the morisco, converso, prisoner, and pícaro who were alienated from established Christian society. Wealth and appearance, as pointed out in Part 3, often took precedence over virtue and truth. The wealthy frequently used their riches to buy titles of nobility,

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thereby weakening the social fabric. Many works, such as those of Ruiz de Alarcón, demonstrate that virtue and integrity are far more important than the shallowness of wealth and reputation that mainstream society upheld.

In Part 4, Ackerlind shows that though many either strove to climb the social ladder or lived on the fringes of society, many others sought to disassociate themselves from established society, to five a peaceful fife in the countryside -a «positive solitude»- away from the corruption of courtly and urban life. The idea of freedom and self-realization often associated with the Beatus ille and the pastoral recurs in poetry, novels, and drama. For the undeceived individual, solitude and freedom from social ambition, as depicted in works by Fray Luis de León, Cervantes, and Lope de Vega, took on a spiritual dimension.

Part 5 offers a lengthy exposition of the code of honor, the most important guide by which an individual determined his/her behavior in society, and which was a recurring theme in medieval and Golden Age literature. Although Ackerlind offers no new insight on the theme, those interested in the subject of women in society will find the section useful since it emphasizes how the honor code mostly governed female membership in society.

The theme of the individual and society is fundamental since it concerns the human condition and forms the basis for many Spanish medieval and Golden Age works. Ackerlind provides generous plot summaries for the plays, novels, and short stories cited to support her thesis. While the specialist would yearn for a more analytical study, Patterns of Conflict remains valuable to those interested in Spanish social standards and attitudes during the Middle and Golden Ages and in how the individual in conflict with society served as the principal theme in numerous Spanish works.

Christine D. Martínez

William Paterson College

of New Jersey

These essays, contributed by fifteen of Elias River's students, are a fitting tribute to a teacher capable of awakening interests and inspiring careers. The collection summarizes Elias's interest as a scholar; since it focuses principally on Golden Age poetry, mysticism, the comedia, and Don Quijote.

The first essay touches, appropriately enough, on Garcilaso and the poetic voice. After a sensitive exposition of various points, I. Azar concludes that «the poems of Garcilaso reveal that the unspeakable is not love, but the "I" of the lover, that the impossible task is simply to utter our "selves", simply to find words that would spell out the singular idiosyncratic details that make every "I" different from all other "I"s.»

J. Chorpenning's essay on the concept of the heart (i.e., the whole person) in Santa Teresa is well worth reading. A. M. Snell equates love and death in Quevedo's courtly love poetry with the same images in the «Llama de amor viva», showing us «how easy it is for the mystics to cross the boundary between mystic and courtly love... "En los claustros del alma" transcends the courtly code in a portrayal of the poetic subject which bears marks of a purgation experience.»

B. Damiani's comparison of Sannazzaro's Arcadia and La Diana is well done and particularly suitable for students working on the pastoral tradition. Dealing with semiotics, E. Friedman expounds on the method proposed by Michael Riffaterre's Semiotics of Poetry, and applies it to two Golden Age sonnets. The essay is skillfully composed, offering a sound exposition of this methodology. D. Garrison reaffirms that Góngora's Píramo is a purposeful, comical attack both on the romantic concepts and the rhetoric of the Ovid Moralisé, and is intended to focus the reader's attention on Góngora's own culteranista style. N. Wardropper analyzes Góngora's misogynist sonnets in a very entertaining and informative manner.

Robert Sloan examines Angela and Don Luis from the perspective that the intimate reality of Calderón's characters is that of actors and under scores the holiday atmosphere of the play. G. Sabat's sensitive interpretation of an intellectual amorous epistle written to Lope by a Peruvian lady reminds us that priority was given to hearing and that spiritual love came through the ears, not the eyes, the source of carnal lust. E. Bergmann presents a provocative article on the function of paintings, symbols, and codes in Peribáñez and La dama boba.

Ruth El Saffar's study deals with don Quijote as «the man on the run» and then continues some what in the vein of C. Johnson's work on sexuality in Don Quijote. G. Shipley considers use of proverbs, relating them to the work of Kenneth Burke. His remarks on the first proverb Sancho uses, «váyase el muerto a la sepultura y el vivo a la hogaza;» are very astute and should be read by anyone teaching the Quijote.

N. Orringer presents a convincing application of Laín Entralgo's ideas on the development of the scientific notions about the body in the Golden Age to poetic theory and the transition from Renais sance styles (Garcilaso) to Baroque ones (Góngora).

A different period is considered by E. Gimbernat who dissertates on the Luba Viole and Tránquilo episode in Lezama Lima's Paraíso, equating it to the Hero and Leander myth and expanding on the multiple meanings which may be ascribed to the text.

J. Muñoz Millanes's article on «Biographical Patterns;» though sometimes too densely written,

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treats biography, memory, Barthes's «biographeme», and our vision of the past. This article is particularly appropriate for such a collection as this, inspired by both the past and present biography of Elias Rivers.

Eric W. Naylor

The University of the South

As the introduction indicates, this volume presents readings of various Golden Age plays united by the exploration of the dialectical tension between art and history in the texts. The work, divided into ten chapters, begins with a reexamination of the polemic between Reichenberger and Bentley. Although it might seem that the topic has been exhausted, Blue frames his remarks in such a way that the positions of these two critics dramatizes the current theoretical debate between «historical» criticism (among which the author includes Marxist and sociological criticism) and «ahistorical» approaches (e.g., reader-response, speech-act, and deconstruction). He then proceeds to deconstruct the apparent opposition between the two currents, demonstrating their interdependence. The ensuing theoretical discussion incorporates several significant insights, including the application of a communicative model to the comedia and the affirmation that any contemporary «historical» approach to Golden Age theatre will be, by nature, already «textualized» since our knowledge of the period depends upon our study of historical texts. He concludes his introductory remarks by inviting the reader to disagree, for «our endeavor is dialogue, not monologue...» (22).

The chapter titles reveal the breadth of the issues addressed: «Comedy and Society in El lindo don Diego», «The Partial Victory: No hay mal que por bien no venga», «Punishment and Reward in La verdad sospechosa», «Disillusion and Dissolution in Los mal casados de Valencia», «Lope's House of Mirrors: El castigo del discreto», «Figures of Authority in Por el sótano y el torno», «Disguise and Improvisation in Don Gil de las calzas verdes», «Judging La adversa fortuna de Don Álvaro de Luna» and «Moral Allegory and Political Allegory: El mayor encanto amor». In general, the discussions prove provocative and well-argued. Chapter 8's examination of La adversa fortuna suggests the application of the narratological concept of «focalization» to dramatic texts, an intriguing possibility that merits further development. In addition, the compelling analysis of El mayor encanto amor as a polyphonic text that encodes, on one level, dangerous political criticism aimed at Philip IV and the Conde-Duque de Olivares supports Blue's assertion that «the myth plays» are much more «meaningful» than often believed and should be reconsidered.

The potential impact of this study extends beyond the field of comedia scholarship in particular to the consideration of dramatic art itself; however, I would note three limitations. First, assuming that the presence of English translations of Spanish passages indicates that the text is intended for non-specialists as well as comediantes, an uninitiated audience might benefit from some background information on the plays and the dramatists (absent from many of the chapters), provided that this would not upset the delicate balance between art and history established in the work. Second, the translations themselves occasionally fail to capture the flavor of the original and might impede rather than enrich the appreciation of the works. For example, the rendition of Doña Constanza's reaction to Don Domingo's suggestion («No lo funda mal») as «It's not a bad idea» (49) rather than «He makes a good point» does not communicate her praise for Domingo in No hay mal. In this case, it seems especially important to maintain the active voice to convey Constanza's growing admiration for Domingo which is otherwise lost. Finally, one might question the reliance upon some outdated editions (the 1867 Imprenta Nacional edition of No hay mal) or modern school text editions (MacCurdy's La adversa fortuna) as primary sources when more reliable versions are available.

The minor reservations expressed above do not diminish the work's significance. As Blue himself remarks in the conclusion, «[the reader] judges partially (again in both senses of the word), because there is no other way to judge» (174). To the best of my judgment, this text will prove an extremely valuable asset to specialists and non-specialists alike-not only for the astute readings of the plays considered, but also for the theoretical insights incorporated.

Amy R. Williamsen

University of Arizona

In all fairness to the prospective reader one should begin by stating that the title given to this slim volume is misleading, suggesting as it does, perhaps, a possibility of new insights or an exploration of further implications hidden within those three inexhaustibly rich literary terms: archetypes, symbols and metatheater. The fact is that the study is a very narrowly-focused one. After setting forth quite specific and orthodox definitions of the three concepts, the author systematically traces their presence in a number of Golden Age plays.

The plays chosen for analysis are all from the period 1615-1630, are mostly of the capa y espada type, and are selected exclusively from the works of Lope de Vega, Calderón and Tirso de Molina. The author's definitions of «archetype» and «symbol» are applied methodically to twenty-three comedias, while the meaning given to «metatheater» is restricted to that of «role-playing» encountered in

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six plays. After a brief introduction, the first section of the study analyzes nine plays by Calderón, eight by Lope de Vega and six by Tirso de Molina, including, among the more popular ones, La dama duende, Las bizarrías de Belisa, and Don Gil de las calzas verdes, along with some relatively little known ones by each of the three dramatists.

The analysis of each play follows a uniform plan throughout. Under a heading called «Estructura», the author gives the number of scene-changes occurring in each one. This is followed, in many cases, by a short plot-summary preceding the analytical commentary identifying the archetypes and symbols with their variations, upon which the play relies for communicating with its audience.

Having demonstrated the frequency with which the tapada (the veiled lady) recurs as a constant archetype in these plays, the author finds a natural link to the more generalized concept of el papel fingido or dissimulation by the character under some guise or other, and thus to the idea of role playing as a dramatic device. This last theme is examined as it occurs in two plays by each of the three playwrights, again including La dama duende and Don Gil de las calzas verdes, and forms the second section of the study.

From the plot-analysis of so many plays we de rive a compelling sense of the ingenuity and creativity needed to turn the few possible variations on the «boy meets girl/boy loses girl/boy gets girl» plot, as the author puts it, into exciting theatrical entertainment. Incidentally, no attempt is made to translate the formula, borrowed from Northrop Frye, into Spanish for this publication, presumably designed to reach a Spanish-reading public. Similarly, the author retains the English expression «blocking characters» when speaking of the roles of father or brothers whose function within the plot is to interpose themselves between the de signs of would-be lovers and the perceived honor of the family.

This book performs a useful service in introducing some lesser-known Golden Age plays to its readers and in drawing our attention to the frequency with which dissimulation (in the forms of veiling, disguise or social pretense of one kind or another) lies at the heart of the Spanish baroque theater. Among the author's conclusions are brief statements comparing the techniques of the three great playwrights with one another, some observations about the characterization of female personages and an affirmation about the verisimilitude of this type of theater. The author considers the success of these plays to be due to the fact that they reflect la «realidad del momento a través del espejo que el dramaturgo pone a su público, que se ve reflejado, dentro de la exageración permitida al autor» (63). Such a sentence might well serve as a good starting point for a whole new discussion of the subject in the fight of the sheer artifice and escapism evident and amply demonstrated in the plots so carefully detailed in this study.

Hazel Cazorla

University of Dallas

This book, which is directed primarily to non-Hispanists, offers a fine scholarly view of the personal, social, historical, and literary circumstances of Cervantes's world. It also demonstrates how Don Quijote, with the narrative innovations found in Part I, becomes the prototype of the novel. The general reader will benefit from the lucid explanations of the masterpiece's narrative structure, its interpolations and interruptions. The specialist will appreciate the perceptive interpretations of specific episodes and sophisticated views on the novel as a genre.

In his chapter on Definition, Gilman explores what novels do to readers and how they do it, skillfully incorporating Castro and Ortega's lucid readings of the Quijote, examples from Huckleberry Finn, and ideas of various novelists and theorists. He illustrates how, in the course of the first two sallies, Cervantes transforms the Quijote from romance to novel by infusing adventures with human experiences. He also elucidates how don Quijote and Sancho, temporalized caricatures, feel them selves existing, and how they communicate this feeling to the reader.

The chapter on Birth studies the interruptive and anti-interruptive elements in the structure of the Quijote and analyzes how the configuration of the story and the techniques of narration are received in the process of reading. Not only do the interruptions of Cide Hamete, the translator, and the «second author» force the reader to maintain an ironical distance from the text, they also allow the protagonists to experience adventures as their own. Gilman's enlightening study of the episode of the Fulling Mills, one of the strong points in the book, explains how the unprecedented episode adventure is infiltrated by experience, and how the senses, postures, and situation bring together the lives of author, reader, and protagonists. Not only do don Quijote and Sancho become aware of their lives and roles as emergent from a past peculiar to both of them, they communicate how it felt to exist during that adventurous dark night.

In the chapter on Invention, Gilman illustrates how Cervantes's sense of his inventiveness is tied to his generally acerbic estimation of contemporary literature. Cervantes juxtaposes, weaves, and re combines motifs from the chivalresque, pastoral, and picaresque genres. In the Second Sally the pastoral, which functions as a «shock absorber», allows for fictional space, erotic relationships, and permits Cervantes to explore what Spitzer called «perspectivism.» In an ironical play on autonomy,

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the protagonists are liberated from their author and their roles, making verisimilitude the central problem for the characters. For Gilman the constant need for them to interpret and make sense of a «half-and-half» world makes the Quijote a novel of the most subversive kind.

The chapter on Discovery discusses the unprecedented contribution of literary criticism to the creation of the Quijote as well as the symbiosis of literature and life found in the work. In the Scrutiny of the Books, Cervantes combines aesthetic judgment of literary works and veiled satire of the Inquisition. Gilman's especially insightful analysis of what occurs in the Sierra Morena, another excellent part of the book, shows how Cervantes fuses lyric, tragic, and comic elements. The pastoral provides the backdrop, chivalric literature (Amadís and Orlando Furioso) a model for narration, and the comedia's honor code (traditional and fictional) an ironic reflection of society. Gilman deftly demonstrates how Cervantes adopted Ariosto's technique of varying episodic and plotted sequences, and explains how the chivalric romance provides Cervantes with a «straw genre» that allows him to criticize the Lopean comedia. The comedia embodied the same irrationality and heroic exaltation of the chivalric romance, the same lack of verisimilitude, and it had the same toxic effect on society. In answer to those who criticize the Quijote for its interpolations (Nabokov, Virginia Woolf), Gilman analyzes the tales of Cardenio and Dorotea, types of social fables that portray class stratification and Cervantes's sceptical view of the convention of honor. Cardenio's story, which ends happily, depicts a failed caballero and a caricaturesque case of honor. Dorotea, who lives between two social categories, fabricates her identity, arranges her story, and proceeds to live it. While her peasant honor, besmirched by Fernando, would have resulted in murder or execution in a comedic, here the matter is resolved peacefully.

In sum, this book, which will appeal to a broad audience, succeeds in explicating Cervantes's world, his duplicitous use of irony, and his contributions to the novel as a genre. All of this is accomplished without unnecessary pedantry or jargon. Only a superfluous appendix, that includes readings from Camus and Sartre, detracts slightly from the work. With this outstanding book the late Stephen Gilman reaffirmed that the combination of solid scholarship, clear thinking, and cogent English is still a powerful tool of literary criticism.

Robert L. Fiore

Michigan State University

Difícil pero muy difícil es el comentario ecuánime de un libro cuyo contenido es lo suficientemente heterogéneo como para integrar una veintena de ensayos, catorce de los cuales, para mayor abrumación, provienen de la pluma de otros tantos críticos. Huelga decir, desde luego, que no me refiero precisamente a semejante multiplicidad sino a lo desigual y a lo dispar del enfoque y la calidad hallados. No obstante, razones tanto sentimentales -Miguel Enguídanos dirigió mi tesis doctoral, de la cual han nacido hasta la fecha cuatro libros; su maestro, el historiador Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois, lo fue también mío- como puramente intelectuales -la curiosidad libresca de don Miguel correría siempre pareja con la diversidad de esta colección- existen para justificar mi empeño de una reseña.

Basta una ojeada a la bibliografía del desaparecido historiador, crítico y profesor para poder comprobar lo proteico de su producción: libros sobre Borges por un lado y sobre finales del diecinueve en España por el otro, artículos sobre poetas, ensayistas, dramaturgos y narradores de ambos continentes, no sólo hispanos sino alemanes, americanos, ingleses y franceses. Su versatilidad en lecturas e investigaciones no deja lugar a dudas.

El tomo Los hallazgos de la lectura: Estudio dedicado a Miguel Enguídanos comprende una retahíla de ensayos escritos por colegas y discípulos, nivelados estos y aquellos por la amistad o admiración que les había unido al homenajeado a razón de su paso por las universidades americanas en que ejerció su magisterio. En la de San Juan de Puerto Rico lo conoció Ricardo Gullón, en la de Indiana lo tratamos la mayoría de sus discípulos como Ann Wiltrout, y finalmente en la de Vanderbilt donde apenas si tuvo tiempo de hacer escuela disfrutó de la amistad de John Crispin y Enrique Pupo Walker. Ellos y otros más, entre muchos, colaboran en este tomo erigido en tributo póstumo. Notable excepción al ligamen fraternal que caracteriza los citados hasta aquí lo constituye el trabajo «Miguel de Unamuno, the Poet of lis Early Essays: 1897 1905», al provenir de Mervyn Coke, la viuda de nuestro don Miguel.

Debido a un continuo y declarado entusiasmo por los noventayochistas, así como por los modernistas Rubén Darío y Juan Ramón Jiménez, y a lo que de historiador llevaba de inextinguible en sus venas, considero que la gran suma de los ensayos aquí reunidos reflejan intereses paralelos a los de Miguel Enguídanos. Todos, sin embargo, aun los más ajenos a semejantes temas le hubiesen plugido, desde la narrativa de viajes y Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Enrique Pupo-Walker) hasta los orígenes de la ficción latinoamericana (Roberto González Echevarría).

Una segunda parte, menor en extensión (unas cincuenta páginas, o sea la quinta parte del libro) pero sin duda de igual interés, la reservan los editores a la publicación de cinco ensayos inéditos de don Miguel. Todos menos uno, dedicado a Clarín crítico, versan sobre el período literario español

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que más le apasionó, la segunda edad de oro de nuestras letras que representa la Generación del 98. Aun en estos ensayos, tal como aparecen, inconclusos y desprovistos de gran aparato crítico (notas, citas, etc.) en su gran mayoría, es posible adivinar la perspicacia y el acierto con los cuales Miguel Enguídanos explicó sus seminarios de literatura de postgrado y redactó sus monografías en beneficio de cuantos le escuchamos y leímos a lo largo de los años que ahora me parecen tan pocos. Por tales razones el ejemplar Los hallazgos de la lectura: Estudio dedicado a Miguel Enguídanos su pone una valiosa e inestimable adquisición para toda biblioteca.

Ricardo Landeira

University of Colorado, Boulder

In these latest additions to the still rapidly growing corpus of Galdosian scholarship we find two very distinct contributions. In the first one, by the well known Galdós critic Geraldine M. Scanlon, one is pleased to find a masterful synthesis of all that has been done on the important novel Marianela together with convincing new insights; in the second, by Josefina Acosta de Hess, treating the theme of adultery in general with special focus on Fortunata y Jacinta, there is little that is new and the form and style of presentation are troublesome.

Scanlon's succinct study follows the usual format of the «Critical Guides to Spanish Texts» series with an impeccable scholarly apparatus, in a reader friendly fashion. It consists of an introduction, four chapters, and the most complete annotated bibliography on Marianela in print. In the brief introduction, the novel is placed in the historical and biographical context in which it was produced, with special emphasis on Krausism and the philosophical and social questions which in this novel replaced Galdós's earlier preoccupation with political and religious matters (15). Especially cogent are the discussions of the essential uselessness of attempts to trace «sources» for this work, and the false premise of many earlier critics «that the text has a single, coherently expressed meaning which is identifiable with authorial intention» (17).

Chapter 2 treats the positivistic concept of «progress», as an approach to analyzing the novel's protagonists and themes. Scanlon points out intelligently that an «ambiguity of the images» (22) discourages easy interpretations, e.g., the relation ship of science and industry to the novel's symbolic elements.

The social question is examined in Chapter 3, with little-known documentation concerning concepts of education in Spain in the 1870s (e.g., 37). Sofía is identified as an early embodiment of «self important charity» (41), a target of satire in many of the novelist's mature novels. Scanlon also elucidates better than previous critics the romantic framework and roots of this work (47). While her depiction of the Centeno family as a retrogressive enemy of society is unquestionably correct, (it is interesting to note that Pereda revealed a similar picture of rural life in De tal palo, tal astilla, without meaning to do so), the assertion that the «frame work of the novel is not pessimistic but optimistic» (48) based on the alleged future possibilities of Felipe Centeno would not seem to be sustainable in the light of what we learn of him in this novel, and less so in the context of what happens to him later in his own novel, El Doctor Centeno.

Chapter 4, «Romantic Realism», explores the romantic origins of this work in the European and Spanish popular novel, as seen in aspects of structure, plot, and setting (61). Detailed realistic descriptions of the industrial world are manipulated by pace, the use of light and darkness, and techniques of contrast (e.g., with pastoral scenes) [66]. While Scanlon is certainly right in equating the stereotypical and polarized characters with models in earlier popular romantic literature, it is odd that she neglects to mention the connection of this literary phenomenon with the «thesis» novel of the 1870s, to which this novel is related (70).

The brief but well-focused conclusion points out that Marianela, although romantic in conception in many ways, marks a turning point in Galdós's concept of the novel, anticipating the realism that will characterize his mature works (83). The carefully annotated bibliography includes bibliographies, historical and ideological studies, biographies, general critical works of the author, editions of Marianela, reviews of it by contemporary critics, modern studies of this novel, and even material on the theatrical adaptation by the Quintero brothers. This critical survey and analysis is a model of its genre.

The second new book, which focuses mainly on works by Galdós, is a very different matter. The rambling, diffuse introduction is indicative of the problems of the entire text: it meanders through a series of well-known sources on the nature of matrimony and adultery in the Western world without adding anything essentially new and making statements like the following which can not stand on their own without discussion: «Es sabido que el matrimonio monógamo es una farsa...» (13).

In Chapter 1, «El adulterio en la literatura», the author wanders in a seemingly aimless trajectory from examples of adultery in Cervantes, to Fernández de Moratín, to Lope and Calderón, then back to Cervantes, thence to Flaubert and Tolstoy, Eça de Queiroz and Machado de Assis, back to Fernán Caballero, and finally to Clarín's La Regenta. This tortuous journey across the centuries is accomplished for the most part without adding anything

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new to what has already been written about the authors and works discussed, and on the contrary, when discussing the adulterous relationship between Ana Azores and her Calderonian husband D. Victor Quintanar, the critic fails to comment on the irony of the anti-Calderonian denouement of the relationship, in which the husband forgives the adulteress (32).

Chapter 2, «Contexto sociohistórico» presents details (none new within the Galdosian canon) of the historical world in which Pérez Galdós wrote his novels, followed by detailed information on the legal status of women in that era (39). The title of Chapter 3, «Galdós: Las novelas breves» is misleading, because the term «breve» is a relative one, with reference to a series of novels such as La de Bringas and La incógnita-Realidad, none of which is in any sense brief except in relation to the extremely lengthy work discussed in the following chapter, Fortunata y Jacinta. We find here a survey of characters and motifs related to the theme of adultery.

Only in Chapter 4 on adultery in Fortunata y Jacinta and in the brief concluding chapter do we encounter an element of originality: the critic's point about how Galdós in his masterpiece presents models and results of adultery new in the history of this theme (89). The lengthy bibliography would be more useful if the entries were divided into categories, and if it were annotated.

Theodore Alan Sackett

University of Southern California

Although there was no direct contact between Unamuno and Sartre, and Sartre himself could not, according to the author, understand Unamuno's thought, Robert Richmond Ellis believes that Sartrean Existentialism is the appropriate method «to elucidate the unwritten philosophy of Unamuno» (11). In this concise and thoughtful essay, the more irrational and «literary» work of Unamuno is interpreted as representing the «pre-reflective, lived moment of the human condition while Sartre's ex presses the passage of that moment in reflexivity» (XI).

The differences are everything. Whereas Sartre's thought is presented as being centered on ethics and freedom, Unamuno is recognized as an original existential ontologist. The result is less a comparison than a challenging study of the evolution of contemporary thought, through two of its most personal practitioners, united by their discovery of «tragedy at the core of the human experience» (XI). For Sartre this tragedy is rooted in man's essential but unfulfilled desire to be God, while for Unamuno «the tragic sense points... to man himself as an absence of God» (84). Yet they are joined no less in their struggle with the individual's relationships with words, things, ideas and the Other as unsatisfactory means out of the personal abyss, and especially in their devotion to writing as salvation.

As a consequence, the way in which both thinkers refashioned conventional literary genres into precise tools for their philosophies acquires special interest; but the results were dissimilar. Despite his discovery of the generosity that, in his view, characterizes the relationship between the writer and the reader, and produces «aesthetic joy», Sartre could never share Unamuno's commitment to a belief in man's spiritual potential to transcend, and even prevail, through poetry. It is here that Ellis displays a slight deafness. Unamuno's poetry proved to be a formidable ontological instrument, yet Ellis maintains that theater in fact «is the genre most suited to the expression of his ontology» (69), a view that can be supported perhaps only by the work discussed here, El otro. Likewise, in the novel, Unamuno, more than Sartre, succeeded in exploiting the potential of the genre as an interrogative and self-reflective mode of expression, and turning it into a unique lesson in the relationship between consciousness and being. Because Ellis seems inclined to take the character Unamuno at his word, his reading of Niebla is flawed. His explicative treatment fails to capture the nature of both Unamuno's and Victor Goti's role as author of the book: it is not true that Victor tells Augusto that Unamuno is the «author of his fictional world» (65), nor is it clear that in Salamanca Unamuno is composing Niebla, even though the game may require that he attempt to persuade both Augusto and the reader that he is doing so (66).

Ellis analyzes Unamuno on the basis of relatively few works, while showing great sensitivity to the painful evolution of Sartre's philosophy; but it is the thought of Unamuno that emerges as more daring, more intuitive, more imaginative, more aggressive and more liberating than the pinched bitterness turned up by Sartre's philosophy. In the end, it is clear that Unamuno was more nearly triumphant than Sartre's Existentialism would have allowed, precisely because he was able to find in the human spirit the capacity to leap over the moral impasses into which Sartre's thought repeatedly thrust him.

Because such differences between him and Sartre are necessarily unbridgeable, they provoke important social questions, especially regarding the role of the individual within the collectivity, or the reasons that pushed Sartre to Marxism and drove Unamuno away from it. This last point, in fact, proves to be so fundamental that Ellis's entire thesis could have used it as its focusing concern.

Victor Ouimette

McGill University

The last decade has seen a boom in Ortega scholarship, with ground-breaking studies in philosophical sources and method (Silver; Orringer, Cerezo), political thought and reformist goals (Ouimette, Elorza and others), bibliography (Donoso, Raley), and literary criticism (Basdekis, I. Fox). Rockwell Gray has synthesized admirably these themes in the first intellectual biography of the Spanish thinker. Lacking the necessary materials for the personal dimension of his subject's vital trajectory, the author has emphasized «his social role as defined by the public he sought and the purpose he espoused» (24). Gray sees Ortega as a gifted writer in a culturally underdeveloped setting, whose style and outlook he identifies more with the 18th-century philosophes and the Krausists than with the critical, but ineffective posture of the Generation of 1898.

This book, a handsomely edited volume, is surely the most comprehensive and readable account to date of Ortegas achievements as well as shortcomings and failures in his life-long efforts to awaken among his countrymen an interest in philosophy, instill social awareness and political responsibility and bring Spain into the orbit of European culture.

As if to emulate his subject's dictum of the in separability of self and circumstance, Gray provides appropriately the social and cultural context of every significant phase of the philosopher's intellectual development. He is especially successful at re-creating the concrete ambience of don José's varied activities. The evocation of Madrid in the 1920's is a notable stylistic achievement in its own right and the history of the Revista de Occidente as a cultural enterprise has never been told better in English.

The author's wide knowledge of European intellectual history informs the explication and critical commentary of Ortegas major works. Gray's assessment of Ortega avoids the all-too-common extremes of hagiography and detraction and contains a balanced evaluation of his contribution to contemporary thought. For example, he is generally sympathetic to the philosopher's claims regarding the priority of his ideas to those of Heidegger, but he also detects in such famous phrases as «el nivel de los tiempos» a touch of parochialism and self promotion (215).

There are some revealing observations on well known works. Thus, La deshumanización del arte is the only Orteguian text in which the «new» and the «authentic» coincide (129); the notion of creencia undergoes a semantic shift from its original, existential meaning in 1940, to become synonymous with the notion of opinion in La idea de principio en Liebniz (309). This last work receives here, I believe for the first time, a thorough critical treatment.

There is a surprising error in this otherwise scrupulous and rigorous study. In formulating a theory of love, Ortega did not appropriate Stendhal's idea of «crystalization» as Gray avers (115); on the contrary, he challenged and ultimately discarded the theory. One could quibble over some of Gray's choices in his commentary of secondary works. Why does he totally ignore, for example, Ortega's Velázquez, a storehouse of modern themes, and one of his finest essays? But ultimately these choices reflect personal preference, and the author compensates generously for the omission with a keen analysis of Goethe desde dentro, which is as good a sample as any of Orteguian hermeneutics.

One of the book's chief virtues is Gray's ability to convey the drama of Ortega's cultural mission. One becomes engrossed in the philosopher's at tempt to reconcile the role of the intellectual with political exigencies. We follow with unflagging interest the author's discussion of his subject's articles and lectures during the time of the Second Republic and follow Ortega as he defends the institution's historical validity, encourages further reforms, admonishes against extremism, censures, and finally falls silent, never to return to politics again.

Rockwell Gray has given us a highly informed, engaging, and complete study of Ortega's career. The book does honor to its subject and to the English language.

Thomas Mermall

Brooklyn College and Graduate Center, CUNY

This collection of essays, growing out of a 1987 Michigan State University conference, International Literature of the Spanish Civil War, commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of that war (1936-39). Dealing primarily with fictional works about the war, Part I treats Spanish works, and Part II treats international responses. The book is opened and closed by two notable figures in contemporary Spanish life -first, the novelist Juan Benet, and last, Luis López Guerra, Justice of the Spanish Constitutional Court. Therein lies the rub. Possibly the very best essay in the whole collection, the one that could have served the essential role of orienting the reader about this important historical event, is left for last.

The collection, which discusses a wide variety of genres and authors, some well known and others neglected, is uneven. The basic problem seems to be -for whom is the collection written? Most essays read as if they were crafted for the scholar of the war, and, even on occasion, for the diligent military theoretician. The best essays, in contrast,

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give sufficient background information, which spurs further reading about a complex civil war with shifting and often confusing alliances. The style of these outstanding essays is evenhanded and straightforward, analytic, yet engaging.

Missing from the volume is an Information on Contributors section, which would have alerted the reader to potential biases or enhanced perspectives of some of the essayists. When treating a complex, controversial, and, for some, still highly emotional topic such as the Spanish Civil War, such orientation on contributors and even significant historical data can often be helpful.

Despite the need for greater editorial guidance throughout the volume, the collection is worth reading. Though all of the essays are not of the same uniform quality, many are excellent, and the essay on Carlos Saura by Kathleen M. Vernon is outstanding. She communicates Saura's use of time and how it differs from other filmmakers, while encouraging the exploration of other areas of Saura's creation, such as his cinematic use of music, which has not been sufficiently examined. Part II presents an informative essay on Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War by Allen Josephs. In a coherent way, Josephs organizes many of the disparate facts about Hemingway's association with the Spanish strife. John Rohrkemper's superb essay on John Dos Passos enables the reader to appreciate an often very difficult writer on many different levels, including political and literary, in terms of diction and structure.

Since most of the artists and intellectuals of the Spanish Civil War period opposed Franco, most of the essays in Rewriting The Good Fight focus on works by and about Republicans. Nevertheless, one of the more interesting articles in the volume examines the often dismissed fascist perspective. The author, Antonio Varela, seems to realize that in order to understand Spain and the long-standing power Franco enjoyed, one must look realistically at the fascination that fascism holds. While both modem-day Spaniards and others would like to shove fascism under the communal carpet, the fact remains that such blind allegiance to authority and control represents a yearning evident in many parts of the world today.

This ability to see universal elements in the Spanish Civil War -even in something so degrading as man's fascination with violence and unbridled power- accounts for much of the enduring quality of works produced about the conflict. Further, the feelings of claustration, of alienation and of despair, so often documented in Spanish Civil War literature, are modem, yet also very ancient themes.

The articles in Rewriting The Good Fight reflect a consensus that the war was in vain, a meaningless loss of life and values. In this regard, perhaps the essay by Justice López is well placed, after all, at the very last, for he realizes that the civil strife engraved on the Spanish psyche constitutes a brutal awareness of the terrible toll of war and of the need to resolve conflicts in better and more constructive ways.

Consensus politics is emerging in Spain, according to López, notwithstanding crises that result when parties central to that decision-making are excluded. While artists of all kinds have attempted to rewrite the good fight of the Spanish Civil War, the task remains, López says, for the Spanish people themselves, despite their reluctance, to come to grips with the underlying and still essentially unresolved conflicts that erupted more than fifty years ago. These are the very conflicts that slash at the fabric of all societies. Ultimately then, Rewriting The Good Fight is more than a collection of literary and critical essays. It is a call to greater freedom and a more mature response to the differences and potential hostilities that characterize the human condition.

Jeanne J. Smoot

North Carolina State University

The author proposes to re-evaluate the limiting categorization of Otero's poetry as testimonial, social, and political, labels he considers inappropriate because they do not address those qualities which adscribe enduring value to literary texts. Barrow places Otero's work in the larger context of satire, an approach which contributes to a more thorough understanding of the poet's artistic talent. How ever, the necessity of doing so in order to save Otero's poetry from the social-poetry stereotype can be questioned considering that there already exists a substantial body of criticism -dating from the seminal works by Emilio Alarcos Llorach and Carlos Buosoño in the 1960's- that treats the Basque poet's texts as art, not as sociopolitical testimonials.

After recognizing the difficulties of defining a term as broad as satire, the author provides (Chapter 1) a workable definition, underscoring attack, variety, a sense of moral truth, and historical particularity. Chapter 2 describes the satirist as a literary persona. Here, as elsewhere in the volume, Barrow makes a plea for focusing on the poems themselves, rather than on Otero's personal political orientation. The satirist shows nobility of character, a sense of duty to serve Spain, abhorrence of vice, and indignation, and poses as a simple, honest man, a teller of plain truth. This mask is aimed at gaining the trust of the reader and with it, the right to correct the world. It is explained that the claim to historical truth is a topic of the satirist and does not mean that Otero writes «historically true» verse. On the contrary, selection and exaggeration play key roles in the presentation of particulars. Careful analyses of specific poems exemplify the characteristics of Otero's satiric

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mask. There is a detail in Chapter 2 that the author overlooked in updating his dissertation. He refers to Otero as a living poet: «Interviews with Otero are rare, and for a living poet, biographical information is remarkably flimsy» (this lack of information has been partially remedied with the publication of Al amor de Blas de Otero, ed. Jose Ángel Asunce [San Sebastián: Universidad de Deusto, 1986], which contains a biographical piece by the poet's widow, Sabina de la Cruz).

Extensive analyses of particular poems are again found in Chapters 3-7, which catalogue Otero's targets of attack: religious hypocrisy; woman, which Barrow interprets as playful, not vicious; the times, including city life; human mortality; and the tyranny of the Francoist regime. The readings of specific texts include descriptions of the range and success of poetic techniques employed. Barrow insists that the value of the satires does not stem from their being morally right or historically true, but from the literary pleasure of a well-constructed unity, of sound and rhythm, and from the power to convey moral rage with intensity.

Chapter 8, «A Style of Dissent», the book's most important contribution to Otero scholarship, brings together the techniques described in a disperse fashion in previous chapters. The result is a clear, coherent presentation of Otero's forceful and convincing style. Barrow examines the poet's diction, syntax, and word-play, emphasizing the latter, which he interprets in a psychological context, as a literary means of finding freedom within an oppressive society.

Chapter 9, «Satire and Renewal», adds an important dimension to the study, linking satire with Otero's vision of the future in which Spain would be united and peace, freedom, community and harmony of man and nature would reign. Satire does away with evil so that goodness may be born again, a cycle that reflects the myth of renewal. Barrow studies how the poet revises traditional Christian imagery to express the birth of a new Spain: trees, plants, sea, air and light. Here, as elsewhere, the author places Otero's ideas in a broad context, noting that they are not mere reflections of the popularity of Marxism at the time, but are well rooted in the Spanish liberal tradition of the nineteenth-century. The author shows objectivity in his analysis and convinces the reader that doctrine apart, the satiric wit and artistry of Otero's poetry give it lasting literary value.

Sharon Keefe Ugalde

Southwest Texas State University

Specialists in 20th-century Spanish theater will be familiar with the important work done by this author in bringing into the spotlight the names, works, contributions and particular difficulties faced by contemporary Spanish women playwrights. As the title and the prologue of this book indicate, it is intended to be an introduction to the topic; O'Connor expresses her hopes that the material presented «sirva de estímulo a autoras, empresarios e investigadores» (7). In keeping with this intention, the book provides an overview of the historical, social and economic obstacles faced by women in the theater, introduces the major women play wrights of the Franco and post-Franco periods, offers -«a modo de aperitivo»- seven one-act plays by contemporary authors, and includes an extensive biobibliographic section on 20th-century women playwrights of Spain.

The first chapter of O'Connor's book, «La difícil dramaturgia femenina española», explores the possible reasons for the relative absence of women dramatists on the Spanish stage. She begins by tracing, from a feminist perspective, the Western philosophical and cultural traditions that have relegated women to the private rather than the public sphere, then focuses on the evolution of these phenomena within the specific literary-historical context of Spain. Particular emphasis is given to the educational, cultural, bureaucratic, economic, psychological, and even architectural factors which have tended to «dissuade» women from attempting to establish themselves in this traditionally male dominated genre. O'Connor also touches on the role the theater critic and literary historian have played in the treatment of Spanish women play wrights, who in general have been excluded from the well-known theater reference books. While this chapter offers a cursory look at many of the obstacles confronting Spanish women authors, it is nonetheless a well-researched introduction that opens the door to various avenues of scholarly pursuit.

In the second chapter, O'Connor summarizes the predominant thematic and stylistic tendencies of Spanish women playwrights during the Franco era, singling out Dora Sedano, Julia Maura, Ana Diosdado, Mercedes Ballesteros, María Isabel Suárez de Deza, Carmen Troitiño, and María Luisa Linares as being the most successful and representative of the dramaturgas of the period. O'Connor's sketchy analyses of their works supports her view that these play wrights followed the commercial «mold» established by their masculine predecessors.

In Chapter 3, O'Connor zeroes in on her principal thesis: that the democratic impulse of the post-Franco period (1975-89) has contributed to the evolution of both feminine and feminist theater within Spain, and that women have finally gained a promising foothold in the genre. Unfortunately, the playwrights she singles out for a more detailed presentation -Carmen Resino, Lidia Falcón, María Manuela Reina, Concha Romero, Paloma Pedrero, Maribel Lázaro, Marisa Ares, Pilar Pombo and Yolanda García Serrano- are treated rather unevenly.

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Falcón, for example, is introduced in a paragraph on «feminist theater» along with several other Catalan writers, but none of her works are mentioned specifically, while at least three of the works of Pedrero and Reina are summarized in some detail. Although the specialist will find the analyses of limited usefulness, this chapter nevertheless is a starting point for further investigations into the field.

The fourth chapter of the book is a mini-anthology of seven one-act plays by women playwrights of the 80s (Falcón, Resino, Reina, Pedrero, Lázaro, Ares and Pombo). The last section of the book, the biobibliographic index of almost a hundred 20th century Spanish women playwrights, is a convenient and useful reference for those wishing to pursue the topic further.

In spite of the unevenness, this introductory book provides a great deal of information, pulling together much of the material that O'Connor has published on the subject in separate articles. At the very least, it gives the reader a sense of the innovative energy of contemporary Spanish women playwrights.

Nancy Vosburg

Stetson University

In the last two years Jesús Carazo has been awarded the Sésamo and Elena Fortún prizes, and his most recent novel was the finalist for the 1988 Premio Nadal. The narrator of Los límites del paraíso is a young Spaniard who, after finishing his studies at the University of Madrid, obtains a post at a lycée on the outskirts of Paris. The dazzling City of Light represents the epitome of the passion, literary glory, and cosmopolitanism that he has long dreamed of, and it forms a marked contrast to the boring provincial city where he grew up and that he has now managed to escape forever, or so he thinks. In the springtime he falls in love with a young French woman, Sophie, and the remainder of the novel traces the course of their affair from the first explosive passion to the final parting and the narrator's return to Spain and the prospect of teaching literature in an instituto for the rest of his days.

The saving grace of this far from original tale is the irony with which it is told. From the vantage point of the present, the older and somewhat wiser narrator is able to poke fun at his former fatuousness, unbridled romanticism, and penchant for trite phrases and for confusing life with literature. His youthful visions of success focus on writing a whopping best seller that will bring him enduring fame and also enable him to buy a mansion on the Côte d'Azur where he will be surrounded by adoring, seductive women. Initially he plans a 500-page historical novel set in the Napoleonic era and filled with improbable adventures, but once he falls madly in love he decides to novelize Sophie's and his life together. The composition of their «living history» affords the opportunity for a number of metafictional winks at the reader and comments about narratees and point of view.

Sophie remains something of a mystery to the narrator, and he alternates between portraying her as a delight and as a monster with a fondness for using people and a stinginess that would have done credit to Quevedo's Licenciado Cabra. On the one hand he is captivated by his lady love, on the other he is discomfited by the non-traditional nature of their relationship. His ambivalence is apparent in his description of his first reaction to her, wherein intense physical attraction is counterbalanced by the vague sense of menace provoked by her mannish gait and «aire donjuanesco» (11). As the months go by, conventional roles are reversed and he ends up doing the grocery shopping, cleaning their apartment, preparing their meals, and taking her clothes to the laundromat. When she comes home she does not inquire about his day or compliment him on his housekeeping but instead gives him a quick peck on the cheek and settles down to read the evening newspaper. He becomes increasingly passive and feminine, at one point even weeping so as to evoke her pity, while she takes up martial arts. (He is convinced that ballet would be a more appropriate activity for a female.)

Los límites del paraíso exemplifies the renewed emphasis upon story and traditional narrative techniques of much contemporary Spanish fiction. Although it is certainly not a great novel, it is at times an amusing one and fine for light summer reading.

Kathleen M. Glenn

Wake Forest University

Women's language, as Carmen Martín-Gaite reminds us in El cuarto de atrás, is oral language, and women's creative sphere is domestic space. Feminist criticism argues that, traditionally excluded from written culture, women have created an oral culture rooted in story telling and conversation. Despite its disarming immediacy and seemingly transparent surface, female discourse encodes its own rhetorical strategies and narrative stratagems. In Escribir, espacio propio Geraldine Nichols explores women's language both in her richly suggestive introductory essay and in her interviews with six contemporary women authors. Building on the oral tradition of female expression, the interview medium becomes a way to let each author formulate herself and her writings in her own language. The resulting conversations offer a rewarding revision of familiar authors like Laforet

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and Matute and a wide-ranging portrait of lesser known ones like Riera and Moix.

Reversing the devaluation and exclusion of women's writing that she documents in her introduction, Nichols moves this remarkable group of women writers from the margins of literary history to center stage. Her book draws tog ether authors that traditional studies first compartmentalize as either Castilian or Catalan writers and then categorize by generations, movements and themes. Shifting the center of gravity from male to female authors, Nichols radically reorients the study of contemporary narrative and posits a female literary tradition that is distinct from -rather than an inferior adjunct to- the male literary canon. She contends that even though these authors write in two different languages, they share a common culture, the culture of the prosperous, educated Catalan middle class. (As the interviews confirm, during the long decades of the Franco interregnum, Castilian and Catalan co-existed in fact if not in public.) The women are, to use Roig's phrase, «daughters» of Barcelona's Ensanche district. Nichols thus subordinates language to culture as the determinant of literary identity, arguing persuasively that the common contexts and themes of this fiction transcend the boundary between languages. The result is a recontextualization of these authors that erases formal differences between them and opens up a broader panorama of contemporary narrative by women. Implicit in Nichols's thesis is the rich heritage of female-authored literature in Catalan extending across the 19th and 20th centuries.

A probing and flexible interviewer, Nichols raises fundamental questions about writing as a woman and about the relationship of writing to space, marriage, income and children. This agenda underscores the distance between the mythic autonomy of masculine creativity and the domestic context of women's writing. Nichols's articulation of her interviews weaves an implicit dialogue between writers. Seeking to identify affinities between individual authors and between texts, she traces the dynamics of literary friendship along the Matute-Tusquets-Moix axis. She also succeeds in turning the interview into a forum for literary criticism by engaging authors as their own readers in discussion of specific texts. These critical exchanges lead to insightful analyses of the patterning of female experience, especially in the works of Matute and Tusquets.

To read Nichols's interviews is to become a privileged listener to lively and stimulating conversations with six very different women writers. The scope and depth of her inquiry and her impressive preparation provide significant and unexpected in sights into the authors and their fiction. By probing questions of gender and culture in her compelling introduction, she convincingly demonstrates the need to integrate both women's literature and contemporary Catalan literature into the codification of post-civil war fiction. This book is a landmark study that points the way to the rewriting of the literary history of contemporary Spain.

Maryellen Bieder

Indiana University

The author's stated purpose is to study the question of Guatemalan identity in Asturias's celebrated novel with a view toward providing her readers with «una forma de acceso a la novela que se aparta de las interpretaciones dadas hasta la hora» (1). To accomplish her objectives, Rodríguez structures her study on the analysis of three «subtexts» that she finds coexisting in the work itself: the official view of society, the forces of resistance opposed to and struggling against this view, and finally, the novelist's vision of the future. Her claim that these three subtexts are related as «periodically decomposing helicoidal spirals» within the novel has a kind of geometric elegance which unfortunately is never illustrated in the body of the study.

Rodríguez states on a number of occasions that her principal methodological mentor is Mikhail Bakhtin. This is a fortunate choice given the fact that Bakhtin's general emphasis upon the social roots and «referentiality» of language and literature is appropriate to the objective she is pursuing. Thus the key notion of «the carnavalesque» as a subversion of the fictive world of El señor presidente is quite convincing. However, Rodríguez's desire to incorporate Bakhtinian concepts and terminology into her study at times seems somewhat forced. For example, the very frequent -and often inaccurate- use of certain terms, such as the adjective dialógico, throughout the study is, at least to this reviewer, rather distracting.

Rodríguez's study has, nonetheless, much to offer students of this important novel. Her analysis, in the third chapter, of the very rich word-play in El señor presidente is well done and helps us appreciate Asturias's technical arsenal of metaphors, verbal displacements, malapropisms, deliberate ambiguities and other «linguistic transgressions.» It is precisely in this area that the Guatemalan's significance as a forerunner of the nueva narrativa becomes apparent. The author's perceptive discussion,

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in the fourth chapter, of the role of the Indian in El señor presidente is another strong point of this study and one which apparently has not been adequately treated in the past. Rodríguez must also be given credit for her intelligent handling of the novel's historical, social, and political back ground: she obviously knows this material well and most importantly, she uses it to support her literary discussion. In other words, only occasionally is she guilty of the kind of reductionism (wherein literature is justified simply for its socio-political documentation) that marred Spanish American criticism for many years.

Rodríguez's penultimate chapter focuses squarely on the problematic figure of the president as the summation of Guatemala's search for identity. Her analysis, somewhat Freudian at times, of the dictator's rejection of his humble origins, of his petit bourgeois ambitions, and of his dependency upon and fears of the yanquis hits the mark. Similarly, her