North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures Series

Mujeres en transito examines in detail the insightful accounts of four prominent female writers who traveled to and from Latin America in the nineteenth century: the French Peruvian socialist and activist Flora Tristan (1803-44), the Argentines Juana Manuela Gorriti (1816-92), Eduarda Mansilla (1834-92), and the Peruvian Clorinda Matto de Turner (1852-1909). Each author traveled and wrote in different and significant moments in the history of the Latin American nations, and their texts touch upon the nature of hemispheric and European cross-cultural relations. Mujeres en transito revises the limited consideration that women's travelogues have received within the Latin American literary tradition. It demonstrates how women's commentaries on their own and other nations speak to their own engagement in the project of modern citizenship. More importantly, the act of traveling often helps female authors challenge the strictly political, legal, and geographic conceptions of nationhood and national identity articulated in canonical texts. Their improved yet marginal position in society as women, their particular reasons to travel, and the personal and symbolic connections with more than one nation or culture lead these four women to articulate a "transnational imaginary" through which they revise the categories of gender, class, modernity, and cultural homogeneity that shaped nineteenth century Latin American societies.

This book examines the development of Latin American science fiction from the mid-nineteenth century until the early days of Modernsmo via an in-depth discussion of the first three novels published in Spanish America: Viaje maravilloso del senor Nic-Nac al planeta Marte by Argentinian writer Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg, Desde Jupiter by the Chilean Francisco Miralles, and Querens by Pedro Castera from Mexico. These three novels incorporate all the attributes that consistently appear in a science fiction work through a blend of Darwinism and Spiritism, the two most dominant and widely-debated scientific discourses of their time. Consistent with the social and political interests in the recently independent Latin American nations, the three writers address scientific, aesthetic, intellectual and personal beliefs through a combination of utopian optimism and dystopian pragmatism.

Home Away from Home: Immigrant Narratives, Domesticity, and Coloniality in Contemporary Spanish Culture examines ideological, emotional, economic, and cultural phenomena brought about by migration through readings of works of literature and film featuring domestic workers. In the past thirty years, Spain has experienced a massive increase in immigration. Since the 1990s, immigrants have been increasingly female, as bilateral trade agreements, migration quotas, and immigration policies between Spain and its former colonies (including the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, and the Philippines) have created jobs for foreign women in the domestic service sector. These migrations reveal that colonial histories continue to be structuring elements of Spanish national culture, even in a democratic era in which its former colonies are now independent. Migration has also transformed the demographic composition of Spain and has created complex new social relations around the axes of gender, race, and nationality. Representations of migrant domestic workers provide critical responses to immigration and its feminization, alongside profound engagements with how the Spanish nation has changed since the end of the Franco era in 1975. Throughout Home Away from Home, readings of works of literature and film show that texts concerning the transnational nature of domestic work uniquely provide a nuanced account of the cultural shifts occurring in late twentieth- through twenty-first-century Spain.

Fashioned Texts and Painted Books examines the folding fan's multiple roles in fin-de-siecle and early twentieth-century French literature. Focusing on the fan's identity as a symbol of feminine sexuality, as a collectible art object, and, especially, as an alternative book form well suited to the reception of poetic texts, the study highlights the fan's suitability as a substrate for verse, deriving from its myriad associations with coquetry and sex, flight, air, and breath. Close readings of Stephane Mallarme's eventails of the 1880s and 1890s and Paul Claudel's Cent phrases pour eventails (1927) consider both text and paratext as they underscore the significant visual interest of this poetry. Works in prose and in verse by Octave Uzanne, Guy de Maupassant, and Marcel Proust, along with fan leaves by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Paul Gauguin, serve as points of comparison that deepen our understanding of the complex interplay of text and image that characterizes this occasional subgenre. Through its interrogation of the correspondences between form and content in fan poetry, this study demonstrates that the fan was, in addition to being a ubiquitous fashion accessory, a significant literary and art historical object straddling the boundary between East and West, past and present, and high and low art.

The abolition of judicial torture—alongside the eradication of both slavery and capital punishment—was one of the most consequential issues debated in eighteenth-century continental Europe. A revealing component of this controversial debate was presented in the unpublished "Discurso sobre la injusticia del apremio judicial," written by the attorney Pedro Garcia del Canuelo. Seeking support for its publication, he forwarded the manuscript to Prime Minister Manuel Godoy in 1795. The savvy Spanish politician, however, not only rejected the text but also warned its author against further discussing the issues raised in his treatise. As a result, although its title was known, the essay was lost to history. The current volume, La abolicion del tormento, analyzes, transcribes, and reproduces the complete "Discurso" while framing its proposals within the European debate regarding the abolition of torture and the prohibition of other methods of mental and physical coercion allowed by diverse tribunals. The monograph additionally considers the extent of the controversy associated with torture in Spain as it provides biographical information on Garcia del Canuelo and examines the philosophical and juridical foundations related to this atrocious practice, one which produced one of the fiercest exchanges of the Enlightenment. The aforementioned dispute reflects the political tensions of an era because a discussion on the legality of torture involves a consideration of what constitutes a human being, what is the relationship between legality and justice, and what are the limits of lawful power in relation to the natural rights and the intrinsic value of the individual. Thoroughly documented, this study should be of particular interest to those concerned with intellectual processes and practices during the modern era, not only in Spain, but throughout the Western world as a whole.

Orientaciones transpacificas propone y traza los contornos de una orientacion intelectual hacia el Este y el Sur de Asia en la tradicion intelectual y artistica mexicana de los siglos XX y XXI. El libro abarca un arco temporal amplio, desde el Porfiriato tardio, pasando por los imaginarios culturales del nacionalismo posrevolucionario, hasta la Guerra Fria y la expansion del neoliberalismo en los albores de este nuevo siglo. Torres-Rodriguez demuestra que, aunque despues de la independencia mexicana se corta el importante vinculo comercial y las redes imperiales que mantuvieron materialmente unidos al virreinato de la Nueva Espana con el continente asiatico durante el periodo colonial, el Este y el Sur de Asia continuan constituyendo un punto de referencia crucial a traves del cual la tradicion intelectual mexicana afirma su centralidad global y ancla sus discursos de singularidad cultural y/o excepcion politica. Mas alla de comprender el orientalismo mexicano como una imitacion ornamental o accidental de los archivos orientalistas europeos, Torres-Rodriguez lo reconceptualiza como una orientacion espacial, corporal y geografica enraizada en la propia historia (post)colonial mexicana y en una tradicion transpacifica de larga duracion. Este estudio marca el giro transpacifico en las cronicas de viaje del diario de Jose Juan Tablada, en las fotografias paisajisticas de Manuel Alvarez Bravo, en los ensayos culturales y en las campanas de alfabetizacion de Jose Vasconcelos, en los ensayos marxistas sobre el modo de produccion asiatico de Roger Bartra, en la novela negra de Rafael Bernal, en la opera coral juarense de Marcela Rodriguez y Mario Bellatin y en las instalaciones tijuanenses de Shinpei Takeda. Orientaciones transpacificas revisa el enfasis tradicional en la relacion trasatlantica con Europa y demuestra que es una imaginacion transpacifica y verdaderamente planetaria–en vez de una mera dialectica entre excolonia y metropolis–la que define la conceptualizacion sobre la modernidad cultural y literaria mexicana. Orientaciones transpacificas explora los puntos de interseccion entre el orientalismo mexicano y las ideologias centrales del latinoamericanismo para develar la influencia espectral de Asia en la formacion de definiciones culturales y continentales que son fundamentales para el campo de los estudios latinoamericanos.

Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain proposes a new taxonomy and conceptual frame for the controversial Iberian genre of sentimental fiction. It traces its origin to late-medieval education in rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine as the foundation for virtuous living. In establishing the genre's boundaries and cultural underpinnings, Narrating Desire emphasizes the crucial link between Eastern and Western Iberian sentimental traditions, and offers close readings of a vast array of Catalan and Castilian fictions, translations, narrative poems, letters, and doctrinal treatises: the Catalan translations of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Santillana's El sueno, Bernat Metge's Lo somni, Romeu Llull's Lo despropiament d'amor, Pedro Moner's La noche and L'anima d'Oliver, Rodriguez del Padron's Siervo libre de amor, Carros Pardo de la Casta's Regoneixenca, Rois de Corella's Parlament and Tragedia de Caldesa, Pedro de Portugal's Satira, Francesc Alegre's Somni and Raonament, Pere Torroella's correspondence, and the well-known works by Diego de San Pedro (Arnalte y Lucenda; Carcel de Amor) and Juan de Flores (Grisel y Mirabella; Grimalte y Gradissa) among others. From them, Miguel-Prendes singles out a group of dream visions whose interpretive and compositional practices sire the sentimental genre. Social interactions lead to either a consolatory or a sentimental form, which imply very different ways of seeing: the allegorical gaze of consolation gives way to narrative fiction. In distorting moral conversion, the sentimental genre heralds the novel.

En el largo y sinuoso proceso que condujo a la publicacion de La Florida del Inca (Lisboa, 1605) podemos suponer la existencia de varios pre-textos: copias manuscritas de versiones preliminares o parciales. Se publican aqui, en ediciones criticas y con un estudio historico-filologico, los unicos documentos conocidos hasta ahora: dos resumenes realizados a partir de la obra ya terminada pero aun manuscrita (c. 1596-1600); dos testimonios de muy distinta naturaleza y de pareja importancia, por cuanto amplian el ya complejo relato de como lo que podria haber sido una escueta relacion historica llego a ser la obra clasica de 1605 y perfilan mejor los avatares de una carrera literaria sujeta a las servidumbres del mecenazgo y la politica. El Epitome del descubrimiento de la tierra de la Florida procede de un manuscrito recientemente descubierto en la Hispanic Society of America, de Nueva York. Se trata de un resumen dictado a un amanuense por el propio Garcilaso poco despues de 1596, cuando las posibilidades de publicar su obra, terminada hacia 1592, se revelaban dificiles por falta de patronazgo politico y economico. El segundo texto, la Historia de los sucesos de la Florida del adelantado Hernando de Soto, es mucho mas extenso que el anterior. El estudio de sus anadidos y errores muestra como no es una version primitiva de La Florida, segun se creia, sino un resumen preparado por el cronista Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas a partir de una copia de la obra, con el objetivo de plagiar su contenido, algo que realmente hizo en sus Decadas (1615). La presentacion conjunta de ambos pre-textos es un hecho insolito en la historia literaria de la prosa en nuestra lengua y, mas alla de la micro-historia de La Florida, viene a arrojar la luz sobre los complicados procesos de la publicacion de nuestros clasicos.

Patricios en contienda explora las maneras en que los cuadros de costumbres fueron usados en Colombia, Ecuador y Venezuela para nacionalizar poblaciones heterogeneas y producir pueblos nacionales para estos tres paises tras la disolucion de la llamada Gran Colombia (1819-1831). Al situar los cuadros de costumbres en el contexto de las guerras civiles y reformas liberales, esta investigacion muestra como las antiguas elites orgullosas de su abolengo colonial--como Jose Maria Vergara y Vergara (1831-1872) o Fermin Toro (1806-1865)--los usaron para legitimarse frente a las nuevas elites que ascendian tras las guerras de Independencia, como es el caso del general Jose Antonio Paez (1790-1873), su hijo Ramon Paez (1810-1894) o Agustin Codazzi (1793-1859). Nuevos y viejos patricios eligieron escribir acerca de tipos sociales especificos y los compilaron en albumes, memorias o "museos literarios" con el fin de crear pueblos que reflejaran sus propias historias personales y proyectos politicos. Este proceso supuso reformular diversas experiencias historicas emergidas de las reformas liberales y homogeneizarlas en tipos pintorescos como el tabaquero o el llanero. En respuesta a estos mecanismos de inclusion y exclusion, miembros marginados de las nuevas elites--como Josefa Acevedo (1803-1861) o Dolores Veintimilla (1829-1857)--criticaron las divisiones entre patriciado y pueblo. Al escribir sobre miembros indeseables para la comunidad, como mendigos o presuntos criminales, estas escritoras revelaron los principios excluyentes que subyacian a la organizacion de pueblos nacionales. Gracias a la opcion metodologica de ubicar los cuadros de costumbres en el contexto de las publicaciones periodicas donde aparecieron por primera vez, Martinez-Pinzon logra una lectura en que los revalua en su calidad de herramientas politicas y los situa en su relacion con otras formas de representacion como las microbiografias de hombres ilustres o las novelas de folletin, generos con los que sus autores buscaron autodefinirse como representantes de un pueblo que, como ellos mismos, cambio durante la formacion de las republicas.

Word Mingas is an English-language translation by Paul M. Worley and Melissa Birkhofer of the award-winning book Mingas de la palabra written by Miguel Rocha Vivas (Casa de las Americas, 2016). It is an encompassing study of oralitures--multilayered cultural knowledge shared through the power of orality--and written literatures by authors from Colombia and other regions in the hemisphere who self-identify as Indigenous. In consequential dialogue with the most recent theories of decoloniality and interculturality, the book weaves and compares two threads of literary critique Rocha Vivas names as oralitegraphies and mirrored visions. The study focuses on texts produced from the early 1990s to the present, and offers productive avenues to discuss, understand, and foster dialogue with the wide array of symbolic-literary systems of the original peoples. Rocha Vivas offers a valuable contribution to the much-needed dialogue on the basic rights of self-representation, self-determination, and the coexistence of multiple systems of representation and identity.

How writers respond to a cosmology in evolution in the sixteenth century and how literature and space implicate each other are the guiding issues of this volume in which sixteen authors explore the topic of space in its multiform incarnations and representations. The volume's first section features the early modern exploration and codification of urban and rural spaces as well as maritime and industrial expanses: "Space and Territory: Geographies in Texts" thus contributes to a history of spatial consciousness. The construction of local, national, political, public, and private places is highlighted in "Space and Politics: Literary Geographies"; the contributors in this segment show how built forms as architectural or literary constructions and spatial orientation are intertwined. "Space and Gender: Geopoetical Approaches" traces the experience of gender as political, territorial, and communicative exploration; the essays in this division deal with social organization and its symbolic analysis, resulting in literary texts featuring what could be called psychological production theories. The development of ethical approaches adapted to or critical of colonial expansion is analyzed in "Space and Ethics: Geocritical Ventures"; here we encounter early modern globalization where locals, explorers, immigrants, adventurers, and intellectuals remake themselves in new places, engage in or meet with resistance, or attempt to rework local sociopolitical systems while reassessing those they are familiar with. "The Space of the Book, the Book as Space: Printing, Reading, Publishing" analyzes the tactile object of the book as an arena for commerce, politics, and authorial experimentation.

Dissonances of Modernity illuminates the ways in which music, as an artifact, a practice, and a discourse redefines established political, social, gender, and cultural conventions in Modern Spain. Using the notion of dissonance as a point of departure, the volume builds on the insightful approaches to the study of music and society offered by previous analyses in regards to the central position they give to identity as a socially and historically constructed concept, and continues their investigation on the interdependence of music and society in the Iberian Peninsula. While other serious studies of the intersections of music and literature in Spain have focused on contemporary usage, Dissonances of Modernity looks back across the centuries, seeking the role of music in the very formation of identity in the peninsula. The volume's historical horizon reaches from the nineteenth-century War of Africa to the Catalan working class revolutions and Enric Granados' central role in Catalan identity; from Francisco Barbieri's Madrid to the Wagnerian's influence in Benito Perez Galdos' prose; and from the predicaments surrounding national anthems to the use of the figure of Carmen in Francoist' cinema. This volume is a timely scholarly addition that contemplates not only a broad corpus that innovatively comprises popular and high culture--zarzuelas, choruses of industrial workers, opera, national anthems--but also their inter-dependence in the artists' creativity.

Feeling the Gaze explores the visual elements in eight contemporary Argentine and Chilean theater performances. Gail A. Bulman shows how staged images can awaken spectators' emotions to activate their intellect, provoking nuanced and deep contemplation of social, historical, and political themes. Ranging from simple props, costumes, body movements and spatial constructions to integrated media and digital images, the aesthetic components in these pieces engage to forge multifaceted storytelling, stimulate the public's relation to memory, and create affective bonds that help build individual and collective social consciousness. Recent innovations in Southern Cone theatre aesthetics have been shifting traditional performance/spectator relationships and animating ideological discussions. The various works presented here give readers a holistic understanding of the emerging prominence of visuality and affect as a vehicle for political advocacy in Latin American theatre and performance. The book asks us to consider the formation of new spectator-performance bonds as authors, directors, and theatre groups increasingly turn toward alternative settings for their work. Lingering visual memories of the performances, together with the feelings that the performative experience stirs up, provide spectators with an enduring focal point through which to reflect on and judge what is "beyond" the performed scenes. Staged live in the Southern Cone and internationally since 2014, these plays demonstrate the transgressive power of the visual to make spectators see, feel, and potentially act against injustices and violence. This study offers comprehensive critical discussions of Teatro Banda's O'Higgins: un hombre en pedazos; Teatro Nino Proletario's Fulgor; Mario, Luiggi y sus fantasmas's Manual de carrona; Agustin Leon Pruzzo's En la sombra de la cupula; Teatro la Maria's Los millonarios; Claudio Tolcachir's Proximo; Sergio Blanco's Tebas Land; and Lola Arias's Doble de Riesgo.

Esta es la primera edicion critica en espanol del Tratado sobre la redondez de la Tierra, ensayo cosmologico y geografico nacido de la "ciencia infusa" (conocimento transmitido por la divinidad), atribuido a Sor Maria de Jesus de Agreda (Agreda, Soria, Espana, 1602-1665). Maria Coronel de Arana es posiblemente una de las figuras mas misteriosas y controvertidas de la Edad Moderna. No solo como personaje historico o literario, su vida y su obra reunen numerosos aspectos aun por descifrar que han dado lugar a una sugerente mitologia cultural de dimension transatlantica, abierta a sumar nuevas interpretaciones y significados. Figura politica, teologica y legendaria, Sor Maria de Jesus de Agreda se transforma en un significante cultural que no deja de acumular capas de sentido. Una de ellas, todavia poco explorada, es la atribucion del Tratado sobre la redondez de la tierra. Este volumen indaga en las razones para la atribucion a Sor Maria de Jesus, considerando su dimension de imagen cultural y transoceanica que rebasa la individualidad concreta. Tratamos diferentes aspectos de la vida, la obra, el contexto cultural y la tradicion desde la que se la leyo y puede leerse tambien en el siglo XXI. El Tratado se enmarca en el espacio de produccion cultural femenina conventual, sin el que no puede entenderse la figura de la autora, ni la escritura de mujeres en la epoca, no solo observando los generos mas conocidos del convento, sino una tradicion todavia por recuperar: la del conocimiento cientifico, que, aunque presente entre sus muros, apenas ha recibido atencion critica.

In this ambitious volume, Yunfei Bai delves into the creative adaptations of classical Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan literary texts by four renowned nineteenth- and early twentieth-century authors in France and Argentina: Theophile Gautier, Stephane Mallarme, Victor Segalen, and Jorge Luis Borges. Without any knowledge of the source languages, the authors crafted their own French and Spanish retellings based on received translations of these Asian works. Rewriting the Orient not only explores the so far untapped translation-rewriting continuum to trace the pivotal role of Orientalism in the formation of a singular corpus of world literature that goes beyond the Anglophone canon, but also sheds light on a wide range of innovative discursive strategies that readily challenge traditional notions of cultural appropriation.

Interpretaciones: Experimental Criticism and the Metrics of Latin American Literature examines readers' reactions to short texts during crucial moments of the reading experience. These readers are students at universities in the US and several Spanish-speaking countries. Far from reducing the reading experience to a series of numbers, the data-driven approaches in the study instead underline the startling complexity and elusiveness of seemingly basic literary processes and concepts, including those pertaining to authorship, titles, conclusions, and so on. Simultaneously, Interpretaciones suggests alternative methodologies for gaining new and unexpected knowledge about literary texts themselves, whether from Latin America or elsewhere. Interpretaciones is an ambitious, interdisciplinary project geared toward those interested in literary theory, Latin American and Caribbean literature, and the nexus between literature and science.