Research and Innovation

In this densely written, subtle, often insightful book, Naharro-Calderón takes on the task of localizing the various nuances of the socio-political condition that defined writers within and without Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. He sets up Juan Ramón Jiménez as a central figure for readings of Antonio Machado, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, Pedro Garfias, Luis Cernuda, and Damaso Alonso that illuminate the weave of texts and intertexts in this period of Spanish poetry that formed the waning years of a Silver Age. The first quarter of the book is given over to a close discussion of the phenomenon of exile: "la pérdida del espacio de origen" (25). After an avalanche of notes, Naharro reaches an aporia (one of the words of postmodernist and deconstructionist discourse of which he is fond), and states resignedly that it is impossible to arrive at a satisfactory "delimitaci6n semantica" of exile but that it is "un fen6meno antiguo y actual conectado con el origen y futuro de la tierra" (58). He establishes his terminology: instead of posguerra, he prefers "'d6cadas de entresiglo' o 'entresiglo' a secas," and to avoid prolonging the myth of "exilio interior," for which he feels Paul Ilie is responsible, he proposes "literatura perseguida, censurada, resistente, o disidente" (93). The rest of the book is less polemical and makes many contributions to enlarging and refocusing the account of Spain's poetry from 1940 to 1960. Naharro's discussion of the fortunes of Juan Ram6n vis-a-vis Antonio Machado shows sharply how politics, ignorance, and censorship combined to create the leyenda blanca about the reclusive Juan Ram6n and the socially committed Machado. The two Andalusians had much in common: they were both anti-moderns concerned about the algebraic spirit of the new poetry; they were both neoromantics in their conception of the poet as prophet and both congenial to Heidegger's ideas about poetry; they both exalted el pueblo ("lo mejor de España," "la aristocracia congénita," Juan Ramón; "el hombre elemental y fundamental," "la aristocracia española está en el pueblo," Machado [172-77]). Machado broke with Ortega's notion of a governing elite, but Juan Ramón was less perturbed, claiming, however, in a discussion of T. S. Eliot's Notes toward a Definition of Culture, that elitism had nothing to do with class. Finally, both Juan Ramón and Machado believed that poets do not write for the masses. Given these parallels, plus Juan Ramón's early and unconditional allegiance to the Republic and his refusal to negotiate, through Juan Guerrero, with the censors, it is a sad lesson in the genesis of legends that Naharro tells. The vexing story of Juan Ramón's relation with younger poets, heretofore anecdotal in nature, Naharro recasts in the language of Harold Bloom: the anxiety of strong poets to overcome their predecessors, means of adaptation and veering away. Ansiedad is the proper word for all parties concerned. The case of Cernuda is enlightening: he attacked, was attacked, responded, then freed himself and went, especially via his dramatic monologues, his own strong way. In "El poeta," Cernuda presented the figure of Juan Ram6n as a precursor of his own poetic devotion, thereby purging himself of his own anxiety of influence. Naharro is right to point out that Cernuda was not an inadaptado, but rather one of the poets of his generation who got beyond solipsism in a convincing way. In a final chapter, Naharro adds to the cultural panorama of the entresiglo through a discussion of the contents of the Juan Guerrero letters in the Juan Ram6n Jimenez collection in Puerto Rico. As early as March 22, 1940, Guerrero was sharing information with Juan Ramón' on the whereabouts of individuals and Blecua began his pursuit of books by Guillén and Juan Ramón'. A copy of "Poeta en Nueva York" was in Blecua's hands in April 1945 (400). In short, although few readers had access to the works of the absent Spanish poets, many individual writers went to great length to acquire now canonical texts. The Guerrero correspondence is, indeed, an invaluable source for the intrahistoria of Spanish poetry. Naharro's book is rich in detail, overlapping on occasion, but thoughtprovoking and illuminating in its effort to go beyond generalizations and ponder cultural details.HOWARD YOUNG

Barcelona: Anthropos, 1994. 463 p. ISBN 84-7658-438-5

Like cartographers after the Treaty of Versailles, contemporary critics of picaresque literature are hard at work redrawing lines and polemicizing boundaries in an attempt to resolve prevailing problems of definition and method. To reevaluate this canon of texts and to address critical issues, a group of internationally renowned scholars gathered in April 1989 for a two-day conference, "The Picaresque: A Symposium on the Rogue' s Tale," which was held at the University of Maryland at College Park and sponsored by the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies in conjunction with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The essays in this volume grew out of this scholarly exchange and map out an unusually broad landscape of contemporary critical concern.

This volume represents the diversity of scholarly approaches to the study of picaresque and opens up new questions concerning the picaresque canon, especially regarding its criteria for the definition of parameters that include elements from classical antiquity to contemporary theory.

(January 1, 1994)

 

Many of the articles of this groundbreaking symposium held at College Park in the Fall of 1989 (50 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War) make important contributions and the book as a whole became essential reading to all those working in the Spanish exile field. In his introduction, Naharro-Calderón lists a series of basic questions he trusts the book will go some way towards answering: '”¿Cómo fue la percepción estetica que tenían los exiliados y vice-versa de los españoles del interior? i,Cómo difiere la literatura exiliada de la pensinsular y qué dialogismos se producen con la realidad y la literatura de las Américas ...? iQué textos debemos seleccionar y de qué forma nuestro olvido sobre el exilio ha afectado el canon y su evaluación? ¿Cuáles son las similitudes y contactos del exilio castellano, del vasco, gallego o catalán?

What can we still learn from Sergei Eisenstein? Long valorized as the essential filmmaker of the Russian Revolution and celebrated for his indispensable contributions to cinematic technique, Eisenstein’s relevance to contemporary culture is far from exhausted. In Movement, Action, Image, Montage, Luka Arsenjuk considers the auteur as a filmmaker and a theorist, drawing on philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Gilles Deleuze—as well as Eisenstein’s own untranslated texts—to reframe the way we think about the great director and his legacy.

Focusing on Eisenstein’s unique treatment of the foundational concepts of cinema—movement, action, image, and montage—Arsenjuk invests each aspect of the auteur’s art with new significance for the twenty-first century. Eisenstein’s work and thought, he argues, belong as much to the future as the past, and both can offer novel contributions to long-standing cinematic questions and debates.

Movement, Action, Image, Montage brings new elements of Eisenstein’s output into academic consideration, by means ranging from sustained and comprehensive theorization of Eisenstein’s practice as a graphic artist to purposeful engagement with his recently published, unfinished book Method, still unavailable in English translation. This tour de force offers new and significant insights on Eisenstein’s oeuvre—the films, the art, and the theory—and is a landmark work on an essential filmmaker.

The book Latino-Americanizando o Brasil: A Crítica Literária e o Diálogo Transnacional focuses on the dialogues and exchanges between Brazilian and Hispanic American literary critics from the 1960s to the 1980s and their efforts to integrate Brazil in the Latin American paradigm. It shows how these engagements helped to rethink national and transnational cultural constructs producing a revision of the Hispanic-centered definition of Latin American literature and a shift in the Brazilian literary and cultural theory from a nationally based perspective to a transnational one. Moreover, Thayse Lima connects the efforts of regional integration to the process of internationalization of Latin American literature in the phenomenon known as the “Boom”. In the intellectual field, she argues, integration was also related to a desire to influence the regime of international circulation, which largely happened in the centre-periphery axis. Latin Americanist critics helped to shape a unified view of the continent’s cultural production, while also creating opportunities for the promotion and circulation of Latin American literature within the region. In addition to contributing to a greater understanding of the complex history of Brazil's insertion in Latin America, the book also sheds light on the strategies used by marginalized intellectual traditions to negotiate and imagine their place in a global sphere.

Barcelona: Anthropos, 1994. 463 p. ISBN 84-7658-438-5

This book presents a new history of German film from 1980-2010, a period that witnessed rapid transformations, including intensified globalization, a restructured world economy, geopolitical realignment, and technological change, all of which have affected cinema in fundamental ways. Rethinking the conventional periodization of German film history, Baer posits 1980-rather than 1989-as a crucial turning point for German cinema's embrace of a new market orientation and move away from the state-sponsored film culture that characterized both DEFA and the New German Cinema. Reading films from East, West, and post-unification Germany together, Baer argues that contemporary German cinema is characterized most strongly by its origins in and responses to advanced capitalism. Informed by a feminist approach and in dialogue with prominent theories of contemporary film, the book places a special focus on how German films make visible the neoliberal recasting of gender and national identities around the new millennium.

This book explores modern political and intellectual movements to protect local languages and cultures in the Sinophone world. The first half of the twentieth century saw East Asia-wide pressure to suppress and erase local languages in favor of enforcing national and colonial languages. This book analyzes language activism in Japan-occupied Taiwan, British Hong Kong, and Northwestern China by situating it in a pan-regional anti-colonial consciousness that sought to protect indigeneity from nationalism and imperialism.

Rutas is an integrated intermediate Spanish textbook and online platform utilizing current research in language teaching and learning. It is specifically designed for hybrid or flipped learning environments, but works well for total online learning and traditional classroom environments. The materials are completely integrated so that students are constantly working with recycled grammar and vocabulary. In addition, culture is intertwined throughout the text, while dedicated Cultura sections explore themes related to the country or region and chapter theme. Authors: Danielle C. Velardi, Roberta Z. Lavine, Paula V. Croci Date: 2019

This volume is the first to focus on teaching about Haiti’s complex history and culture from a multidisciplinary perspective. Making broad connections between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, contributors provide pedagogical guidance on how to approach the country from different lenses in course curricula. They offer practical suggestions, theories on a wide variety of texts, examples of syllabi, and classroom experiences. Teaching Haiti dispels stereotypes associating Haiti with disaster, poverty, and negative ideas of Vodou, going beyond the simplistic neocolonial, imperialist, and racist descriptions often found in literary and historical accounts. Instructors in diverse subject areas discuss ways of reshaping old narratives through women’s and gender studies, poetry, theater, art, religion, language, politics, history, and popular culture, and they advocate for including Haiti in American and Latin American studies courses.

Written entirely in Spanish, the volume is the first handbook on Spanish Language Teaching to connect theories on language teaching with methodological and practical aspects from an international perspective. It brings together the most recent research and offers a broad, multifaceted view of the discipline.