Spanish Culture and Society: The Essential Glossary by Barry Jordan (review)

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

MLRy 99.1, 2004 229 is designed to give you a relatively quick and easy entry into Hispanic Studies as it stands today' (p. 12), and the tenor of her chapter suggests that the target audience is sixth-formers contemplating enrolling for a degree in Spanish, or even younger students facing decisions on what subjects to take for A-level or its equivalent. This is an entirely laudable aim, and justifies what might seem at firstglance to be a rather elementary approach: for example, 'monolingualism' is defined as 'ability to speak only one language' (p. 10). If this is the intended readership, one wonders what they would make of terms like 'reterritorialise' (p. 167) or 'instantiated' (p. 169), in Jon Beasley-Murray's otherwise lucid and simulating final chapter on the various pos? sibilities opening up for Hispanic Studies in the future ('Beyond Hispanic Studies? Interdisciplinary approaches to Spain and Latin America'). In general, however, a very judicious balance is struck, and the book successfully presents the fieldof Hispanic Studies as complex, dynamic, and exciting, with authori? tative contributions from an array of distinguished scholars. Lynn Williams writes on Language, and there are chapters on medieval studies (Louise Haywood), Golden Age studies (Terence O'Reilly), Spain and Spanish America in the eighteenth and nine? teenth centuries (Geoffrey Ribbans), and twentieth-century Spain (Derek Gagen). Catalan, Galician, and Basque culture are discussed by David George. Contempo? rary Latin America is divided into two large regions: Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Andes (Peter Standish) and the Southern Cone (Philip Swanson). Rob Rix writes on Spanish and Latin American cinema. Each chapter has a short, well-chosen bibliography, there is a good index and a historical time-chart, as well as eleven short paragraphs in which current and recent students of Hispanic Studies comment favourably on what they have derived from their experience. University of Strathclyde Eamonn Rodgers Spanish Culture and Society: The Essential Glossary. Ed. by Barry Jordan. London: Arnold. 2002. xix + 255pp. ?14.99. ISBN 0-340-76342-6. This volume offersa compact and comprehensive compendium of information about contemporary Spain, with definitions of terms in current or recent use, such as movida and poderesfdcticos. Thirty contributors have provided some 450 entries on subjects as diverse as banks, basketball, Montserrat Caballe, design, detective fiction,holidays, labour law, Terenci Moix, Ortega y Gasset, sexuality, and zarzuela. There are some minor omissions, e.g., culebron, though telenovela is included. Although repetition of material between articles has not been entirely avoided, it is clear that an efforthas been made to keep the overall size of the volume within certain bounds, by limiting the number of overview articles which would repeat material contained in more detailed entries. Thus, for example, there is no general article on music, but the topic is well covered by entries on bands, on genres such as flamenco and the nova canfd, on individual performers from Alaska to Serrat, and on musical institutions like the Liceu and the Teatro Real. Overall economy has also been achieved by restricting even the longest entries to c. 400 words. The price of this has been a certain unnecessary sacrifice of detail. Surprisingly, there is little explicit evidence of the use of Internet sources, and users of the volume are not referredto any. Most ofthe articles operate at a certain level of generality, and there is less by way of statistical and other factual data than might seem desirable, though the contributions by,among others, Tony Morgan, show what can be achieved by including the maximum amount of information without any loss of concision. There is also an avoidance of polemical edge, which might have enlivened the entries 23 o Reviews on controversial topics such as the Civil War, Opus Dei, or the Tejerazo. Ryan Prout's treatment of topics like corruption and surrealism are, by contrast, refreshingly free from this kind of blandness. In a publication ofthis kind, a high premium has to be set on accuracy, and although the volume achieves a commendably high standard in this regard, with a reliable system ofcross-referencing, there are a few lapses. There are two references to Banesto (pp. 55 and 57), but no...