A Companion to Latin American Literature offers a lively and informative introduction to the most significant literary works produced in Latin America from the fifteenth century until the present day. It shows how the press, and its product the printed word, functioned as the common denominator binding together, in different ways over time, the complex and variable relationship between the writer, the reader and the state. The meandering story of the evolution of Latin American literature - from the letters of discovery written by Christopher Columbus and Vaz de Caminha, via the Republican...

Medieval Iberia was rich in sociolinguistic and cultural diversity. This volume explores the culture, history, literature and language of the Peninsula in an attempt to understand its cultural-political complexity and its legacy. Principal themes include the representation of minority groups in the community; the challenge of social contact that could bring mutual absorption of influence or conflict; the effects of linguistic interaction and development; and the dissemination of cultural and scientific knowledge within and beyond the borders of the Peninsula. Modern interpretations of...

Providing a basis for understanding the main lines of development of poetry in Spanish America after Vanguardism, this volume begins with an overview of the situation at the mid-century: the later work of Neruda and Borges, the emergence of Paz. Consideration is then given to the decisive impact of Parra and the rise of colloquial poetry, politico-social poetry (Dalton, Cardenal) and representative figures such as Orozco, Pacheco and Cisneros. The aim is to establish a few paths through the largely unmapped jungle of Spanish American poetry in the time period. The author emphasises the...

A pesar de que nuestro conocimiento cientifico sobre el Santo Oficio es cada vez mas completo, la mera referencia a la Inquisicion espanola trae a la mente una serie de connotaciones e imagenes que le deben mas al arte, la literatura y la polemica politica que a la historiografia. Este libro plantea el estudio de la Inquisicion como tema literario en el periodo comprendido entre 1789-1848, fundamental en la creacion de una idea moderna del Santo Oficio. La evolucion del tema literario inquisitorial en Espana durante dicho periodo nos ayuda a comprender nuestra propia concepcion contemporanea...

For many reasons, but most usually the lack of playable modern translations, the plays of the seventeenth-century Spanish Comedia have appeared infrequently on the stages of the English-speaking world. Once such translations began to appear in the final decades of the twentieth century, productions followed and audiences were once again given the opportunity of discovering the enormous riches of this theatre. The bringing of Spanish seventeenth-century verse plays to the contemporary English-speaking stage involves a number of fundamental questions. Are verse translations preferable to prose,...