Writing and Heritage in Contemporary Spain


Book Description

This volume is an innovative exploration of cultural heritage through museum studies, metacriticism and literary criticism. This is an innovative exploration of cultural heritage and the literary traditions that shape the contemporary literary scene in Spain. Through a coalescence of museum studies, metacriticism and traditional literary criticism thestudy interweaves discussion of museum spaces with literary analysis, exploring them as agents of memorialisation and a means for preserving and conveying heritage. Following introductory explorations of the development of museums and the literary canon, each chapter begins with a "visit" to a Spanish museum, establishing the framework for the subsequent discussion of critical practices and texts. Case studies include examination of the palimpsest andunconscious influence of canonical cores; the response to masculine traditions of poetry and art; counter-culture of the 1990s; and the ethical concerns of postmemory writing. STUART DAVIS is a Lecturer in Spanish, Girton College, and Newton Trust Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Cambridge.




Rewriting Franco’s Spain


Book Description

Rewriting Franco’s Spain: Marcel Proust and the Dissident Novelists of Memory proposes a new reading of some of the most culturally significant and closely studied works of Spanish memory fiction from the past seventy years. It examines the influence of French writer Marcel Proust on fiction concerning the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship by Carmen Laforet, Juan Goytisolo, Juan Benet, Carmen Martín Gaite, Jorge Semprún, and Javier Marías. It explores the ways in which À la recherche du temps perdu has been instrumental in these authors’ works, galvanizing their creative impetus, shaping their imaginative act, and guiding their adversarial stance toward Franco’s regime. This book illustrates how these writers use Proustian themes and techniques and thereby enhances our understanding of the function of memory and fictional creation in some of the most important milestones in contemporary Spanish literature. Rewriting Franco’s Spain argues that an appreciation of Proust’s pervasive influence on Spanish memory writing obliges us to reconsider the notion that Franco’s regime maintained a rigid stranglehold on imported culture. Capturing the richness of Spanish novelists’ contact with literature produced outside of Spain, it challenges the prevailing scholarly tendency to focus on the novelists’ immediate sociopolitical concerns. There is more to these texts than a simple testimony of the brutality and hardship of the civil war and life under Franco. By illuminating the subversive nature of Spanish novelists’ use of a Proust-inspired practice of self-writing, Rewriting Franco’s Spain seeks to readjust some of the ways we view the role of novelists living during the regime and in its wake. It advocates a conception of novelists as dissidents, teasing out the seditious undercurrent of their cultivation of self-writing and examining how they disputed the regime’s ideas about what culture should look like. The preconception that the development of Spanish literature under Franco was stunted because Spaniards were prevented from reading works considered an affront to National-Catholic sensibilities is cast aside, as is the notion that Spain was isolated from narrative developments elsewhere. Rewriting Franco’s Spain ultimately reveals the centrality of Proust’s monumental novel in the evolution of contemporary Spanish literature.




The Reinvention of Mexico in Contemporary Spanish Travel Writing


Book Description

The long history of transatlantic movement in the Spanish-speaking world has had a significant impact on present-day concepts of Mexico and the implications of representing Mexico and Latin America more generally in Spain, Europe, and throughout the world. In addition to analyzing texts that have received little to no critical attention, this book examines the connections between contemporary travel, including the local dynamics of encounters and the global circulation of information, and the significant influence of the history of exchange between Spain and Mexico in the construction of existing ideas of place. To frame the analysis of contemporary travel writing, author Jane Hanley examines key moments in the history of Mexican-Spanish relations, including the origins of narratives regarding Spaniards' sense of Mexico's similarity to and difference from Spain. This history underpins the discussion of the role of Spanish travelers in their encounters with Mexican peoples and places and their reflection on their own role as communicators of cultural meaning and participants in the tourist economy with its impact—both negative and positive—on places.




Illustrating Spain in the Us


Book Description

A dazzling combination of comics and essays sheds light on the rich but often overlooked contributions of Spanish immigrants to the political, cultural, and scientific history of the US.




Paper Heritage in Italy, France, Spain and Beyond (16th to 19th Centuries)


Book Description

This book takes a long-term approach, spanning from the end of the 16th to the 19th century, to explore how men and women in Italy, France, and Spain collected, displayed, and passed down various types of papers. The contributors share a core interest in the relationship between social actors and their paper heritage. The collectors, who come from diverse cultural, social, and gender backgrounds, provide insights into the reasons and processes behind the accumulation, valorisation, and transmission of their paper heritage. Unlike most studies on collecting, this book shifts the focus away from collections and institutions to the owners of the collected objects and their desires for their accumulated papers. This volume covers three centuries and provides insights into the aspirations of collectors and the fate of their papers after transmission. It takes place against the backdrop of major social, political, and cultural changes affecting the Italian peninsula, the Spanish monarchy, and France. The cultural interests and the collector networks often extended beyond Europe, as noted by many of the essays in this volume. Paper Heritage in Italy, France, Spain and Beyond (16th to 19th Centuries) will interest scholars and students of Early Modern and Modern European History across various fields, including social and cultural history, intellectual history, gender history, history of collecting and patronage.




The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel


Book Description

The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel provides an accessible introduction to an important World literature. While many of the authors covered-Aira, Bolaño, Castellanos Moya, Vásquez-are gaining an increasing readership in English and are frequently taught, there is sparse criticism in English beyond book reviews. This book provides the guidance necessary for a more sophisticated and contextualized understanding of these authors and their works. Underestimated or unfamiliar Spanish American novels and novelists are introduced through conceptually rigorous essays. Sections on each writer include: *the author's reception in their native country, Spanish America, and Spain *biographical history *a critical examination of their work, including key themes and conceptual concerns *translation history *scholarly reception The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel offers an authoritative guide to a rich and varied novelistic tradition. It covers all demographic areas, including United States Latino authors, in exploring the diversity of this literature and its major themes, such as exile, migration, and gender representation.




Modern Literatures in Spain


Book Description

Jo Labanyi and Luisa Elena Delgado provide the first cultural history of modern literatures in Spain. With contributors Helena Buffery, Kirsty Hooper, and Mari Jose Olaziregi, they showcase the country’s cultural richness and complexity by working across its four major literary cultures – Castilian, Catalan, Galician, and Basque – from the eighteenth century to the present. Engaging critically with the concept of the “national”, Modern Literatures in Spain traces the uneven institutionalization of Spain’s diverse literatures in a context of Castilian literary hegemony, as well as examining diasporic and exile writing . The thematically organized chapters explore literary constructions of subjectivity, gender, and sexuality; urban and rural imaginaries; intersections between high and popular culture; and the formation of a public sphere. Throughout, readings are attentive to the multiple ways in which literature serves as a barometer of cultural responses to historical change. An introduction to major cultural debates as well as an original analysis of key texts, this book is essential reading for students and scholars with an interest in the literatures and cultures of Spain.




Contemporary World Fiction


Book Description

This much-needed guide to translated literature offers readers the opportunity to hear from, learn about, and perhaps better understand our shrinking world from the perspective of insiders from many cultures and traditions. In a globalized world, knowledge about non-North American societies and cultures is a must. Contemporary World Fiction: A Guide to Literature in Translation provides an overview of the tremendous range and scope of translated world fiction available in English. In so doing, it will help readers get a sense of the vast world beyond North America that is conveyed by fiction titles from dozens of countries and language traditions. Within the guide, approximately 1,000 contemporary non-English-language fiction titles are fully annotated and thousands of others are listed. Organization is primarily by language, as language often reflects cultural cohesion better than national borders or geographies, but also by country and culture. In addition to contemporary titles, each chapter features a brief overview of earlier translated fiction from the group. The guide also provides in-depth bibliographic essays for each chapter that will enable librarians and library users to further explore the literature of numerous languages and cultural traditions.




The Contemporary Spanish Novel


Book Description

Although there are several annotated bibliographies of contemporary Spanish novelists, this book covers critical works published on the post civil war Spanish novel as a literary form. The volume cites books and articles, and each citation is accompanied by a descriptive and evaluative annotation. The work contains a section of entries on books and another on articles. Entries within each section are arranged alphabetically. Included are entries primarily for studies published in English or Spanish, though some in Catalan, French, Galician, and Italian are also cited. In the last decades, there has been an explosion of critical works on the post civil war Spanish novel. This proliferation of material causes serious problems for scholars conducting research on the subject. While there are bibliographies of particular novelists, this book deals with general studies of trends, topics, and comparative approaches. The volume primarily cites works published in English or Spanish, but it also includes some in Catalan, French, Galician, and Italian. The volume is divided into two sections—books and articles. Within each section, entries are arranged alphabetically. Each citation is accompanied by a descriptive and evaluative annotation. The annotations provide information about the topic, content, and methodology of the works cited and express an opinion of the works' value. The length of the annotations varies according to the importance of the topic. Author and title indexes add to the utility of the work.




Contemporary Spanish Gothic


Book Description

Examines Spain's contribution to international interest in Gothic culture, film and literatureWith the success of novels such as The Shadow of the Wind and films like The Others, contemporary Spanish culture has contributed a great deal to the imagery and experience of the Gothic, although such contributions are not always recognised as being specifically Spanish in origin. Contemporary Spanish Gothic is the first book to study how the Gothic mode intersects with cultural production in Spain today, considering some of the ways in which such production feeds off and simultaneously feeds into Gothic production more widely. Examining the works of writers and filmmakers like Carlos Ruiz ZafAn, Arturo PA(c)rez-Reverte, Pedro AlmodAvar and Alejandro AmenA!bar, as well as the further reaches of Spanish Gothic influence in the Twilight film series, the book considers images and themes like the mad surgeon and the vulnerable body, the role of the haunted house, and the heritage biopics of Francisco de Goya.