Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

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  Toma y Daca: Transculturación Y Presencia de Escritores Chino-Latinoamericanos

  Huei Lan Yen

  En la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, decenas de miles de trabajadores chinos emigraron a Cuba, Perú, México y Panamá en busca de una vida mejor. En los países donde residieron, los chinos y sus descendientes optaron por asimilarse contribuyendo de manera significativa al desarrollo económico de la sociedad de acogida mediante su participación laboral en la agricultura, el transporte y otras industrias. Asimismo, en el ámbito literario, artístico, religioso y político también aportaron al devenir cultural de estos países.

  En Toma y daca: Transculturación y presencia de escritores chino-latinoamericanos, uno de los primeros estudios de la tradición literaria china-latinoamericana y uno de los primeros que trata obras de autores nunca antes estudiados, Huei Lan Yen examina cómo los escritores latinoamericanos de primera y segunda generación de ascendencias china y mestiza utilizan la literatura para reconstruir, reevaluar, y renegociar sus identidades culturales. Yen sostiene que es a través de esa producción literaria que conseguimos un mejor entendimiento de las complejidades y tensiones del proceso de la transculturación Oriente-Occidente en América Latina del siglo XIX. Explorando a gran escala la interrelación única entre los componentes de la cultura china, como el confucianismo y el taoísmo, y las culturas dominantes de América Latina, Yen demuestra que la literatura china en América Latina posee una tradición de compleja y sofisticada estética, pero siempre con sus propios rasgos distintivos culturales.

  In the mid-1800s, tens of thousands of Chinese workers migrated to Cuba, Peru, Mexico, and Panama in search of a better life. As they and their descendants assimilated into their new host countries, they contributed significantly to the economies of these countries through their work in agriculture, transportation, and other industries. However, through the years and throughout their work and assimilation, they also made distinguished literary, artistic, religious, and political contributions to the cultural heritage of the region. In this seminal in-depth study of the Chinese-Latin American literary tradition, Huei Lan Yen examines how first-and second-generation Latin American writers of Chinese and mixed-race Chinese descent relied upon literature to reconstruct, reevaluate, and renegotiate their cultural identities. Yen then argues that it is through the lens of their literary output that we can best understand the intricacies and tensions of the East-West transculturation process of nineteenth-century Latin America. Prior studies have treated Chinese-Latin Americans as characters. However, this is the first sustained study of the work of Chinese-Latin American authors. Explicating the unique interplay of aspects of Chinese culture, such as Confucianism and Taoism, with dominant Latin American cultures, Yen reveals Chinese-Latin American literature as having an aesthetically complex and sophisticated tradition with a specific cultural flavor of its own.

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  The Would-Be Author: Molière and the Comedy of Print

  Michael Call

  This book is the first full-length study to examine Molière’s evolving (and at times contradictory) authorial strategies, as evidenced both by his portrayal of authors and publication within the plays and by his own interactions with the seventeenth-century Parisian publishing industry. Historians of the book have described the time period that coincides with Molière’s theatrical activity as centrally important to the development of authors’ rights and to the professionalization of the literary field. A seventeenth-century author, however, was not so much born as negotiated through often acrimonious relations in a world of new and dizzying possibilities.The learning curve was at times steep and unpleasant, as Molière discovered when his first Parisian play was stolen by a rogue publisher. Nevertheless, the dramatist proved to be a quick learner; from his first published play in 1660 until his death in 1673, Molière changed from a reluctant and victimized author to an innovator (or, according to his enemies, even a swindler) who aggressively secured the rights to his plays, stealing them back when necessary. Through such shrewdness, he acquired for himself publication privileges and conditions relatively unknown in an era before copyright. As Molière himself wrote, making people laugh was “une étrange entreprise” (La Critique de L’École des femmes, 1663). To an even greater degree, comedic authorship for the playwright was a constant work in progress, and in this sense, “Molière,” the stage name that became a pen name, represents the most carefully elaborated of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin’s invented characters.

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  Crisis y reemergencia: El Siglo Xix En la Ficción Contemporánea de Argentina, Chile Y Uruguay (1980–2001)

  Verónica Garibotto

  En las últimas décadas-especialmente a partir de los noventa-ha habido una visible reemergencia del siglo XIX en la cultura del Cono Sur. Figuras decimonónicas típicas (indios, gauchos, letrados y cautivas) han reaparecido en la escena literaria de Argentina, Chile y Uruguay. Héroes como San Martín y Artigas se han convertido en protagonistas principales de la literatura, el cine y el teatro. Géneros fundantes de la identidad nacional (el relato de viaje, la poesía gauchesca, el romance nacional) se han reciclado y transformado. Textos canónicos como La cautiva, el Martín Fierro y el Facundo han sido reescritos una vez más en diferentes campos artísticos. Y controvertidos eventos históricos (las guerras civiles, las masacres de las comunidades indígenas) han sido revisados y vueltos a narrar. Combinando el análisis textual con una perspectiva más abarcadora anclada en la teoría cultural, este libro responde a dos preguntas interrelacionadas: ¿por qué el siglo XIX ha resurgido de manera tan fuerte en las últimas décadas? ¿Cuáles son las implicaciones ideológicas de esta reemergencia?

  A través de una comparación transnacional de Argentina, Chile y Uruguay, y de una lectura de la ficción producida por figuras prominentes en los tres países (activistas políticos, intelectuales públicos y autores canónicos), Crisis y reemergencia contribuye a dilucidar cómo el campo cultural del Cono Sur ha cambiado desde los noventa: cómo la ética intelectual, las identidades nacionales y las estrategias discursivas que fueron funcionales a la consolidación del liberalismo en el siglo XIX han sido reformuladas, transformadas y repensadas en las últimas décadas. Apoyándose en el marxismo cultural, el análisis del discurso y la teoría poscolonial, el libro apunta a una triple contribución: definir los componentes ideológicos y discursivos que están en el corazón del siglo XIX, mostrar su continuidad hasta los noventa (y aclarar así las conexiones entre liberalismo y neo-liberalismo) y exponer su reciente transformaciónuna transformación que abrió el camino a lo que se ha llamado el "retorno de lo político" en la región.

  In the last decades-and especially since the 1990s-there has been a noticeable reemergence of the nineteenth century in Southern Cone culture. Popular nineteenth-century figures (indios, gauchos, letrados, and cautivas) have reentered the national literary scene in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Nineteenth-century heroes such as San Martín and Artigas are again the main protagonists of Southern Cone theater, film, and literature. Canonical nineteenth-century texts (La cautiva, Martín Fierro, Facundo) are being rewritten one more time in different artistic fields. Foundational nineteenth-century genres (travel narratives, gauchesque poems, and national romances) are being transformed and recycled. Controversial nineteenth-century events (the civil wars, the massacre of indigenous communities) are being revisited and explored. Through a combination of close textual analysis and a broader perspective rooted in cultural theory, this book answers two interrelated questions: Why did the nineteenth century resurface so strongly in the last decades? What are the ideological implications of this reemergence?

  Based on a transnational comparison of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, and a survey of narratives that were mostly produced by well-known figures (political activists, public intellectuals, and canonical authors), Crisis y reemergencia helps to elucidate how the Southern Cone cultural field has changed since the 1990s: how intellectuals' ethics, national identities, and discursive strategies that were functional to the consolidation of liberalism in the nineteenth century have been challenged, transformed, and rethought in the last decades. Borrowing from cultural Marxism, discourse analysis, and postcolonial theory, the book pursues a triple contribution: to define the discursive and ideological components that were at the core of the nineteenth century, to show their continuity up to the 1990s (and thus clarify the connections between liberalism and neoliberalism), and to expose their recent transformation-a transformation that paved the way for the "return of the political" to the region.

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  Genre Fusion: A New Approach to History, Fiction, and Memory in Contemporary Spain

  Sara J. Brenneis

  Although the boom in historical fiction and historiography about Spain's recent past has found an eager readership, these texts are rarely studied as two halves of the same story. With Genre Fusion: A New Approach to History, Fiction, and Memory in Contemporary Spain, Sara J. Brenneis argues that fiction and nonfiction written by a single author and focused on the same historical moment deserve to be read side-by-side. By proposing a literary model that examines these genres together, Genre Fusion gives equal importance to fiction and historiography in Spain. In her book, Brenneis develops a new theory of "genre fusion" to show how authors who write both historiography and fiction produce a more accurate representation of the lived experience of Spanish history than would be possible in a single genre. Genre Fusion opens with a straightforward overview of the relationships among history, fiction, and memory in contemporary culture. While providing an up-to-date context for scholarly debates about Spain's historical memory, Genre Fusion also expands the contours of the discussion beyond the specialized territory of Hispanic studies. To demonstrate the theoretical necessity of genre fusion, Brenneis analyzes pairs of interconnected texts (one a work of literature, the other a work of historiography) written by a single author. She explores how fictional and nonfictional works by Montserrat Roig, Carmen Martín Gaite, Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, and Javier Marías unearth the collective memories of Spain's past. Through these four authors, Genre Fusionn traces the transformation of a country once enveloped in a postwar silence to one currently consumed by its own history and memory. Brenneis demonstrates that, when read through the lens of genre fusion, these Spanish authors shelve the country's stagnant official record of its past and unlock the collective and personal accounts of the people who constitute Spanish history.

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  Sites of Disquiet: The Non-Space in Spanish American Short Narratives and Their Cinematic Transformations

  Ilka Kressner

  Some of the most important writers of the twentieth century, including Borges, Cortázar, Rulfo, and García Márquez, have explored ambiguous sites of a disquieting nature. Their characters face merging perspectives, deferral, darkness, or emptiness. Such a space is neither a site of projection (as utopia or dystopia) nor a neutral setting (as the topos). For the characters, it is real and active, at once elusive and transforming. Despite the challenges of visualizing such slippery spaces, filmic experimentations in Spanish American cinema since the 1960s have sought to adapt these texts to the screen. Ilka Kressner’s Sites of Disquiet examines these representations of alternative dimensions in Spanish American short narratives and their transformations to the cinematic screen. The study is informed by contemporary critical approaches to spatiality, especially the concepts of atopos (non-space), spaces of mobility, sites of différance, of a self-effacing presence, and sonic spaces. Kressner’s comparative study of textual and cinematic constructions of non-spaces highlights the potential and limits of inter-arts adaptation. Film not only portrays the sites in ways that are intrinsic to the medium, but during the cinematic translation, it further develops the textual presentations of space. Text and film illuminate each other in their renderings of echoes, gaps, absences, and radical openness. The shared focus of the two media on precarious spaces highlights their awareness of the physical and situational conditions in the works. Therefore, it vindicates the import of space and dwelling, and the often underestimated impact of surroundings on the human body and mind. Despite their heterogeneity, the artistic elaborations of these ambivalent atopoi all share a liberating impulse: they assert creative and open-ended interactions with space where volatility ceases to be a negative term.

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  Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women's Filmmaking

  Bernadette Luciano

  In recent years, Italian cinema has experienced a quiet revolution: the proliferation of films by women. But their thought-provoking work has not yet received the attention it deserves. Reframing Italy fills this gap. The book introduces readers to films and documentaries by recognized women directors such as Cristina Comencini, Wilma Labate, Alina Marazzi, Antonietta De Lillo, Marina Spada, and Francesca Comencini, as well as to filmmakers whose work has so far been undeservedly ignored. Through a thematically based analysis supported by case studies, Luciano and Scarparo argue that Italian women filmmakers, while not overtly feminist, are producing work that increasingly foregrounds female subjectivity from a variety of social, political, and cultural positions. This book, with its accompanying video interviews, explores the filmmakers’ challenging relationship with a highly patriarchal cinema industry. The incisive readings of individual films demonstrate how women’s rich cinematic production reframes the aesthetic of their cinematic fathers, re-positions relationships between mothers and daughters, functions as a space for remembering women’s (hi)stories, and highlights pressing social issues such as immigration and workplace discrimination. This original and timely study makes an invaluable contribution to film studies and to the study of gender and culture in the early twenty-first century.

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  Knowing Subjects: Cognitive Cultural Studies and Early Modern Spanish

  Barbara Simerka

  In Knowing Subjects, Barbara Simerka uses an emergent field of literary study-cognitive cultural studies-to delineate new ways of looking at early modern Spanish literature and to analyze cognition and social identity in Spain at the time. Simerka analyzes works by Cervantes and Gracían, as well as picaresque novels and comedias. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, she brings together several strands of cognitive theory and details the synergies among neurological, anthropological, and psychological discoveries that provide new insights into human cognition. Her analysis draws on Theory of Mind, the cognitive activity that enables humans to predict what others will do, feel, think, and believe. Theory of Mind looks at how primates, including humans, conceptualize the thoughts and rationales behind other people's actions and use those insights to negotiate social relationships. This capacity is a necessary precursor to a wide variety of human interactions-both positive and negative-from projecting and empathizing to lying and cheating. Simerka applies this theory to texts involving courtship or social advancement, activities in which deception is most prevalent-and productive. In the process, she uncovers new insights into the comedia (especially the courtship drama) and several other genres of literature (including the honor narrative, the picaresque novel, and the courtesy manual). She studies the construction of gendered identity and patriarchal norms of cognition-contrasting the perspectives of canonical male writers with those of recently recovered female authors such as María de Zayas and Ana Caro. She examines the construction of social class, intellect, and honesty, and in a chapter on Don Quixote, cultural norms for leisure reading at the time. She shows how early modern Spanish literary forms reveal the relationship between an urbanizing culture, unstable subject positions and hierarchies, and social anxieties about cognition and cultural transformation.

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  Género, nación y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura gallega y española

  Carmen Pereira-Muro

  Lugar de Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura española y gallega se ha ganado duro, y ella todavía no ha recibido el reconocimiento que se merece. En Género, nación y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura gallega y Española, Carmen Pereira-Muro estudia la obra y personalidad de este fascinante autor en el contexto de los nacionalismos que compiten español y gallego. Ella vuelve a leer las historias literarias y cánones nacionales de España y Galicia como narrativas patriarcales que luchan para asimilar o silenciar proyecto nacional alternativo de Pardo Bazán.

  Pereira-Muro sostiene que Pardo Bazán postuló la inclusión de las mujeres en la cultura nacional como un paso clave para eludir la lógica representacional detrás de realismo y el liberalismo en el estado-nación moderno. Al insistir en que las mujeres deben ser socios iguales, Pardo Bazán adoptó problemáticamente el binarismo patriarcal que asigna a la mujer a la naturaleza y los hombres a la cultura, pero también subvierte que al negar su relación complementaria. Su elección astuta y manipulación de modelos culturales masculinos (Realismo, no Romanticismo; prosa, no la poesía; lengua castellana, no gallego) en última instancia, su- a pesar de la feroz oposición ganaron inclusión en el canon nacional español. Por otra parte, el estudio de sus relaciones con espinosos emergente nacionalismo gallego muestra que su exclusión de la "literatura gallega" se debió en gran parte a su actuación transgresora género. Finalmente Pereira-Muro sostiene que en la última novela del autor, Pardo Bazán experimentó con la creación de una escritura femenina y una femenina canon para España. Sin embargo, la política de género predominantes aseguraron que sólo su producción realista (masculino) lo hizo en el canon español, y no este último modernista escrito, (femenino).

  En conclusión, este libro cuestiona la naturalización de los cánones nacionales por el descubrimiento de las políticas de género detrás de lo que se echa determinada como natural por idiomas y geografía. Hacer esto también expone a las restricciones de género paralelas en el trabajo detrás aparentemente opuestos central (español) y (Galicia) proyectos nacionales periféricos.

  Emilia Pardo Bazan's place in Spanish and Galician literatures has been hard won, and she has yet to receive the recognition she deserves. In Género, nación y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura gallega y Española, Carmen Pereira-Muro studies the work and persona of this fascinating author in the context of Spanish and Galician competing nationalisms. She re-reads the literary histories and national canons of Spain and Galicia as patriarchal master narratives that struggle to assimilate or silence Pardo Bazán's alternative national project.

  Pereira-Muro argues that Pardo Bazán posited the inclusion of women in the national culture as a key step in circumventing the representational logic behind Realism and Liberalism in the modern nation-state. By insisting that women should be equal partners, Pardo Bazán problematically adopted the patriarchal binarism that assigns women to Nature and men to Culture, but she also subverted it by denying its supplemental relationship. Her astute choice and manipulation of masculine cultural models (Realism, not Romanticism; prose, not poetry; Castilian language, not Galician) ultimately won her-despite fierce opposition-inclusion in the Spanish national canon. Furthermore, the study of her thorny relations with emerging Galician nationalism shows that her exclusion from "Galician literature" was due largely to her transgressive gender performance.

  Finally Pereira-Muro contends that in the author's last novel, Pardo Bazán experimented with creating a feminine writing and a feminine canon for Spain. Nevertheless, the prevailing gender politics ensured that only her realist (masculine) production made it into the Spanish canon, and not this last, modernist (feminine) writing. In conclusion, this book questions the naturalization of national canons by uncovering the gender politics behind what is cast as naturally determined by language and geography. Doing this also exposes the parallel gender strictures at work behind seemingly opposed central (Spanish) and peripheral (Galician) national projects.

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  Miradas transatlánticas: El periodismo literario de Elena Poniatowska y Rosa Montero

  Alicia Rita Rueda-Acedo

  Voces de mujeres han sido sistemáticamente silenciado o se omite por completo cuando una nación se reúne su narrativa histórica. En Miradas Transatlánticas: El periodismo literario de Elena Poniatowska y Rosa Montero, Alicia Rita Rueda-Acedo examina la relación entre la obra periodística y literaria de los dos escritores con nombre en el título, ya que utilizan una combinación distinta del periodismo y la ficción para crear nuevos espacios donde las voces y experiencias de las mujeres pueden estar situados prominente en las narraciones históricas de sus naciones.

  
  Rueda-Acedo analiza las obras de los dos escritores desde las perspectivas de género y los estudios de género, la ampliación de la noción de género de la tradición literaria y su aplicación a la producción periodística. Cada uno de los capítulos replantea y revisa el concepto de los géneros literarios con el argumento para la inclusión de la entrevista, el reportaje, el artículo, y la crónica en la categoría de literatura. En su estudio de Las siete cabritas por Poniatowska y Historias de mujeres por Montero, Rueda-Acedo argumenta con éxito que se trata de obras de homenaje a las mujeres que han influido en la historia. Al interpretar y subvertir los modelos patriarcales, los escritores llaman la atención sobre las formas en que las mujeres se han involucrado la historia mexicana, española y universal. Rueda-Acedo se centra en las características de la entrevista periodística y propone su interpretación como un texto literario. También se propone una poética de este género.

  
  El estudio de Rueda-Acedo explora cómo Poniatowska y Montero representan a las mujeres que han marcado la historia como parte de la agenda feminista de que los dos escritores han promovido en su producción periodística y literaria. El libro también hace hincapié en el papel de los dos escritores como investigadores y críticos y profundiza el debate animado sobre la relación entre la literatura y el periodismo que se discute actualmente en ambos lados del Atlántico.

  Women’s voices routinely have been muted or omitted entirely when a nation assembles its historical narrative. In Miradas Transatlánticas: El periodismo literario de Elena Poniatowska y Rosa Montero, Alicia Rita Rueda-Acedo examines the relationship between the journalistic and literary work of the two writers named in the title as they utilize a distinct combination of journalism and fiction to create new spaces where women’s voices and experiences may be situated prominently in their nations’ historical narratives. Rueda-Acedo analyzes the works of the two writers from the perspectives of both gender and genre studies, extending the notion of genre from the literary tradition and applying it to journalistic production. Each of the chapters rethinks and revises the concept of literary genres by arguing for the inclusion of the interview, the reportage, the article, and the chronicle within the category of literature. In her study of Las siete cabritas by Poniatowska and Historias de mujeres by Montero, Rueda-Acedo argues successfully that these are works of homage to women who have influenced history. By interpreting and subverting patriarchal models, the writers draw attention to the ways in which women have engaged Mexican, Spanish, and Universal history. Rueda-Acedo focuses on the characteristics of the journalistic interview and proposes its interpretation as a literary text. A poetics of this genre is also proposed. Rueda-Acedo’s study explores how Poniatowska and Montero represent women who have marked history as part of the feminist agenda that the two writers have promoted in their journalistic and literary production. The book also emphasizes the role of the two writers as researchers and critics and deepens the vibrant debate about the relationship between literature and journalism currently being discussed on both sides of the Atlantic.

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  (A)wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque

  David R. Castillo

  The term anamorphosis, from the greek ana (again) and morphe (shape), designates a variety of perspective experiments that can be traced back to the artistic developments of the 1500's and 1600's. Anamorphic devices challenge viewers to experience different forms of perceptual oscillation and uncertainty. Images shift in front of the eyes of puzzled spectators as they move from the center of the representation to the margins, or from one side to the other. (A) Wry Views demonstrates that much of the literature of the Spanish Golden Age is susceptible, and indeed requires, oblique readings (as in anamorphosis).

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  Caballero noble desbaratado: Autobiografía e invención en el siglo XVI

  José Luis Gastañaga Ponce de León

  A las narraciones en primera persona del pasado no siempre les viene bien el nombre de autobiografías. En los siglos anteriores a la definición del género, quienes escribían la historia de sus vidas con frecuencia utilizaban como modelo para sus narraciones los textos que gozaban de mayor prestigio, como la hagiografía, la historiografía y las misceláneas. Caballero noble desbaratado: Autobiografía e invención en el siglo XVI analiza un conjunto de narraciones españolas en primera persona y sus condiciones de escritura y recepción. Se concentra en el Libro de la vida y costumbres/i> de Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán (1499–1547), el caballero del título.

  El estudio se abre con algunos antecedentes de esa obra central: el Memorial de Leonor López de Córdoba de fines del siglo XIV, que narra pasajes difíciles de su vida; la Breve suma de la vida y hechos de Diego García de Paredes, que cuenta duelos y batallas para dejar a su hijo una lección sobre el honor y el coraje; y Cautiverio y trabajos de Diego Galán, un relato de cautiverio entre musulmanes y posterior huida que nos propone un ejemplo temprano de autobiografía novelada. También se examina la influencia de escritores como Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, Antonio de Guevara y Pedro Mexía, así como vitalidad de la poesía lírica, culta y popular, en ambos lados del Atlántico.

  Aunque Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán ha merecido una edición en la Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, nunca se le ha dedicado hasta hoy un libro. Este ensayo llena ese vacío, presenta lecturas novedosas de los autores escogidos y se constituye en un valioso aporte para el estudio de la autobiografía en lengua española.

  First-person narrative does not always fall under the genre of autobiography. In the centuries before the genre was defined, authors often patterned their personal narratives after prestigious discourses, such as hagiography, historiography, and the literary miscellany. Caballero noble desbaratado: Autobiografía e invención en el siglo XVI analyzes several first-person narratives from Spain and the conditions of their writing and reception. It focuses on the sixteenth-century Libro de la vida y costumbres by Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán (1499-1547), the knight of the title.

  One chapter looks at antecedents to the central work: the late fourteenth-century Memorial by Leonor López de Córdoba, who narrates difficult passages of her life; the Brief Summary of the Life and Deeds by Diego García de Paredes, who speaks of duels and battles as an object lesson in honor and courage for his son;and Cautiverio y trabajos by Diego Galán, a tale of captivity and flight in Muslim lands that constitutes an early example of fictionalized autobiography. The study also examines the influence of writers like Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, Antonio de Guevara, and Pedro Mexía and the vitality of lyric poetry on both sides of the Atlantic.

  Although the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles has devoted a volume to Enríquez de Guzmán, there has never been a book-length study dedicated to this author. This book fills that gap and constitutes a valuable contribution to the study of autobiography in Spanish.

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  Nossa and Nuestra América: Inter-American Dialogues

  Robert Patrick Newcomb

  Is Brazil part of Latin America, or an island unto itself? As Nossa and Nuestra América: Inter-American Dialogues demonstrates, this question has been debated by Brazilian and Spanish American intellectuals alike since the early nineteenth century, though it has received limited scholarly attention and its answer is less obvious than you might think. This book charts Brazil's evolving and often conflicted relationship with the idea of Latin America through a detailed comparative investigation of four crucial Latin American essayists: Uruguayan critic José Enrique Rodó, Brazilian writer-diplomat Joaquim Nabuco, Mexican humanist Alfonso Reyes, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, one of Brazil's preeminent historians. While these writers are canonical figures in their respective national literary traditions, their thoughts on Brazilian-Spanish American relations are seldom investigated, and they are rarely approached from a comparative perspective. In Nossa and Nuestra América, Newcomb traces the development of two parallel essayistic traditions: Spanish American continentalist discourse and Brazil's solidly national exegetic tradition. With these essayistic traditions in mind, he argues that Brazil plays a necessary-and necessarily problematic-role in the intellectual construction of "Latin America." Further, in traversing the Luso-Hispanic frontier and bringing four of Latin America's preeminent thinkers into critical dialogue, Newcomb calls for a truly comparative approach to Luso-Brazilian and Spanish American literary and cultural studies. Nossa and Nuestra América will be of interest to scholars and students of Latin American and Luso-Brazilian literature and ideas, and to anyone interested in rethinking comparative approaches to literary texts written in Portuguese and Spanish.

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  Gender, Discourse, and Desire in Twentieth-Century Brazilian Women's Literature

  Cristina Ferreira-Pinto

  This study by Cristina Ferreira-Pinto explores the poetic and narrative strategies twentieth-century Brazilian women writers use to achieve new forms of representation of the female body, sexuality, and desire. Female writers discussed include: Gilka Machado, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Marcia Denser, and Marina Colasanti. While creating new forms, these writers are also deconstructing cultural myths of femininity and female behavior. In order to understand these myths, the book also presents new readings of some male-authored canonical novels by Jose de Alencar, Machado de Assis, Manuel Antonio de Almeida, and Aluisio Azevedo. The specific focus on female sexuality and desire acknowledges the intrinsic link between sexuality and an individual's sense of identity, and its importance for female identity, given the historical repression of women's bodies and the double standard of morality still pervasive in many Western cultures. In the discussion of the strategies Brazilian female poets and fiction writers employ, Ferreira-Pinto addresses some social and cultural issues that relate to a woman's sense of her own body and sexuality: the characterization of women based on racial features and class hierarchy; marriage; motherhood; the silencing of the lesbian subject; and aging. Ferreira-Pinto's analysis is informed by the works of various and diverse critics and theoreticians, among them Helene Cixous, Teresa De Lauretis, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldua, Georges Bataille, and Wilhelm Reich.

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  Constructing the Criollo Archive: Subjects of Knowledge in the Bibliotheca Mexicana and the Rusticatio Mexicana

  Antony Higgins

  This book constitutes an attempt to theorize the process of the emergence, in eighteenth-century New Spain, of a position of intellectual subjectivity differentiated from that established by the regime of Spanish imperial authority. The principal concern has been to trace how certain groups of Criollo intellectuals try to construct such discourses, paradoxically, out of the framework of available European systems of knowledge and representation. In this fashion, it was sought to discern the outline of an ideological program for Criollo political and cultural hegemony in the eighteenth-century.