This interdisciplinary volume interrogates bodily thinking in avant-garde texts from Spain and Italy during the early twentieth century and their relevance to larger modernist preoccupations with corporeality. It examines the innovative ways Spanish and Italian avant-gardists explored the body as a locus for various aesthetic and sociopolitical considerations and practices. In reimagining the nexus points where the embodied self and world intersect, the texts surveyed in this book not only shed light on issues such as authority, desire, fetishism, gender, patriarchy, politics, religion,...

This volume explores the genre of the historical novel and the variety of ways in which writers choose to represent the past. How does an author s nationality or gender impact their artistic choices? To what extent can historical novels appeal to a transnational audience? This study demonstrates how histories can communicate across national borders, often by invoking or deconstructing the very notion of nationhood. Furthermore, it traces how the concerns of the postmodern era, such as postmodern critiques of historiography, colonialism, identity, and the Enlightenment, have impacted the...

When Brazil was honored at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2013, the Brazilian author Luiz Ruffato opened the event with a provocative speech, claiming that literature, through its pervasive depiction and discussion of otherness, has the potential to provoke ethical transformation. This book uses Ruffato s speech as a starting point for the discussion of contemporary Brazilian literature that stands in contrast to the repetition of social and cultural cliches. By illuminating the relevance of humanities and literature as a catalyst for rethinking Brazil, the book offers a resistance to the...