Escrituras de la ciudad

Abstract

Escrituras de la Ed. Jose Carlos Rovira Madrid: Palas Atenea, 1999. 282 pages. For many of us, the city is a way of life. Books that examine some aspect of urban reality, be it cultural, anthropological, sociological, economic or political, serve to remind us of the importance of reading the city as an emblem of modern culture. Escrituras de la ciudad, a collection of critical essays edited by Jose Carlos Rovira, does so by building upon ideas originally explored in Literatura y espacio urbano (1995), also edited by Rovira. Escrituras de la ciudad presents thirteen essays that explore the cityscape from diverse cultural vantage points such as Golden Age Spanish poetry, the Latin American avant-garde and Impressionist painting, making the anthology an enticing invitation to explore both Latin American and Spanish urban texts. The stroll through varied Hispanic cityscapes begins with Jose Angel Cilleruelo's essay El 27 contra la ciudad. His references to various North American thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau provide the necessary context to explore the antagonism between city and country in the poetry of the Generation of 27. Cilleruelo's approach emphasizes the importance of understanding city-texts in relation to other cultural production, a comparative approach that is deployed by most of the contributors, and one of assets of the volume as a whole. In a second essay concerned with the Spanish cityscape, Jose Maria Ferri Col's presents a thorough analysis of urban ruins and the importance of these images for Spanish Golden Age poetry. Along the same comparative lines, Angel L. Prieto de Paula's essay on twentieth-century Spanish poetry provides an excellent overview on the city/country dichotomy with special attention given to poets writing during the civil war and in the early years of franquismo rule. Two of the more thought-provoking essays contained in the collection direct the reader's attention to visual representations of urban space. The editor's inclusion of analyses of multiple forms of media such as visual art and film, signals an affirmation of the importance of cross-disciplinary readings of the city. In his comparative overview of Western European and North American Impressionist art, Jose Costa Mas takes the reader on a leisurely stroll through painted urban parks and gardens, highlighting the nineteenth century's quest to urbanize nature. This analysis of Impressionism offers a satisfying overview of the importance of the city for the artistic movement as a whole. It would have been interesting for Costa Mas to also relate the Impressionist movement to the chronicles of Latin American modernistas, such as Manuel Gutierrez Najera Not only were the modernistas contemporaries of Impressionist painters, but for many of them Paris and things French were emblematic of modernity. Juan A. Rio Carratala continues the trajectory of the visual cityscape with his reading of films from the 1950's, with a special emphasis on those directed by Juan A. Bardem. Carratala's piece addresses not only the importance of reading films in dialogue with literary texts, but also draws attention to provincial cities which often remain in the shadows of the metropolis in studies of urban literature. …