Multicultural Iberia: Language, Literature and Music by Dru Dougherty , Milton M. Azevedo (review)

Abstract

MLRy 98.1, 2003 229 Martin Murphy, 'Luis Gutierrez, Novelist and Impostor'; Donald L. Shaw, 'Rivas and Tragedy: The Cases of El Duque de Aquitania and Malek-AdheV; Margaret A. Rees, 'More on El moro exposito'; J.E. Varey,' "The Bleeding Nun" and "Our Lady of Paros"'; Joan Estruch Tobella, 'Becquer, autor de Dona Manuela'; Luis Caparros Esperante , ' "Hoy es siempre todavia"; la plasticidad del ayer en los poemas de Antonio Machado'; Colin Smith, 'Alvaro Cunquiero, Britain and Ireland'; Patricia McDermott , A Missing Link in the Dis-affiliation of a Post-Romantic Expatriate in Revolt ?' The essays vary considerably in quality. The most interesting are perhaps those that cover the early modern era: the contributions of Deyermond and Michael on the pre-Romantic hispanomedievalists Tomas Antonio Sanchez and Juan Antonio Pellicer are illuminating, and Martin Murphy's essay on the little-known novelist Luis Gutierrez, executed in 1809 as a French spy, has more than mere curiosity value. The volume concludes with two contrasting but well-researched pieces: in what, sadly, would have been one of his final writings, the breadth of Colin Smith's scholarship is amply demonstrated in his account of Alvaro Cunquiero's debt to English literature, in particular, his rewriting of Hamlet; and Patricia McDermott supplies a concise but penetrating insight into the politico-cultural impact of Revindicacion del conde Don Julian, though her conclusion is somewhat marred by her unqualified acceptance of Peers's notion that the Romantic Movement in Spain was a 'failure'?an untenable assumption in the wake of Flitter's research in this area. Caparros Esperante's article on time in Machado is over-long, while Estruch Tobella's case for Becquer's authorship of Dona Manuela is unconvincing: he over states the significance ofthe 'Advertencia' (reproduced in full) as a political satire, and the intertextual information supplied as evidence of authorship is hardly conclusive. But the uneven quality of the volume is most apparent in the period covering the Golden Age. It is surprising that in none of the essays on the religious and mystic writers of the period is there a reference to researchers such as Colin Thompson and Terry O'Reilly or, for that matter, A. A. Parker; indeed, there is barely a reference in the six essays devoted to the Siglo de Oro to any critical writing after 1980. If the volume was meant to reflectthe diversity of Peers's interests, then the absence of an essay on Catalonia is an unfortunate omission, especially as it could be argued that his advocacy of Catalan culture and institutions represented a more enduring legacy than his contributions to Spanish mysticism or to Romanticism, both fully represented here. The volume also contains a list of Peers's publications?essentially a reprintof an item in the 'Memorial Number' ofthe Bulletinof Hispanic Studies irom 1953?and a finelyjudged appraisal of his achievements by Geoffrey Ribbans in which he draws attention to Peers's shortcomings as a literary critic, betraying as he did 'a late-Romantic outlook typical of the Edwardian era against which the best minds of the coming generation were already reacting' (p. 25). Apart from covering some ofthe same ground as Ribbans's reappraisal, the introduction supplies over-long summaries of the essays to follow, frequently with extensive quotation, and with gratuitous obervations on the quality of the contributions ('surmises [. . .] persuasively'; 'succeeds admirably'; 'argues convincingly'). It could surely have been assumed that the con? tributors would speak forthemselves and that the readers would judge forthemselves. University of Exeter D. Gareth Walters Multicultural Iberia: Language, Literature and Music. Ed. by Dru Dougherty and Milton M. Azevedo. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999. vii + 258 pp. $26.50. ISBN 0-87725-003-0. The title of this extremely varied collection of essays is perhaps its least useful aspect, in that they all originate from a Catalonian Studies Programme conference held at the 230 Reviews University of California in 1997 and are, in fact, quite monocultural in focus. Indeed, Catalan studies are really the only common thread in this volume: approaches range from the highly technical methodologies of digitalized medieval texts in the firstes? say, 'The Digital Scriptorium: A New Way to Study Medieval...