Bienal De Research Articles

Insights into the Maya Blue Technology: Greenish Pellets from the Ancient City of La Blanca

Financial support is gratefully acknowledged from the MEC Projects CTQ2011-28079-CO3-01 and 02 which are also supported with ERDF funds. Research was conducted within the Grupo de anlisis cientifico de bienes culturales y patrimoniales y estudios de ciencia de la conservacion Microcluster of the University of Valencia Excellence Campus. The authors would like to thank Dr. Isabel Solana (SCSIE, UV), Dr. Jose Luis Moya Lopez, and Manuel Planes Insausti (Microscopy Service UPV) for their technical support.

Better is the enemy of good: Not the right approach for ablation of accessory pathways

Originally attributed to the French writer and philosopher Voltaire in 1772, the aphorism stated in the title has been quoted to generations of medical students, residents, and junior attending physicians. While the French version “Le mieux est l’ennemi la begueule de bien” sounds rather elegant, the New York version “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is somewhat less refined. This viewpoint can be considered practical wisdom or conversely a rallying cry for mediocrity. During the past decade, based on available literature and curriculum at scientific sessions, it appears that this philosophy may have been adopted by cardiac electrophysiologists with respect to the catheter ablation of accessory pathways. The safety and efficacy of radiofrequency catheter ablation of accessory pathways, particularly at major centers, have been commendable since its introduction. The initial riteria for determining successful sites for accessory pathay ablation were identified during surgical cryoablation nd catheter ablation utilizing DC current, establishing the oundation for future approaches. The introduction of transcatheter radiofrequency energy for arrhythmia ablation resulted in a smaller, more defined lesion delivered to the myocardium While this decreased the morbidity associated with accessory pathway ablation, it required more precise mapping in order to achieve a successful lesion. In the early 1990s, there was significant interest in identifying electrogram criteria for successful radiofrequency ablation of accessory pathways in the adult and pediatric populations. Interest in determining additional criteria or utilizing techniques to further assess electrograms for successful ablation has waned since the initial flurry of manuscripts. More recent attention regarding accessory pathway ablation has focused on challenging anatomic locations, including utilizing right coronary electroanatomic mapping for right freewall pathways and case reports of accessory pathway ablation from an epicardial or aortic sinus location. The progress that has been made with respect to catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation has redistributed the procedural case mix seen by the majority of internal medicine trained

El Frente Amplio Progresista

<p>El Frente Amplio Progresista conformado por el Partido de la Revolución Democrática, el Partido del Trabajo y Convergencia, fue la salida institucional y legislativa de estos tres partidos para la LX Legislatura (2006-2009), para dar continuidad al Proyecto Alternativo de Nación propuesto por Andrés Manuel López Obrador y la coalición Por el Bien de Todos durante el proceso electoral de 2006.</p>

Cadalso's Cartas marruecas and Questions of Identity, Modernity, and Heroism

At the heart of José de Cadalso's Cartas marruecas lie questions of personal, social, cultural, and national identity, which the author explores through the central notion of the hombre de bien. In this paper, I consider the nature of the notions of identity that are questioned and constructed in the Cartas marruecas and discuss the extent to which they reveal to us an author who demonstrates what Foucault terms a 'consciousness of modernity' and an heroic attitude to the challenges of his time.

Influence of physical attributes on the price of land: the case of the Province of Talca, Chile

J.L. Troncoso, M. Aguirre, P. Manriquez, V. Labarra, and Y. Ormazabal. 2010. The influence of physical attributes on the price of land: the case of the province of Talca, Chile. Cien. Inv. Agr. 37(3): 105-112. This study aims at estimating the percent impact on the price of farmland of the following physical attributes: size, soil quality, water rights, connectivity and location. To this effect, all the farm sales occurred in the province of Talca between 2003 and 2006 were examined, directly from the corresponding title deeds, at the Conservador de Bienes Raices (Property Register) of Talca, obtaining thus a total of 92 observations. Subsequently, a linear function was estimated, with price per hectare as the dependent variable and the physical attributes listed above, as explanatory variables. Analysis showed that the most influential variable is location (i.e. county) and in a very minor degree, connectivity (i.e. distance to the nearest paved road), water rights, soil quality and size. Talca is the preferred county, as location in other counties has negative impacts on price. Size and connectivity have negative impacts, while water rights and soil quality have positive impacts on price.

Luxurious Dump: Wasted Buildings and the Landscape of Pure Suspension

The Costanera Center building in the financial district of Santiago sat half-finished for months, exposing concrete and reinforcement bars contrasting with the glass-faced skyscrapers surrounding it; a banner a the site read “Icon of Latin American development”. Once a symbol of Chile soaring copper driven economy, the stalled project became an emblem of its decline after work ground to a halt last year on what would be South America’s tallest building. Conditions of labour also deteriorated as this particular project started to crumble, and workers saw how their salaries – tied to timings and targets – were put at risk and their labour was literally wasted. This essay approaches the idea of the wasteland by looking at how this and other buildings in Chile have formed dumping grounds not of traditional waste but of half-finished structures, temporarily (or even permanently) useless forms of architecture; as dumping grounds, they have become void spaces within the city, places that people surround but not cross through, yet, paradoxically, they are very luxurious in terms of money spent and soil prices. The essay will approach the project reworking some of the ideas proposed by the artist Robert Smithson in his influential 1960s writings about the industrial wasteland of New Jersey; opposing the Romantic view of ruins, the artist proposes that these waste spaces do not fall into decay but rather rise into ruin before they are built; they are, he argues, ruins in reverse. Interestingly, Smithson links these spaces with his ideas about erosion, entropy and nature-made disasters, which also come together in the case of Chile and the devastation of its recent earthquake, a disaster that deepened the suspended state of some of its buildings. These constructions remain in a semi-permanent state of suspension, as a terrain of potentiality that could be, or not.

The Bienal de Säo Paulo: Unseen/Undone (1969—1981)

As Vilem Flusser put it in 1969, the Bienal de Sao Paulo is a stubborn fact.Its recurrence since the first edition in 1951 lends it a semblance of perpetuity, and it is now a cultural event that might be described in terms of 'always' - as in: 'Sao Paulo's biennale has always been intended to indicate Brazil's competent modernism to an international clientele, and to energise local developments by injections of the international.' However, underlying this stubborn fact is a series of structurally discontinuous exhibitions, particularly during the 1970s, after the boycott of the 10th edition in 1969, and in the context of Emilio Garrastazu Medici's military government (1969-74), which brought with it an acceleration of repressive means of state control such as censorship, arbitrary arrest and torture. The boycott was supported by prominent Brazilian artists and writers, and gained solidarity in Europe and later in the USA. By 1971 the boycott had successfully appropriated the exhibition's international prestige, or, rather, participating in the Bienal, co-sponsored by Brazil's right-wing military regime, had come to be seen as a dubious ambition for any politically engaged artist. The boycotted Bienal remains a landmark within the event's history. But by the mid- 1970s the once focused, artist-led boycott lost much of its attention and participation. The five editions that followed received little coverage in the international press, and their history hasn't been widely examined. As a consequence of this lapse in critical attention, the 16th edition of 1981, which was curated by Walter Zanini and received remarkable critical attention, may seem to have sprung ex nihilo, without relation to what took place in the decade preceding it.

Primera Bienal de Arquitectura Latinoamericana en Pamplona

The first Bienal de Arquitectura Latinoamericana (BAL) took place in Pamplona in May 2009. It is a new young event promoted by the AS20 research team that aims to show in Spain the most recent and outstanding work of young latin american architects. For the first edition, the selected teams were: Tristan Dieguez and Axel Fridman; Sebastian Adamo and Marcelo Faiden; Nicolas Campodonico; FGMF Fernando Forte, Lourenco Gimenes and Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz; Carla Juacaba; Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen; Grupo Talca –Macarena Avila, Cecilia Cullen, Martin del Solar, Alejandra Liebana and Rodrigo Sheward; El Cielo –Armando Hashimoto and Surella Segu; Pablo Perez Palacios and Alfonso de la Concha; Juan Manuel Pelaez Freidel; Camilo Restrepo; Felipe Mesa; Marcelo and Martin Gualano; Gonzalo Diez Ponce and Felipe Muller.

Visions, Valves, and Vestiges: The Curdled Victories of the Bienal de La Habana

The Bienal de La Habana, started in 1984 as the direct result of one of Fidel Castro's legendary brainstorms, was inaugurated under the banner of Cuba's forceful idealism and anti-imperialism. The Bienal has stalwartly advocated the need for a forum outside the mainstream in which local discourses and aesthetics can grow. It has told a story that differs from the stories told by international exhibitions elsewhere in the world. It has served as antidote to the homogenizing forces of the marketplace, while presenting a potential model for an alternate practice. As the only biennial operated by an avowedly socialist country, it has stood for anticommercialism and solidarity among artists. The Havana biennial, in short, is in a class by itself, and it has quickly acquired a certain cachet for its clarity of vision and for having been there first. The Bienal is now at an interesting point in its development, reflective not only of conditions particular to Cuba and Cuban art but also symptomatic of broader dynamics in the global art system and the institution of biennials. If it is true, as some writers have recently asserted, that the era of the grand international exhibitions has crested, then Havana stands as an important and fascinating case study in this history.

Towards a threshold aesthetic of the trickster: Reconsidering curatorial strategies from Documenta 11

Criticised for a commitment to social engagement, rather than aesthetics, the exhibition of Documenta 11 was nonetheless informed by what could be termed a threshold aesthetic. The aesthetic orientations of Documenta 11 are considered a form of adversarial trickster—positioning, possibly creating openings for transgressive art practices. As master of the threshold, the duplicitous trickster seeks out and creates boundaries, since borderlands are the site of ambiguities, opposition and crossings. The potential for disruption is discussed in terms of revolutionary negation or opposition from within the system. Documenta 11 is regarded as an example of the latter kind of trickster in the transnational exhibition circuit by heightening awareness of complexity and multiplicity, including trickster-style artworks that show up the complexities of localised and transcultural production, and undermining global market dynamics by favouring artworks and production strategies that resist commodification—particularly collective and collaborative practices. Making an argument for an adversarial agenda grounded in agonism, the varied post-colonial counter-positionalities of Documenta 11 are contrasted with the single oppositional strategy of anthropophagy employed in the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo (1998). Further adversarial strategies re-examined by Documenta 11, particularly Third Cinema, are explored as guiding an interstitial aesthetic of thirdness, of in-betweenness and resistance.

Echo -ing the Spirit of the Times: A Polish Canadian Youth Experiment in the 1970s

The First National Polish Canadian Youth Convention was held in October, 1969, at York University in Toronto. A major result of this meeting was the creation of Echo as a socio-cultural “Canadian Publication of Polish Youth,” which debuted in February, 1970, and lasted until 1975. This paper argues that the historical context of the 1970s is crucial for understanding the generational differences amongst Polish Canadians at the time, questions of identity for the second generation, and the creation, success, and demise of Echo magazine. The staff and content of Echo were in many ways more Canadian than Polish or Polish Canadian because Canadian society was experiencing youth consciousness and ethnic consciousness simultaneously. This context stimulated Polish Canadian youth to create their own voice that was not necessarily deferential to authority in the Polish Canadian community. These youth were not affected by the society around them in the same way as non-ethnic middle-class Canadian youth. Nonetheless, Echo was a successful forum for young Polish Canadians across Canada to debate the meaning of Polish Canadianness and discover themselves in a 1970s context of greater ethnic activism and changing social attitudes. La première convention nationale de la jeunesse canado-polonaise a eu lieu en octobre 1969 à l’Université de York à Toronto. Une des initiatives les plus importantes de cette réunion fut la création d’ Echo, une «revue canadienne de la jeunesse polonaise» à vocation socio-culturelle, qui parut de 1970 à 1975. Dans cet article, nous considérons que le contexte historique des années 1970 joue un rôle crucial pour comprendre les différences générationnelles chez les Canadiens d’origine polonaise de cette époque-là, les problèmes d’identité de la deuxième génération, ainsi que la création, le succès et la disparition de la revue Echo . Étant donné que la société canadienne faisait l’expérience d’une prise de conscience à la fois de la jeunesse et de l’ethnicité, le personnel d’ Echo fut de bien des manières plus canadien que polonais ou canado-polonais, ce qui orienta le contenu de la revue. Ce contexte historique a stimulé les Canadiens polonais à chercher une voix qui leur serait propre et qui ne se montra pas forcément déférente envers l’autorité au sein de la communauté canado-polonaise. La société dans laquelle ces jeunes vivaient ne les toucha pas de la même façon que leurs contemporains canadiens de classe moyenne non-ethnique. Quoiqu’il en soit, pour eux Echo fut un succès d’un bout à l’autre du Canada en tant que forum où ils purent débattre du sens d’une appartenance canadienne polonaise et se découvrir eux-même dans le contexte de l’activisme accru et des attitudes sociales en mutation des années 1970.

The economic impact of visceral leishmaniasis on households in Bangladesh

To explore current patterns of diagnosis and treatment, quantify household economic impact and identify household strategies to cover the costs of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) care in rural Bangladesh. Structured interviews with 113 VL patients from 87 households documenting all provider visits and expenditures for health care for VL, and the ways in which the expenditures were covered. Patients paid a median of 7 visits to six different providers before beginning VL treatment. All visited the subdistrict government hospital at least once. While health care, including antileishmanial drug therapy, is officially available free of charge at government facilities, 79% of patients reported making informal payments for provider access, diagnostics and drug administration; only 14% of patients received their full drug course from this source. For the 58% of patients who purchased the full treatment course, drug cost constituted 34% of direct expenditure. Median direct expenditure for one VL patient was US$87 and median income lost was $40; median total expenditure was 1.2 times annual per capita income of our study population. Households employed multiple coping strategies to cover expenditures, most commonly sale or rental of assets (62%) and taking out loans (64%). Visceral leishmaniasis treatment causes a major economic burden in affected families. Control strategies for VL should facilitate timely, affordable diagnosis and treatment of patients to decrease the infection reservoir and to alleviate the economic burden of VL on households.

The Resurgence of Anthropophagy

The recent focus on anthropophagic trends in art, following the theme of the XXIV Bienal de Sao Paulo in 1998, heralds nothing new in Brazil.1 Over the years, the Brazilian audience has been subjec...

Creating Democracy: A Dialogue with KrzysztofWodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko was born in Warsaw, Poland, and studied industrial design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. His work involves the investigation of strategies of communication in the public sphere. His projects have been exhibited at the Bienal de São Paulo (1965, 1967, 1985), Documenta (1977, 1987), the Venice Biennale (1986,2000), and the Whitney Biennial (2000). In 1998, he was awarded the Hiroshima Peace Prize. He is head of the Interrogative Design Group and director of ACT, the center for Art, Culture, and Technology, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Positive findings for laser use in cleaning cellulosic supports

The purpose of this work is to continue with the research task carried out by the Centro de Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales on the study of laser effects in the cleaning of stone-like materials. In this paper, we want to show the first steps that have been taken in the study of Q-switched Nd:YAG laser effects ( λ = 1064 nm, FWHM = 6 ns) on cellulosic supports. The experiments were carried out on samples directly exposed to laser radiation and on samples covered with an artificial layer of dirt (carbon black and ash). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) shows a migration of fillers toward the surface when laser fluency is increased. This effect is more pronounced on mechanical woodpulp paper. Color change is only appreciable on samples covered with carbon black. Fourier’s transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) shows paper oxidation in two cases: on rag paper when it is directly exposed to laser radiation and on chemical pulp paper artificially soiled using carbon black (due to the iron and copper cationic additives and the optic bleaches found in the chemical pulp paper). The conclusion can be drawn that the results are satisfactory for rag paper and mechanical woodpulp paper with a layer of dirt similar to real dirt (ash) when using the collimated beam at fluencies equal to 79 mJ cm –2.

‘Choose Your Weapon’: Duelling French Women in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

In the introduction to his study on duelling in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries published in the late 1980s, Franyois Billacois maintains that it is an attempt to analyse the duration of the practice of duelling as a resistance to official norms, especially a 'resistance qui tient en echec [ ... ] et la contrainte et la propagande, ces deux armes de l'autorite centrale.' Duelling, he argues, was a symbolic way for noble male protagonists to deny the absolute authority of the king. The beheading of two high-ranking duellists (Bouteville and Des Chapelles) in 1627 can be seen as the symbolic royal answer to this challenge, a ritual murder necessary for the birth of absolutism. These decapitations did not, however, spell the end of this barbaric custom; although the courts continued doggedly to pursue duelling, and the moralists repeatedly to rile against the practice, the duellists themselves were hardly ever punished. Moreover, based on the documents he has studied, Billacois asserts that in the first half of the seventeenth century we must accept this as true from his point of view also as regards the eighteenth century, it being for him a dull echo of the preceding one '[ ... ] un homme ne se bat pas contre une femme.' 'Et les femmes' he observes 'ne se battent pas entre elles.' He concludes, 'Sauf exception anecdotique qui ne fait que confirmer la regIe, Ie sexe fort a Ie monopole du jugement des armes. Meme (et surtout!) si des femmes sont la cause de bien des rencontres'.l Yet, women did engage in duels. The evidence, anecdotal in some cases and historical in others, is there. In fact, duelling women offered a challenge similar to that of their male counterparts. By co-opting a mechanism so highly male-coded, women put themselves beyond male authority and society's law as defined by men. Male reaction to female duellists, if not as drastic as that of the centralised authority, is surely symbolic of the disapproval or disdain men feel whenever women assume practices men consider as belonging only to themselves.

Affirmation of the Curatorial Class

The Seventh Havana Biennial (Septima Bienal de la Habana) Havana, Cuba November 14, 2000-January 5, 2001 November 17, 2000, arrival, Central Havana At first sight, the city appears to be an enormous film noir set. Streets are filled with a still functioning fleet of pre-revolution-era Ford and Chevy motorcars that mingle with water trucks and orange pedicabs. Men, women and children spill over broken sidewalks in between picturesque colonial architecture collapsing at a rate of almost one building per day. This leaves a maze of jagged pastel walls and shadowy apertures. Despite all the apparent poverty and physical decay, the Cubans I meet are well educated and robust looking. Compared to other third-world nations I have visited, it is clear that the revolution succeeded in raising most people's living standards. Many also immediately nail down where I am from, leading some individuals to offer me black market cigars and other goods. Nevertheless, I am impressed by the civility of Havana and its residents as well the city's urban vitality, all qualities that are rapidly receding from public spaces in the United States. This in turn makes some of th e observations that follow all the more disconsolate. November 18, the opening of the exhibitions at Castle El Morro and Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana In a city where North American visitors otherwise appear only in diluted concentrations, we join ranks with several swelling battalions of art tourists unloading like occupation troops from buses and cabs onto the bluff overlooking downtown Havana. Armed with palm-sized digital cameras and hygienic water bottles, most have, for this occasion, forgone heat-trapping black on black for cotton attire that exposes un-tanned legs and necks to the tropical glare. Many wear oversized white t-shirts. Some are imprinted with candy-colored portraits of Che rendered in a 1960's, retro Cuban poster style. Perhaps it is inevitable that 40 years after the revolution, Cuba markets the iconography of what is the last Marxist-Leninist government in the western hemisphere. After all, dealing in the revolution is already an enterprise of Madison Avenue. Perhaps filmmaker and scholar Jeffrey Skoller put it best when he stated that Guevara and the Cuban Revolution have become upscale icons for the aging boomer market. [1 ] No doubt Gap Jeans and Taco Bell ads along with cigar bars and Salsa music have helped to make this forbidden island if not exactly radically chic, then at least cut-rate exotic. Skoller goes so far as to ask whether revolutionary iconography itself has become so much cultural baggage, exhausted, now simply nostalgic, preventing the present from rethinking the past critically and imagining the future in new and original ways? [2] Meanwhile, like a winding sheet, the still lingering shiver of cold-war politics envelopes Havana in a singular allure, especially vibrant to people who recall the 1960's Missile Crisis, or grew up watching James Bond movies. Meanwhile, to those of us with obsolescent socialist sentiments, Skoller's haunting appraisal is difficult to shake, especially when confronted with the paradoxes that make up contemporary Cuban life and culture. Yet perhaps more than any other kind of strangeness was the way this beautiful, struggling city managed on this occasion to again play a significant role within the international art world. At the same time it became one more occasion for the affirmation of the curatorial class: that transnational detachment of specialized professionals who manage the global spectacle called contemporary art. Perhaps this is the context in which those exhausted signifiers that Skoller alludes to seemed most in play. While there is still something different about the Bienal de Ia Habana when compared to other global art festivals--more artists of color from the southern hemisphere are represented--the same aura of exotica provides a particular status within the larger cultural tourist landscape. …

A proposal of protection for a very fragile heritage: Rock art sites in Andalusia

The character of the assignment is explained, followed by the results of the work undertaken by the Direccion General de Bienes Culturales of the Consejeria de Cultura of the Junta de Andalucia, with the aim of gauging the pos sible risks of degradation to rock art sites in the Termino Municipal of Jaen.

Diego de San Pedro From Manuscript to Print: The Curious Case of "La pasión trobada", "Las siete angustias", and Arnalte y Lucenda

DIEGO DE SAN PEDRO FROM MANUSCRIPT TO PRINT: THE CURIOUS CASE OF "LA PASIÓN TROBADA", "LAS SIETE ANGUSTIAS", AND ARNALTE YLUCENDA Dororthy S. Severin University of Liverpool The manuscript and printing history of Diego de San Pedro's "La pasión trobada" (= LPT) is one of the most interesting cases of the role of printing in the transformation of a manuscript text. The longer version of ZfZsurvives only in one manuscript witness, in the Cancionero de Oñate (HHl), which was the Ur-text of the Isabelline propaganda cancioneros (discounting another manuscript, MLl, which is a copy of the first printed text, 95VC) . ' A shorter version was adapted for printing and the ending was abridged and rewritten, perhaps because of the exigencies of the printed length, although this is not an entirely satisfactory explanation. The text was further cannibalised by the author and a "Siete Angustias de Nuestra Señora" poem was separately written (and possibly circulated in manuscript) , to be printed both within the text of the Tratado de amores deArnalteyLucenda (MN53, printed 1491), and as a separate poem (95VC, 13SA ) . Ofcourse the processjust might have been the other way around; the "Angustias" having proved popular in court, Diego de San Pedro might have decided to expand to a full Passion poem. The manuscript witness for the shorter poem exists only in an eighteenth-century copy (MN 19, ID 2895, Pero Guillen, no. 92), so ' See my edition ?? LPT. For Diego de San Pedro, Whinnom's three-volume Obras completas remains the authority (I, Arnalte, 1973 , II, Cárcel, 1971, III, poetry, ed. with me, 1979). Bibliographical information and siglascome from Brian Dutton's shorter version ofhis massive cancioneroindex, Catálogo-índice delapoesía cancionerildelsiglo XV. La corónica 29.1 (Fall, 2000): 187-191 188DororthyS. SeverinLa corónica 29.1, 2000 thejury is still out. Here he is listed as "San Pedro, criado del conde de Urueña", therefore he was not yet well-known. Finally, a good quantity ofthe textwas 'borrowed' by Alonso del Campo for his Auto dela Pasión, which survives in manuscript at Toledo cathedral (TCl), and was produced as a play not only in Toledo but elsewhere. And the printed text of LPTwas one of the most durable and best-selling Spanish chapbooks until the nineteenth century. 2 Diego de San Pedro's vivid and simply-told version of the Passion has all the ingredients which would give it mass appeal to a popular audience . Despite the original attribution to one 'Pedro de San Pedro' in the Oñate, it is undoubtedly by his hand, as the duplication ofverses in the "Angustias" demonstrates. More puzzling is the decision to scrap the original ending entirely (sts. 208-266) and to rewrite stanzas 208-236 of the manuscript text. Out goes the final scene of the gathering of the disciples at Mary's house after the Passion, but the crucifixion is also rewritten from the halfway point of Mary's lamentations at the foot of the Cross (but not the verses duplicated in the Arnalte, which might at least seem logical). The augmented lamentations of the Virgin, the "Siete Angustias", was considered a good choice for inclusion in the Arnalte as a balancing companion-piece to a panegyric to Isabel. There is littie mystery here; Diego de San Pedro had a definite interest in ingratiating himself with the new regime as he was a vassal of the disgraced Girón family. The implied comparison to the Virgin was discreet enough not to be offensive. He eschews all courtiy verse except the leitmotiv "este es la triste morada / del que muere / porque muerte no le quiere", a choice which is also followed in the Cárcel de Amor (1492), which has no courdy verse, and despite his reputation for difficult conceptista poetry which was still viable in Gracián's day, when the later writer praised "El mayor bien de quereros" in the Agudeza y arte de ingenio. 3 This is more evidence of my thesis, stated elsewhere, that courdy verse had fallen badly from favour in the 1480s and 1490s and was scarcely printed at this time. Diego de San Pedro was, however, always...

Literature at War, 1914-1940: Representing the "Time of Greatness" in Germany (review)

Book Reviews le Maghreb. Les voix que nous entendons dans Fugues de Barbarie sont avant tout celles du Maghreb, bien que Breton fasse tout de même de nombreuses incursions dans le texte. Il est difficile de se passer de lui, même quand on cherche à le démystifier. Malgré son originalité, le volume (et les lecteurs!) aurait sans aucun doute bénéficié d'un travail editorial plus soigné. Certaines imprécisions de style, de format et d'organisation (souschapitres du chapitre trois par exemple), et des analyses à certains moments un peu rapides rendent la lecture quelque peu "hasardeuse". Mais le hasard est la mère de bien des découvertes. Ce n'est pas Breton qui contredirait l'auteur de Fugues de Barbarie. Martine Guyot-Bender Hamilton College Wolfgang G. Natter. Literature at War, 1914-1940: Representing the "Time of Greatness" in Germany . New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. Pp. 280. $35. German "war literature" of 1914-1918, according to Wolfgang Natter, was "almost exclusively a male genre" whose legitimacy was spatially defined. The conflation of "war" with the combat zone, and therefore with men, is a familiar premise. It has been contested by feminist critics who argue that the world war constituted a vast economy, and who reassess the concept of authenticity used to exclude women's writings from the canon. Thus convention long depicted the occupiers of a war zone as engaged in "combat," but excluded from consideration the occupied, the civilian inhabitants subjected to physical and economic violence. Natter presents the German case in a way suggestive for the evolution of German thought and literary developments in the twenties and thirties, and for our understanding of wartime literary production in general. It is the great merit of Natter's study that he brings together archival evidence about the military control of textual production and dissemination, along with unpublished publishers' records about the selection and censorship of writings about the war. By examining the collaboration of the state with publishing houses and the military in forging a unified national spirit, he shows that war literature is not the "unmediated expression of any given author's 'experience ' of the war." Rather, he underscores the institutional dimension of authorship. Despite claims to represent actual front experience through the voices of combatants (and dead heroes were even more marketable than live ones), the literature of the war in Germany, as elsewhere, was framed by the legacy of Homer, Greek pastoral elegy, the Bible, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and long-forgotten writers. German war literature followed paradigms set before the war by second-rate writers such as Walter Bloem and Thea von Harbou, whose national BiIdungsroman aimed to create a unified state through images of comradeship at the front and of soldiers ' idealistic self-sacrifice for the larger whole. Tacit in this literature (explicit after 1918) was an anti-republican, anti-civilian ideology that opposed deeds to words and army to parliament, and that located the enemy not beyond the Rhine or Urals but at home. The military, publishing houses, academics, and leaders of the popular-instruction movement all agreed that they faced a Kulturkrieg: not only a war of German culture against a materialist (French) model of civilization, but a propaganda war to be waged through the Word. Thus the pseudonymous Cincinnatus proclaimed in 1916, "More than any other conflict hitherto, this is a war of words and with words, a war which is about the power of words." From the outset of the war, the state of siege permitted censorship of violence, despair, or any critique of strategy, as well as a "conscious strategy of deception" that perpetuated, e.g., the heroic myth of Langemarck (where soldiers were slaughtered by friendly fire). When Ludendorff and Hindenburg came to power in 1915, they instituted a proactive Vaterländische Unterricht (Patriotic Instruction) system on the home front and at the battle front. They set up military centers for the collection of news reports and distribution of communications, took control of soldiers ' newspapers, created libraries and bookstores at the front in collaboration with selected pubVol . XL, No. 2 103 L'Esprit Créateur lishers, and thoroughly censored all publication until October 15, 1918. A...