La destrucción y la creación en Los siameses y Flores de papel

Many Hispanic American plays of the twentieth century, such as Flores de papel and Los siameses, among others, depict the social-economic imbalance visible among the different social classes. This inequality is seen as inevitable, forcing the working class first to destroy elements of the status quo, in order then to construct a new reality. Thus it attempts to produce radical changes, including the alteration or reconstruction of the class system itself, through destruction-construction of the surrounding reality. Hence, the dramatists, considering the role of the theater and of the writer, present these struggles and class discrepancies in an attempt to find a solution to the problems of their characters' social environment.     

Algunas reflexiones en torno al término latín en la documentación alfonsí

This study examines the development of linguistic consciousness in thirteenth-century Hispano-Romance by analyzing the relationship between the terms latín and romance in works sponsored by Alfonso X. In the article, the author demonstrates that numerous lexical items (e.g., injuria, negligencia, suspensión, inquisición) were already a part of Romance vocabulary despite their labeling as latín in the Alfonsine texts ("iniuria en latin tanto quiere dezir en romançe commo desonrra que es fecha o dicha aotro a tuerto o a despreçiamiento del," Siete Partidas). Framed within the (later stages of the) "complex monolingualism" approach proposed by Roger Wright, the author also argues that, as Hispano-Romance speakers in Castile expanded their cultural knowledge, the term latín became associated with the areas from which vocabulary was taken to supply new scientific or pseudo-scientific expressions. The designation latín, in the contexts under scrutiny, was perceived not as a language but as a lexical register marker in the higher sociolects of the vernacular.     

El rey que fue animal: sobre la invención del otro en Calderón,Dostoievski y Coetzee

The aim of this article carries a comparison between Calderón and Dostoevsky, their semblances and differences. First, I study a relationship toward otherness which is, in both cases, problematic and modern. Departing from Segismundo's complaints when he is imprisoned (saying that he is living a life “worse than animals live”) I analyze two kinds of misunderstandings: a white blindness that respects the Other's difference, and the evil inside its unconcealment. Finally, I discuss Coetzee's Dostoevsky (in The Master of Petersburg) in relation to some of the thesis outlined previously: the necessity of respect when dealing with the space of the other, either in its human form or in a non-human presentation.     

Reflexiones en torno al teatro en la producción crítica de Alberdi y Sarmiento

This article examines the important role played by Juan B. Alberdi's and Domingo F. Sarmiento's literary articles in advancing the modern nationalist discourse in Argentina. I argue that in their performance reviews, these two men of letters advocated for the formation of a national theater in an effort to promote a national cultural expression.     

Conciencia nacional y devoción jacobea en el Poema de Fernán González

Jacobean devotion and national awareness are closely related in the Poema de Fernán González (PFG). The great advance of the Reconquest in the thirteenth century and the reevaluation of the past that it caused enabled the broad Hispanic perspective of the PFG. Spain is not only a distant and longed-for reality (“regnum Gothorum”) but a current political concept. This is the frame of the PFG's intense Castilian sentiment. Castile is the bastion of the Visigothic monarchy, which did not yield to the Muslims and was the foundation for the recovery of Spain. The territorial diversity becomes the outstanding feature of this country, in which the “Montaña” takes an important role. Confronting the proposal of the cult of Saint Millán by the Monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, the author of the PFG, aware of the damages that such a cult was causing to his monastery, clings to the Jacobean devotion that achieved a broad Hispanic scope.     

Literatura y realidad histórica en Las conversiones de Martín Recuerda

Abstract

Kathleen M. Glenn and Mercedes Mazquiarán de Rodríguez, eds. Spanish Women Writers and the Essay. Gender, Politics, and the Self. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. 294 pp. $34.95.

Watson, Janell. Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust. The Collection and Consumption of Curiosities. Cambridge University Press, 1999. x + 227 pp.

Anne J. Cruz. Discourses of Poverty: Social Reform and the Picaresque Novel in Early Modern Spain. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 320 pp.     

Las estrategias del juego áulico en las comedias mitológicas de Calderón de la Barca

This article studies the particular case of the mythological plays of Calderón that form a cohesive and recognizable set of works in certain circumstances. This kind of comedy is modulated by specific issues of reception, under the dominant global principle of playfulness, through the mechanisms of admiratio, and different strategies of courtly game that can be summarized in four basic areas: conventional comicity, the writing of a theater full of sensorismo, the importance of the intellect games, and finally, the strategies to point identity marks of a particular social group.     

“Melismas medievales” en Concierto Barroco: enumeración y artificiosidad de Alejo Carpentier

The distinction between condensation, proliferation, and substitution defines, according to Severo Sarduy, the tenets of the Latin American neobarroque movement. This article, though sympathetic to the ideas of Sarduy, aims at clarifying the terms in which Alejo Carpentier conducts a recreation and evocation of the baroque movement in Europe and America. Taking Leo Spitzer's definition of chaotic enumeration as a focal point, it aims to clarify the mechanisms of literary composition in Carpentier. It argues that Carpentier's vision relies on an absolute yet universal and inclusive role of America in the shaping of the modern world.     

La lógica del absolutismo. Vecinos y magistrados en Charcas en tiempos del reformismo borbónico

El artículo analiza la relación entre el reformismo borbónico y el desarrollo de espacios públicos de deliberación sobre asuntos de interés común en la ciudad de La Plata, la sede de la real audiencia de Charcas (hoy Sucre), hacia fines de la década de 1770. Se exploran un conjunto de luchas en torno a cuestiones críticas al programa reformista, tales como los recortes a las potestades del ayuntamiento, las preeminencias ceremoniales, el monopolio del tabaco y los medios legítimos de resolución de conflictos entre gobernantes y gobernados. Como resultado, se genera una politización de las relaciones de mando y obediencia, la multiplicación de controversias en diversos ámbitos donde se desenvolvía la vida pública y la difusión de pasquines como medio de propagación de opiniones contestatarias. Argumentamos que este proceso terminó por poner en cuestión tanto los fundamentos ideológicos como las condiciones de posibilidad de las políticas absolutistas.     

Topoiesis de la recepción literaria

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a particular notion about “topoiesis,” focusing on the text reception point of view. Initially, it establishes a theoretical framework using useful concepts from hermeneutics and post-structuralism, to later discuss the real existence of a dialogue or a “fusion of horizons” in which a “sense of space” of a text would be blended in the meeting point between textuality and the reader. Finally, through this space we propose a categorization of the different types of “topoiesis” of literary reception, establishing correspondences with the concept of “enunciative instances” in the text space, detailed in another article.