Publisher Description

First published in 1961, A New History of Spanish Literature has been a much-used resource for generations of students. The book has now been completely revised and updated to include extensive discussion of Spanish literature of the past thirty years. Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, both longtime students of the literature, write authoritatively about every Spanish literary work of consequence. From the earliest extant writings though the literature of the 1980s, they draw on the latest scholarship. Unlike most literary histories, this one treats each genre fully in its own section, thus making it easy for the reader to follow the development of poetry, the drama, the novel, other prose fiction, and nonfiction prose. Students of the first edition have found this method particularly useful. However, this approach does not preclude study of the literature by period. A full index easily enables the reader to find all references to any individual author or book. Another noteworthy feature of the book, and one omitted from many books of this kind, is the comprehensive attention the authors accord nonfiction prose, including, for example, essays, philosophy, literary criticism, politics, and historiography. Encyclopedic in scope yet concise and eminently readable, the revised edition of A New History of Spanish Literature bids fair to be the standard reference well into the next century.

Gathered to meet the rising upsurge of interest in Spain, this collection features major critical articles dealing with the authors and texts customarily taught in colleges and universities in the United States. The articles are in English and Spanish, with a predominance of the former. The material is organized to reflect the common chronological and period divisions of the academic curriculum, and is clustered around major literary figures, with a mix of general articles on the writers and texts that are most commonly included in anthologies. Spanish literature and culture have attracted a renewed interest since the return to constitutional democracy in the mid-1970s and the growing participation of Spain in the world economy and its incorporation into the European common market. Spanish literature balances a participation in the major literary movements of European literature in general with unique features of Hispanic culture that are a consequence of the special circumstances of its geography,especially the ways in which it historically served as a conduit to Europe of Arabic and Jewish cultures. Figures of international acclaim like Federico Garc'a Lorca, Miguel de Unamuno, and Jose Ortega y Gasset, Nobel prizewinners like Vicente Aleixandre and Camilo Jose Cela, the universality of Miguel de Cervantes, without whom the modern novel would not have been possible, the uniqueness of the Hispanic ballad tradition, mystic poets like San Juan de la Cruz and Santa Teresa Jesus, and the picaresque tradition are some of the major reference points for the singularity of Spanish literary culture. All of this literary activity has inspired innumerable dissertations, theses, and books, published by academic and trade presses, as well as articles in journals traditionally devoted to literary history and philosophy, along with new specialized journals and the organization of national and international congresses on national and cultural issues, writers, and schools of writing. These three volumesselect the most seminal works on Spanish literature and collect them in one place for scholars and students alike. This three volume collection of reprinted articles is also available as individual volumes priced at $80.00/Y [Can. $120.00/Y]: * Volume 1.Theoretical Debates0815335636 Volume 2.From Origins to the 18th Century0815335644 Volume 3.The Modern Period0185335652

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.

The masterpieces of medieval Spanish literature have come to be known and loved by Hispanists, and more recently by others throughout the world. But the brilliant illuminations with which the original manuscripts were illustrated have remained almost totally unknown on the shelves of the great European libraries. To redress this woeful neglect, two noted scholars here present a generous selection from this great visual treasury including many examples never before reproduced. John E. Keller and Richard P. Kinkade have chosen five representative works, dating from the mid-thirteenth century to the late fifteenth, to illustrate the richness of early Spanish narrative art. Together, these five works encompass the entire range of narrative techniques and iconography to be found in medieval Spain, and reflect both foreign and native Spanish artistic tendencies. The authors' analyses of the relation between verbalizations and visualizations will provide students of medieval art and literature a wealth of new information expanding our knowledge of this fascinating period. The beauty of many of the illuminations speaks for itself.

In this groundbreaking study, Diana Berruezo-Sánchez recovers key chapters in the history of Afro-Iberian diasporas by exploring the literary contributions and life experiences of black African communities and individuals in early modern Spain. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, international trade involving chattel slavery led to significant populations of enslaved, free(d), and half-manumitted black African women, men, and children in the Iberian Peninsula. These demographic changes transformed Spain's urban and social landscapes. In exploring Spain's role in the transatlantic slave trade and its effects on cultural forms of the period, Berruezo-Sánchez examines a broad range of texts and unearths new documents relating to black African poets, performers, and black confraternities. Her discoveries evince the broad yet largely disregarded literary and artistic impact of the African diaspora in early modern Spain, expanding the scope of linguistic practices beyond habla de negros and creating space for early modern black poets in the Spanish literary canon. These textual sources challenge established understandings of black Africans and black African history in early modern Spain. They show how black Africans exerted significant cultural agency by collectively contributing to and shaping the literary texts of the period, including those of the popular genre villancicos de negros, and by developing artistic traditions as musicians, dancers, and poets. As both creators and consumers of cultural forms, black African men and women navigated a restrictive, coercive slave society yet negotiated their own physical and cultural spaces.

Using each chapter to juxtapose works by one female and one male Spanish writer, Gender and Modernity in Spanish Literature: 1789-1920 explores the concept of Spanish modernity. Issues explored include the changing roles of women, the male hysteric, and the mother and Don Juan figure.

During the time that I have held the Taylorian Teachership of Spanish at Oxford, I have frequently received letters asking what there is to read in Spanish besides Cervantes and Calderon and what editions should be used. The present volume is intended to answer these questions, and to show the position occupied by the great writers in the general scheme of the literature of their country. The various divisions of the great subject have been exhaustively treated up to their several dates by Nicolas Antonio, Ticknor, Amador de los Rios, Schack and Wolf, to whose books I beg to acknowledge my many obligations, hoping at the same time that the present general sketch may be useful to the general reader, and to the beginner, and may serve as an introduction to more extensive works. I am aware that a few short extracts, however well chosen can give no adequate idea of the manner of a great writer or of the merits of a great book, and that translations, even by the most skilful hands, are wont to reproduce the defects rather than the beauties of their original. The extracts here printed are intended to relieve the monotony of a long list of short notices of authors, and to illustrate the development of the language and progress of literary method; they are, as far as possible, characteristically Spanish in subject and, it is hoped, of sufficient interest to induce readers to refer to the books from which they are taken