Spanish Women's Writing 1849-1996

Spanish Women's Writing 1849-1996
Author: Catherine Davies
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2000-12-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0567559580

Traces the tradition of Spanish women's writing from the end of the Romantic period until the present day. Professor Davies places the major authors within the changing political, cultural and economic context of women's lives over the past century-and-a-half -- with particular attention to women's accounts of female subjectivity in relation to the Spanish nation-state, government politics, and the women's liberation movement.

Kate O'Brien and Spanish Literary Culture

Kate O'Brien and Spanish Literary Culture
Author: Jane Davison
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2017-10-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0815654138

One of the most important Irish novelists of the twentieth century, Kate O’Brien (1897–1974) was also a pioneer of women’s writing. In a career that spanned almost fifty years, nine novels, nine plays, two travelogues, and copious criticism, O’Brien rebelled against the narrow nationalism and restrictive Catholicism prevalent in independent Ireland. In this highly original approach to O’Brien’s work, Davison traces the influence of three leading Spanish writers—Jacinto Benavente, Miguel de Cervantes, and Teresa of Avila. O’Brien’s lifelong fascination with Spanish literature and culture offered an oblique way of resisting the Catholic and conservative imperatives of the Irish Free State. In a series of close comparative readings, Davison identifies the origin of O’Brien’s creative disinhibition and ultimately situates her within a tradition of dissident Irish women writers.

Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture

Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture
Author: Lloyd Hughes Davies
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1786835762

This is the first monograph to consider the significance of madness and irrationality in both Spanish and Spanish American literature. It considers various definitions of ‘madness’ and explores the often contrasting responses, both positive (figural madness as stimulus for literary creativity) and negative (clinical madness representing spiritual confinement and sterility). The concept of national madness is explored with particular reference to Argentina: while, on the one hand, the country’s vast expanses have been seen as conducive to madness, the urban population of Buenos Aires, on the other, appears to be especially dependent on psychoanalytic therapy. The book considers both the work of lesser-known writers such as Nuria Amat, whose personal life is inflected by a form of literary madness, and that of larger literary figures such as José Lezama Lima, whose poetic concepts are suffused with the irrational. The conclusion draws attention to the ‘other side’ of reason as a source of possible originality in a world dominated by the tenets of logic and conventionalised thinking.

Spanish New York Narratives 1898-1936

Spanish New York Narratives 1898-1936
Author: David Miranda-Barreiro
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1351548115

In the early decades of the twentieth century, New York caught the attention of Spanish writers. Many of them visited the city and returned to tell their experience in the form of a literary text. That is the case of Pruebas de Nueva York (1927) by Jose Moreno Villa (1887-1955), El crisol de las razas (1929) by Teresa de Escoriaza (1891-1968), Anticipolis (1931) by Luis de Oteyza (1883-1961) and La ciudad automatica (1932) by Julio Camba (1882-1962). In tune with similar representations in other European works, the image of New York given in these texts reflects the tensions and anxieties generated by the modernisation embodied by the United States. These authors project onto New York their concerns and expectations about issues of class, gender and ethnicity that were debated at the time, in the context of the crisis of Spanish national identity triggered by the end of the empire in 1898.

European Feminisms, 1700-1950

European Feminisms, 1700-1950
Author: Karen M. Offen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2000
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804734208

This ambitious book explores challenges to male hegemony throughout continental Europe over the past 250 years. For general readers and those interested primarily in the historical record, it provides a comprehensive, comparative account of feminist developments in European societies, as well as a rereading of European history from a feminist perspective. By placing gender, or relations between women and men, at the center of European politics, it aims to reconfigure our understanding of the European past and to make visible a long but neglected tradition of feminist thought and politics. On another level the book seeks to disentangle some misperceptions and to demystify some confusing contemporary debates about the Enlightenment, reason, nature, and public vs. private, equality vs. difference. In the process, the author aims to show that gender is not merely 'a useful category of analysis', but that sexual difference lies at the heart of human thought and politics.

Crime Scenes

Crime Scenes
Author: Anne Mullen
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789042012332

The essays in this collection are based on papers given at a conference on detective fiction in European culture, held at the University of Exeter in September 1997. The range of topics covered is designed to show not only the presence and variety of narratives of detection across different European countries and their different media (although there is a predictable emphasis on the novel). It also illustrates the fertility of the genre, its openness to a spectrum of readings with different emphases, formal as well as thematic. Approaches to detective fiction have often tended to confine them-selves to 'symptomatic' interpretation, where details of the fictional world represented are used to diagnose a specific set of social preoccupations and priorities operative at the time of writing. Such approaches can yield valuable insights. Nonetheless there is a risk of limiting the value of the genre as a whole solely to its role as a mirror held up to society. In this perspective, issues of structure and style are sidelined, or, if addressed, are praised to the extent that they approach invisibility -- concision, spareness, realism are the qualities singled out for praise. The genre also gives much scope for formal innovation -- and indeed has often attracted already established 'mainstream' writers and filmmakers for just this reason. The eclectic diversity of the detective narratives considered in this volume reveal the malleability of the traditional constraints of the genre. The essays bear rich testimony to the value of considering the interplay of thematic and structural issues, even in the most apparently unselfconscious and popular (or populist) forms of narrative. The patterns of reassurance, the triumph of intellect and the ordered, rational world 'of old' are now challenged by the need to foreground the problems, ambiguities and uncertainties of the self and of society. The plurality of meanings and the antithetical imperatives explored in these detective narratives confirm that the most recent forms of the genre are not mere palimpsests of their 'golden age' precursors. The subversion of traditional expectations and the implementation of diverse stylistic devices take the genre beyond mere homage and pastiche. The role of the reader/spectator and critic in conferring meaning is a crucial one.

The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel

The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel
Author: Efraín Kristal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2005-05-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139827057

The diverse countries of Latin America have produced a lively and ever evolving tradition of novels, many of which are read in translation all over the world. This Companion offers a broad overview of the novel's history and analyses in depth several representative works by, for example, Gabriel García Márquez, Machado de Assis, Isabel Allende and Mario Vargas Llosa. The essays collected here offer several entryways into the understanding and appreciation of the Latin American novel in Spanish-speaking America and Brazil. The volume conveys a real sense of the heterogeneity of Latin American literature, highlighting regions whose cultural and geopolitical particularities are often overlooked. Indispensable to students of Latin American or Hispanic studies and those interested in comparative literature and the development of the novel as genre, the Companion features a comprehensive bibliography and chronology and concludes with an essay about the success of Latin American novels in translation.

Spanish Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Spanish Literature: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Jo Labanyi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2010-08-26
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0199208050

This title explores the rich literary history of Spain which resonates with contemporary debates on transnationalism and cultural diversity. It introduces readers to the ways in which Spanish literature has been read in and outside Spain explaining misconceptions, outlining insights of scholarship and suggesting new readings.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Culture

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Culture
Author: Professor Eamonn Rodgers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2002-03-11
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1134788584

Some 750 alphabetically-arranged entries provide insights into recent cultural and political developments within Spain, including the cultures of Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque country. Coverage spans from the end of the Civil War in 1939 to the present day, with emphasis on the changes following the demise of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. Entries range from shorter, factual articles to longer overview essays offering in-depth treatment of major issues. Culture is defined in its broadest sense. Entries include: *Antonio Gaudí * science * Antonio Banderas * golf * dance * education * politics * racism * urbanization This Encyclopedia is essential reading for anyone interested in Spanish culture. It provides essential cultural context for students of Spanish, European History, Comparative European Studies and Cultural Studies.