Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Spanish Identity: Nation, Myth, And History, Jesús Torrecilla

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In the last two centuries, conservatives and liberals have offered two mutually exclusive visions of Spanish history, each with distinct myths, symbols, and heroes. The conservative image, formed in the Middle Ages, was based on the myth of the Reconquest and the need to restore (or keep) the homogeneity of a country characterized by its Christian religion and Latin culture. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, faced with Napoleon’s invasion, Spanish liberals understood the danger of associating their modern ideas with France and invented a progressive and democratic Spanish tradition. According to their interpretation, the most authentic Spain was …

Habitus, Heterotopia And Endocolonialism In Early Spanish Literary Fascism, Nil Santiáñez

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article explores strategies of symbolic production of national space (e.g. technologies of tropological striation) in early fascist works of Tomás Borrás, Luys Santa Marina, and Rafael Sánchez Mazas written à propos the Rif War (1919-27). Considered as perlocutionary speech-acts, these texts conceive Morocco as a heterotopia and embody a fascist habitus produced by a heterogeneous group of writers, intellectuals, politicians and military personnel—in particular the notorious Foreign Legion—posted in Morocco; they all shared the defense of an authoritarian concept of nation as a model for the political organization of Spain as well as an endocolonialist gaze and stance towards …

The Basque Country: The Heart Of Spain, A Part Of Spain, Or Somewhere Else Altogether, Paddy Woodworth

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The Basque Country exhibits contradictory symptoms of good health and chronic internal rupture. A flexible and robust economy and a vibrant cultural life are undermined by opposed senses of identity, which make almost any statement about the region deeply contentious. The verifiability—or otherwise—of Basque nationalist and Spanish nationalist readings of Basque history and culture matter less today than the fact that they are held with genuine conviction by big sectors of Basque society. Both traditions have their own legitimacy, but neither has been capable of fully acknowledging or including the other. Paradoxically, Francoism reinforced Basque nationalist identity, and anxieties about …

The Spanish Case For Europe. The Power Of Cultural Identity, Gonzalo Navajas

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Europe has not been for Spain an easily assumed identity, a home within which Spaniards could find accommodation. Yet, for the first time in modern history, Spain has become fully integrated in the political and economic system of Europe and it functions within it as a strong and dedicated partner. Paradoxically, this new order has developed simultaneously with the increasing assertion of the local nationalities. I propose that the current political and cultural situation in both Europe and Spain has created the appropriate conditions for an extensive reexamination of the conventional European/Spanish paradigm. That is so because the circumstances on …

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Sara Lennox. Cemetery of the Murdered Daughters: Feminism, History, and Ingeborg Bachmann by Kristin T. Vander Lugt

Birgit Tautz. Reading and Seeing Ethnic Differences in the Enlightenment: From China to Africa by Susanne Kelley

Patrick Greaney. Untimely Beggar. Poverty and Power from Baudelaire to Benjamin by Christine Rinne

Philip Payne, Graham Bartram, and Galin Tihanov, eds. A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil by Geoffrey C. Howes

Jennifer Willging. Telling Anxiety: Anxious Narration in the Work of Marguerite Duras, Annie Ernaux, Nathalie Sarraute and Anne Hébert by Natalie Edwards

Michael Lucey. Never Say I: Sexuality and the First Person …

Uses Of A Myth: Al-Andalus, Serafín Fanjul

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In the last two decades, the Spanish press treatment of the Muslim world reflects a change of tone from unsympathetic to enthusiastic, although the information is still marred by confusion and ignorance. This change of attitude has occurred in other Western countries as well, and it is due in part to immigration trends, control over oil resources, and the relativism of official discourses towards the Third World. In the case of Spain, however, there is an additional internal element at play: the mass-media reinvention of a mythical al-Andalus as a tolerant and pluralistic society. This idealized interpretation of seven centuries …

The Significance Of Birds In The Works Of Augusto Roa Bastos, Helene C. Weldt-Basson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Birds have occupied a central role in the works of the Paraguayan writer, Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2005), from the beginning of his literary career. In texts ranging from his early poetry to his complete short stories, compiled in 2003, the bird motif repeatedly resurfaces, raising the question of the relevance of birds in Roa Bastos’s oeuvre. This article argues that birds are used symbolically throughout Roa Bastos’s poetry and prose works, by drawing upon their significance within Guarani myths and literature. The article focuses on several symbolic associations for birds in Guarani culture, including their relationship to oral language, …

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Bigsby, Christopher. Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory by Roxane Riegler

Bruce, Iris. Kafka and Cultural Zionism. Dates in Palestine by Bettina Matthias

Haase, Christine. When Heimat Meets Hollywood: German Filmmakers and America, 1985-2005 by Maria Stehle

Herzog, Dagmar. Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany by Sabine Hake

Iossel, Mikhail and Jeff Parker. Amerika. Russian Writers View the United States by Yuliya Minkova

Macksey, Richard and Eugenio Donato, eds. The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man by Safoi Babana-Hampton

Magnarelli, Sharon. Home is Where the (He)art Is: The Family …