Spanish Studies: An Introduction by Bill Richardson (review)

Abstract

1018 Reviews Spanish film production. A longer article, published in La Nacion of Buenos Aires, describing her visit as a journalist to the British film studios in Elstree, foregrounds her ambition to become a practitioner of cinematic art. In several of the interviews reprinted in this collection, she talks about her ideas for scripts and her desire to get into the movie business as not just a writer but a director. A second section situates Mendez in relation to other women intellectuals of her generation by including assessments of her significance by three contemporaries, Ernestina de Champourcin, Consuelo Berges, and Maria Zambrano. This section is illuminating above all because it demonstrates the density of talent and depth of self-awareness represented in the female component of Spanish intellectual life in the years before the Civil War. The third and longest section contains eight critical studies that, taken together, comprehend the main aspects and periods of Mendez's production. There is good representation here, as well, of her theatrical and cinematic work: Juan Perez de Ay? ala gives a fascinating account of La historia de un taxi, the 1927 film script Mendez wrote and helped produce, while Emilio Miro and Pilar Nieva de la Paz investigate her experimentation with avant-garde theatre and children's theatre, respectively. Analyses of her poetic production by two specialists in twentieth-century Spanish women poets, Catherine G Bellver and John C. Wilcox, cover the full range from her firstcollections to her writing in exile. A fine article by Roberta Quance describes the Spanish cultural context in which Mendez's lifestyle and choices opened new identities forwomen, while Alfonso Sanchez Rodriguez suggests how Mendez found in avant-garde aesthetics a way of textualizing that new identity.James Valender com? pletes the picture by offeringa suggestive account of Mendez's activities and contacts in Buenos Aires during her stay in 1929-30. Offering access to previously unpublished documents, a balanced selection of crit? ical essays by specialists, and an excellent bibliography, this volume is indispensable to scholarship on Mendez and women writers of the 1920s and 1930s, and of great interest to students of the Spanish avant-garde. University of California, San Diego Susan Kirkpatrick Spanish Studies: An Introduction. By Bill Richardson. London: Arnold. 2001. xiv + 226pp. ?14.99. ISBN 0-340-76038-9 (pbk). Most of us who teach modern languages nowadays have to cope with pressures which nudge departments towards an instrumental approach to language learning, and a reduction of cultural content. Bill Richardson's book is a welcome contribution to redressing the balance, for he neither retreats into a traditionalist defence of literary syllabuses nor focuses exclusively on the ephemeral and the contemporary. His standpoint is clearly expressed in the introduction: 'Meanings may be derived from major cultural artefacts [. . .] just as they may also relate to popular cultural forms and to [. . .] everyday experience' (p. 1). The book, therefore, implicitly affirmsthat students seeking to function within the Spanish-speaking world, even in the most pragmatic sense, need to be familiar with the cultural reference points which help the language community to structure and articulate its sense of its own identity. The book is organized around ten thematic areas, all of which can be seen as variations on the notion of cultural identity: the influence of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is marked. The firsttwo chapters explore issues of Spanish nationhood in the light of Spain's historic relationships with both Latin America and Europe, leading into a discussion (Chapters 3 and 4) ofvarious local nationalisms within the peninsula. This, inevitably, addresses the issue of multilingualism, but also draws interestingly MLR, 98.4, 2003 1019 on research in cross-cultural pragmatics to explore some of the differences between English and Spanish speakers in the areas of courtesy, argumentation, and non-verbal communication. Chapter 5,' Icons and Archetypes', considers the perennial relevance of figures such as El Cid, Celestina, Teresa ofAvila, Don Quijote, and Don Juan. The changing gender relationships, sexual mores, and attitudes towards marriage which have developed in the last three decades are analysed in Chapter 6. Attitudes to? wards wealth, including the easy-going culture of corruption in contemporary Spain, education, religion, and attitudes...