The Companion to Hispanic Studies by Catherine Davies (review)

Abstract

228 Reviews a case in point. In Spain, the old distinction between modernismoand noventayochismo has increasingly broken down, the latter being collapsed into the former and both being nowadays associated more and more with Modernism in the European and Anglo-Saxon sense of the word. Mary Lee Bretz's new book illustrates the process. Dismissing the notion of a Generation of 1898 as a product of Francoist criticism and ignoring attempts to define modernismo as a parallel but separate movement, she gathers under one critical umbrella practically all the writers active in the forty-year span her book covers and analyses the content of their major works on relatively new principles (for Spanish literature anyway) chieflyborrowed, as her bibliography shows, from recent non-Spanish discussions of Modernism and Modernity. The result avoids not only the distinction mentioned above, but also others, e.g. between late realism and the literature of the fin de siglo or between more and less canonical writers. Thus the late Galdos, Pardo Bazan, and to some extent Clarin, Palacio Valdes, Valera, and others appear as 'transitional or fully modernist writers' (p. 24), while at the same time Concha Espina, Dicenta, Blasco Ibanez, Carmen de Burgos, D'Ors, Pompeyo Gener, Llanas Aguilaniedo, the Martinez Sierras, Picon, and sundry others figure alongside Unamuno, Jimenez, Baroja, the Machados, Perez de Ayala, Ortega, Valle-Inclan, and the like. Ganivet is there, but oddly enough there is no reference to Pio Cid, despite its obvious importance. Bretz's aim is to assemble these authors, representative as they are of 'intricate, tangled forces that enter into play and evolve over time' (p. 69), and tease out a series of thematic strands in their work. These form a basis for 'a dialogic exchange between Spanish modernism and other national modernisms' (p. 20). What emerges is a series of standpoints for viewing the content of the work of the writers in question which tend to differfrom those we are used to. They are much nearer to those which we often think of as relevant to Modernist writers outside Spain. They include, forexample, a reconceptualization of time, the sense of a multifaceted, unstable, physical world, the notion of new modes of viewing reality,the development of new patterns of literary discourse, a differentview of gender relationships, lack of confidence in the stability ofthe self,doubts about truth statements in literary works, and the creation of new relationships between author, text, and reader. It seems extremely likely that approaches to the period of this kind are destined to elbow aside older ways of looking at the thematics of the writers Bretz deals with. Terms like casticismo, abulia, spiritual malaise, aestheticism vs. preoccupation with the national problem, europeizacion, and similar critical expressions inherited from the middle of the last century appear to be fading out of our vocabulary. The texts have not changed, but the questions critics are asking about them have. If the result is the replacement of older terms with newer ones which bring criticism offin de siglo and early twentieth-century Spanish literature more into line with evolving patterns of critical thought in the rest of Europe and in North America, I, for one, despite belonging to the Old Guard of critics of the '98, am not sorry to see the shift come about. University of Virginia, Charlottesville Donald Shaw The Companion to Hispanic Studies. Ed. by Catherine Davies. London: Arnold. 2002. viii+i98pp. ?14.99. ISBN 0-340-7629-8 (pbk). With the removal of languages from the core curriculum in schools, and the general public indifference towards learning about the languages and cultures of other coun? tries, anything which encourages engagement with other cultures is to be welcomed, and this volume is no exception. Catherine Davies' introduction states that 'the book 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...