El Libro De Research Articles

Responding to Neruda's Book of Questions 17, and: Responding to Neruda's Book of Questions 18, and: Dunethin Rock, Maroochydore

Responding to Neruda's Book of Questions 17, and: Responding to Neruda's Book of Questions 18, and: Dunethin Rock, Maroochydore Roger Callen (bio) Responding to Neruda's Book of Questions 17 1 "Have you realized that autumnis like a yellow cow"the sun doesn't discriminatebetween bovine creatures and pastoral seasonsshines on all, just the same a white ox disappears in winter snow snowballs roll through the skygathering rime:all the animals beg for more 2 in autumn people chew the fat off their livesleaving honed bone & snow on bare treesyellow cows stand silently in the slaughter yardtheir blue throats exposed to winterhoping for the transparent monarchy of Spring [End Page 150] Responding to Neruda's Book of Questions 18 grape clusters those who hang togetherhave a common purposepick the one who knowshow to mature a succulent raisin grapes crushed by trampling feetwere an oblation to the party lineunderwrote its sugareach knows its stemis fed by the vine's propaganda ripeness of raisins and wineis as elusive as the revolutionary moment picking is harder for the reluctantphilanthropist Dunethin Rock, Maroochydore white birds perch on the writhing silence of the river they surround the rock but hide their dark spoons their long knotted legs seem to stretchdeep into the mud wings and necksembrace the water's oscillating rind [End Page 151] a flight and a roostfor Dunethin's enigma quiet heaviness breaks from the forestspills into butterflies and birdsfrom bald rootsmagnetic recollections we walk where paperbarks and mangroves minglewatch a fish slide through the limpid surfaceplop backto water's shadows and slow tides we are reluctant to leave the seamswhere life has been placed [End Page 152] Roger Callen Roger Callen studied geology and anthropology in Adelaide and worked in the deserts of central Australia as geologist and archaeological assistant. He now lives in the Sunshine Coast District, Queensland, writes mainly poems and produces artworks on paper. His poems are published in Famous Reporter, Polestar, and Cordite. He recently won the Bauhinia Literary Awards Open Poetry Section. Footnotes Note: The quotation is from Pablo Neruda's El libro de las preguntas, translated by William O'Daly and published by Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend WA) in2001. Copyright © 2011 University of Nebraska Press

El libro de cocina: un estudio teórico-descriptivo de El Libro de Doña Petrona

When concerning cookbooks, it is to note that genre studies have often considered the material for folklore studies, anthropology and history, and not as objects themselves. The best known example is The Raw and the Cooked , Levi-Strauss. It is yet necessary a linguistic approach to give account of the nature of the various genres used in the transmission and teaching of culinary practices in different societies and cultures. In this work we will take some contributions made by the textual linguistics studies to explore the nature of the 'cookbook' as distinct from the 'recipe'. To do so, we have chosen a paradigmatic work in the Argentine cookery as it is El libro de Dona Petrona .

Poetry: Five Poems

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsReina María RodríguezReina María Rodríguez (Havana, 1952) is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including: En la arena de Padua (1991; On the Sands of Padua); La foto del invernadero (1998, Casa de las Américas prize; The Winter Garden Photograph, forthcoming), Otras cartas a Milena (2004; Other Letters to Milena), and Tres maneras de tocar un elefante (2004; Three Ways to Touch an Elephant). Her work has been translated into many languages, and in 1999 she was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. The following poems are from El libro de las clientas (2005), Catch and Release (2006), and Poemas de Navidad (forthcoming)

The Laughter of the Saints: Parodies of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (review)

GILES, RYAN D. The Laughter of the Saints: Parodies of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2009. 197 pp.In the twenty-second book of The City of God, Saint Augustine dedicates a section to the eternal happiness of the saints. He speculates that they keep an intellectual remembrance of past ills and sins while being protected from them in sensible experience. The view of the physical expression of happiness is shattered in many hagiographie narratives and its variations in medieval literary tradition where figures cloaked in sanctity are represented and reinvented through the expression of a risus paschalis, which, as Mikhail Bakhtin explains in his text Rabelais and His World, operates in the form of a licensed yet apparently transgressive laughter. There is a marked difference between expressions of happiness and laughter, and the saint is not a literary or religious figure traditionally associated with laughter.However, Ryan D. Giles in his book The Laughter of the Saints productively traces the ways in which the medieval and early modern secular literature of Iberia reappropriates the figures of saints through the strategy of comical inversions. Throughout the five chapters that comprise this book, the author interprets the manifestation of this strategy as a tradition that ranges from Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora and other hagiographie works to Don Quixote. Along the way, the book makes productive stops to read passages and fundamental aspects from El libro de buen amor, El Lazarillo de Tormes, Carajicomedia, La Celestina, La lozana andaluza, and Guzman de Alfarache.According to the text, in the tradition of the comic inversion of the saints, they are not the ones who do the laughing; rather, they are transformed into ambiguous sources of laughter. The comic inversion of the saints and their narratives produces an ambiguous attitude toward the sacred, thus rendering the clear-cut distinction between the sacred and the profane flexible and porous. In order to approach the humorous «interpretation of the saints, Giles turns his attention to the notion of the antisaint: a term first used by modern scholars in the context of legends featuring a double who falsely mimics a bona fide holy man or woman, in keeping with the contrast between the divine miracles of St Peter and the demonic magic of Simon Magus, or the Antichrist's apocalyptic impersonation of Christ (13). Giles reformulates this definition of the antisaint by using it to designate the festive overlapping of the saint with his antitype that brings together images of piety and impiety, virtue and vice (13). This redefinition of the antisaint seems to conform to Bakhtin's notions and identification of strategies that belong to his notion of the carnivalesque.Interestingly, though, Giles distances his reading of comical inversion in hagiography from the tradition of Bakhtin's carnival. He chooses not to fully explore Bakhtin's medievalisms because he feels the concept is misleading and because the qualification of the and the is conflictive and contradictory according to some scholars (5-6). In contrast to his opinions, other scholars might read Bakhtin's views on the relationship between the official and the popular as less constrained by tension and disagreement; perhaps they might even be interpreted as impossible to separate, as Bakhtin's interpretation of the image of Janus suggests.At the same time, Giles revisits Julio Caro Baroja's folkloric study El carnaval, which serves as an interesting source of folkloric and ethnographic information on the forms of carnival in Spain. Giles's attention to Caro Baroja's text points to an interesting route of reflection that invites a comparative reading with Bakhtin's work as both scholars attempt to decipher the system ruling the notions and practices of carnival in different ways. Throughout the text, the celebration of carnival as a sometimes church-sponsored celebration, and its particular manifestations in Spain, provide information and guide the interpretation of some of the strategies of the comical inversion of the saints. …

El "Libro del linaje de los señores de Ayala" y otros textos genealógicos: Materiales para el estudio de la conciencia del linaje en la Baja Edad Media (review)

Reviewed by: El "Libro del linaje de los señores de Ayala" y otros textos genealógicos: Materiales para el estudio de la conciencia del linaje en la Baja Edad Media Nancy F. Marino Dacosta, Arsenio , ed. El "Libro del linaje de los señores de Ayala" y otros textos genealógicos: Materiales para el estudio de la conciencia del linaje en la Baja Edad Media. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 2007. 252 pp. ISBN: 978-84-8373-904-4 Arsenio Dacosta has brought together five genealogical texts pertaining to the Ayala family that were produced between the late fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries, with the intention of facilitating research on one of the most important Castilian lineages. These texts are: 1. El libro de los linajes de los señores de Ayala, which Fernán Pérez de Ayala, father of the Canciller, wrote in the first person in 1371. There are four extant manuscript witnesses, one in the Real Academia de la Historia (used as the basis for the present edition), two in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, and another in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Segments of the text were previously edited in support of biographies of Fernán López de Ayala. 2. Continuación del "Libro del linaje" y "Andanzas" de Fernán Pérez de Ayala, which is an apparently incomplete text that the Canciller produced between 1385 and 1407. It was written in the first person as well, and like its predecessor has been partially published in biographies. 3. Relación fidelíssima de las sucesiones del linage de Ayala, an anonymous and little-known text that was probably composed during the reign of Juan II of Castile. The sole extant copy seems to date from that era. The genealogist Luis Salazar y Castro included some of this text in his Pruebas de la historia de la casa de Lara (1694). 4. La generación y linage que descendió de don Fernán Pérez de Ayala, which was commissioned by the then head of the family, Garci López de Ayala, around 1470. It is clearly connected to the Relación fidelíssima but has never before been edited. 5. Genealogía de la Casa de Ayala en al año de mill y ciento y ocho [sic], an anonymous work that was compiled some time between 1605 and 1611. It is housed in the library of the Monastery of San Juan Bautista de Quejana (Álava), which the Canciller founded in 1378. It is edited here for the first time. The editions of these five important works have been meticulously executed. Dacosta facilitates the reading process by resolving abbreviations, adding punctuation and accents (where necessary), and moderately modernizing spelling, all without compromising the integrity of the original texts. He has also done a thorough job [End Page 247] of annotating the editions by identifying persons referred to, explaining events mentioned, defining legal or other specialized language, and making reference to items in the book's seventeen-page bibliography that will provide further information to the reader. Dacosta's preliminary study provides more than sufficient information to introduce the reader to issues concerning the Ayala family's strong desire to control their own story. These include a study of its foundation myths and the collective efforts of some family members to create and maintain prestige among rival aristocratic lineages. In this section, Dacosta discusses individual and collective uses of memory as well as its manipulation. The Ayalas were particularly adept at exploiting both facts and fancy in order to accentuate or obscure their participation in past and contemporaneous events. By emphasizing their marital ties to other members of the high aristocracy they sought to aggrandize themselves, providing information on their line of succession and its ties to other noble families. But the desire to control information also worked in an opposite manner: the Canciller himself attempted to conceal the fact that the Ayalas had their origins in the illustrious House of Haro, which he apparently believed diminished their singularity. In addition to the useful introductory study, the carefully edited texts and the bibliography, Dacosta has provided eighteen genealogical trees that clearly represent the...

El Libro de Recuerdos (Book of Memories): A Latina Student’s Exploration of Self and Religion in Public School

This article is an exploration of how an alternative text reflects the multiple identities of one high school Latina, focusing in particular on her religious identity. In this ethnographic case study, the author addresses three questions: 1) In what ways does literacy activity inside the school, in the form of the science scrapbook, allow for this student to construct her religious self inside as well as outside of school? 2) How is one student’s science club scrapbook a symbolic representation of the struggle between the spiritual and material worlds that she negotiates? and 3) How does this scrapbook challenge traditional notions of identity and highlight the complexity of presenting a religious self in the public domain? In describing one student’s engagement with religion via her scrapbook, the article argues for a more complex and nuanced view of religion, literacy, and identity.

The Justice of the Infidelity (La justicia de la infidelidad)

In this work, I analyze the Archpriest de Hita book El Libro de Buen Amor. I focus the analysis on the faithfulness in love. I based my argument in the chapter of what happened to Pitas Pajas a Britain painter.

Distant Wonders: The Strange and the Marvelous between Mughal India and Habsburg Iberia in the Early Seventeenth Century

The Book of Imaginary Beings, by the celebrated Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, appeared in 1969. This was the English translation of the revised and expanded second edition of an anthology of fantastical stories he had published two years before in association with Margarita Guerrero (El Libro de los seres imaginarios). According to the author, it was a “handbook of the strange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination,” a topic that was known to fascinate him. In fact, the success of Borges' work shows that such creatures appeared to hold as great a fascination for contemporary society as they had held over other societies many centuries before. Perhaps this brief evocation of Borges' interest in imaginary beings from other times and from all cultures—even if fantasies certainly do not hold an identical value in each historical period and the same significance in every culture—may help to demonstrate how mistaken it is to think that such ‘aberrations’ and ‘anomalies’ have entirely faded as ‘modernity’ has emerged. However, Borges did make it clear that the beings he was dealing with—whether the Indian elephant-headed god Ganesha or the monstrous Kujatha—were ‘imaginary,’ and he took care to distinguish them from other, let us say, ‘real’ entities. Such a clear demarcation has not always been feasible, and it is precisely the changing status of the ‘strange and marvelous’ that lies at the center of this essay.

What Every Noblewoman Needs to Know: Cultural Literacy in Late-Medieval Spain

Previous articleNext article No AccessWhat Every Noblewoman Needs to Know: Cultural Literacy in Late-Medieval SpainJulian WeissJulian Weiss Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 81, Number 4Oct., 2006 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713400004309 Views: 49Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 2006 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Catherine E. Léglu, Stephen J. Milner Introduction: Encountering Consolation, (Jan 2008): 1–18.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09741-5_1

Libro de los huéspedes (Escorial MS h.I.13): A Unified Work of Narrative and Image for Female Pilgrims

LIBRO DE LOS HUESPEDES (ESCORIAL MS h.1.13): A UNIFIED WORK OF NARRATIVE AND IMAGE FOR FEMALE PILGRIMS John K. Moore,Jr. University ofAlabama at Birmingham Thomas Spaccarelli University of the South In convents, churches, and elsewhere along the Camino de Santiago, women on pilgrimage in the Middle Ages would have encountered an instructive feast for the ears and eyes - music and sermons, sculptures and paintings. Part of this edification may have included listening to the narratives andviewing dieir corresponding decorations in the largeformat , late fourteenth- to early fifteenth-century Escoriai MS h.1.13,1 We extend our gratitude to the Dean ofthe School ofArts & Humanities at the University ofAlabama at Birmingham, Bert Brouwer, and to the Dean ofthe College of Arts & Sciences at the University ofthe South, Rita Smith Kipp, for providing generous financial support toward publication. In addition, we wish to thank Frank Domínguez, Emily Francomano, Sheri Spaine Long, andjennifer I. Crook Moore for their suggestions on earlier drafts ofthis essay and, at La corónica, to George Greenia and the two anonymous readers for their feedback on the final stages ofthis article. Their comments have played an important role in the development ofour ideas. JohnJeremiah Sullivan helped clarify wording in a final draft. Finally, we are grateful to Manuel Terrón Bermúdez, Director of the Servicio de Gestión Fotográfica at Patrimonio Nacional, for permission to reproduce the images included in this article. 1 Two scholars who have addressed this manuscript's decorated initials are Sister Eleanore Michel and Roger M. Walker. Due to her edition's limited scope, Michel's unpublished doctoral dissertation, "Vidas de SardaMaríaMadalenay SantaMarta":An Edition ofthe Old Spanish Text (1930), discusses only those decorations in the first folios ofthe manuscript, the first two legends in the codex (xciv-xcvi). Walker, in£/ cavallero Plácidas (MS Esc. h-I-13) (1982), observes that decorated initials mark the beginning ofeach legend in the codex (vii). La corónica 35.1 (Fall, 2006): 249-70 250 John K. Moore, Jr. and Thomas SpaccarelliLa corónica 35.1, 2006 conventionally known as one of several Flores Sanctorum and more recendy christened the Libro de los huéspedes (LH).2 The LH contains nine Castilian translations of French legends: miracles on Santa Maria Madalena, Santa Marta, and Santa María Egipciaca; martyrdoms on Santa Catalina de Alexandria and San Eustacio; and romances on Guillelme, Florencia de Roma, an unnamed empress of Rome,3 and Sevilla, the wife of Carlos Maynes.4 The manuscript was considered a miscellany ofunrelated stories until 1982, whenJohn Maier andThomas Spaccarelli demonstrated die interrelatedness ofdie codex's narratives. Scholars, most recendy Emily Francomano ('"Lady"' and "Manuscript Matrix"), now agree that the legends in the LH were carefully chosen and purposefully sequenced.5 In terms of structure, the codex's narratives are ordered from the time and place of Christ to the reign of Charlemagne (Carlos Maynes) in medieval France, a trajectory that continually arcs toward the present moment and location of die LH's audience (Spaccarelli 23, 41); furthermore, narrative patterns, plots, and character types reappear throughout the codex to create a coherent body of texts (Francomano, '"Lady"' 138). An examination of the decorations and illustrations in the LH and their relationship to its - InA MedievalPilgrim's Companion, Reassessing El libro de los huéspedes (EscorialMS h.1.13), Thomas Spaccarelli bestows this title upon the codex due to the importance of hospitality and the guest/host relationship. We use his designationbecause it also conveys that the manuscriptwas organized as awhole and indicates its associationwithpilgrimage and pilgrims, male and female alike. 3 This figure is the same as the protagonist ofGautier de Coincy's "The Empress of Rome" in his Miracles de Nostre Dame. For an analysis ofthis narrative in relation to the decorative elements that accompany it, see Nancy B. Black. 4 In the same orderjust listed, the rubrics ofthe manuscript title the legends: "De sareta Mana Madalena" (MariaMadalena: fols. lra-2vb); "Commo santa. Marta partió lo que auja [en] seruiçio de Dios" (Santa Maria: fols. 3ra-7rb); "Aqwi comjença la estoria de santa Maria egiçiaca" (Maria Egiçiaca: fols. 7rll-14va); "Del...

Fernando de la Torre's "Juego de naipes", a Game of Love

FERNANDO DE LA TORRE'S "JUEGO DE NAIPES", A GAME OF LOVE Nancy F. Marino Michigan State University In the late 1450s Castilian poet Fernando de la Torre sent a collection ofprose and poetic texts to Doña Leonor de Foix, daughter ofKingJuan II ofNavarra and Aragón, who had repeatedly requested it. This compendium, known as El libro de las veynte cartas e quistiones, contains letters written to a variety of correspondents and almost two hundred poems on amorous themes. Among these verse compositions is an elaborate work entitled "El juego de naipes", which the poet dedicated to the Countess ofCastañeda Mencia Enriquez de Mendoza, a noblewoman of die Castilian court. In one of his studies of playing cards in Spanish literature, JeanPierre Etienvre affirms that it is the first literary version of a card game and diat the poet was die first author to use card suit symbolism in his work, which makes the "Juego de naipes" unique in all of early European literature ("Symbolisme" 427-28). But Etienvre finds the work's textual coherence and overall meaning difficult to discern and wonders if, in the end, it is simply an exercise in poetic virtuosity (Márgenes 317). Nicasio Salvador Miguel has also addressed the apparent system of symbols inherent in Fernando de la Torre's association of certain classes of women with card suits, and assumes diat contemporaneous readers familiarwith courdy debates on amorous topics would have understood the underlying meaning even ifwe cannot (219-20). María Jesús Diez Garretas agrees with Salvador Miguel's assessment of the difficulty of fully appreciating the poet's correlation ofcategories ofladies widi suits and colors. She also posits a few possible I would like to thankJosephJ. Gwara for reading an earlier version ofthis article and for his many useful suggestions that have improved it. La corónica 35.1 (Fall, 2006): 209-47 210Nancy F. MarinoLa corónica 35.1, 2006 figurai meanings based on known medieval symbols but is unable to explain what she considers some baffling references (Torre, Obra literaria 58-60). Only Antonio Paz y Melia fails to see any literary merit in the game, finding it amoral for its treatment of the love ofmarried ladies and nuns. He nevertheless admits that die deck itselfmightbe ofinterest from an artistic or historical point ofview (Torre, Cancionero xix).1 The "Juego de naipes" does exhibit Fernando de la Torre's considerable virtuosity as a poet; however, it does not merely parade before his reading public a series ofelements thatflaunthis considerable knowledge of proverbs and symbols of various sorts, references historical, biblical, and mythological. I would like to propose instead diat this poetic deck ofcards is a cohesive system that integrates all of these elements and leads its readers, sometimes playfully, to deduce that loyalty and constancy are the most important concerns in matters of love. One can arrive at this conclusion by paying close attention to the well-chosen signposts: the colors and traditional symbolism ofthe suits, the poetry written for each ofthese suits, and the people that the poet indicates the artist should paint on die cards. But we can gain additional insightby considering this work's inclusion in the Libro de las veynte cartas e quistiones, where it is surrounded by texts that provide information about Mosén Fernando's life, relationships with others, and attitudes towards women in general and love in particular. Some of these works, especially the prose correspondence with friends both male and female, appear to provide a context for the seemingly odd references or associations that he makes in the "Juego de naipes". In addition, several of the apparently obscure allusions or pictorial descriptions of contemporaneous persons can be clarified by looking to external historical accounts. Fernando de la Torre's connection with the Castilian court of both Juan II (1406-1454) and Enrique IV (1454-1474) and his relationship with the rulers of Navarra has been established bodi by evidentiary documentation and by his own words.2 A native of Burgos who studied in Florence and attended the Council of Basel, Mosén Fernando probably entered Juan II's service in the late 1430s and continued to 1...

La ciudad en la memoria: imágenes, momentos y significados de la ciudad de México en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, en El libro de mis recuerdos de Antonio García Cubas

El objeto de este escrito se configura, pues, como el acercamiento a una mirada que, desde sus propias posibilidades e inmersa en un momento histórico fecundo en acontecimientos y significaciones -como lo es la segunda mitad del siglo XIX-, traduce su experiencia en un tipo característico de representación -el texto mnemónico-, donde la percepción e interpretación del entorno en que se vive, van construyendo, en el tiempo, la imagen de la ciudad.

Reading and Writing Patronio's Doctrine in Real Academia Espanola MS 15

Traditionally, philologists have found manuscript 15 of the Real Academia Espanola in Madrid (RAE 15) interesting from an editorial perspective, but typically they have studied its copy of El Conde Lucanor in isolation from the other scripta bound together with it in the codex.2 Aside from its obvious value as one of the five manuscript witnesses of El Conde Lucanor, RAE 15 studied from cover to cover as a whole is a treasure trove not only of late medieval manuscript culture, but also for medieval Spanish literature in general. By drawing together examinations of scribal emendations and additions throughout the codex, its organization of materials, and comments on the other scripta included in the book, we can more fully appreciate how the codex itself and its version of El Conde Lucanor were put to use in late-medieval Spain. Among the other writings included in this compilation, two works in particular stand out; one is the only known copy of the Libra de los enganos which follows El Conde Lucanor, and the other is the Lucidario, an encyclopedic treatise on morals, religion, and science, to paraphrase Jose Amador de los Rios, which concludes the collection (3: 536).In addition to these familiar works of didactic literature, the codex contains other, more inconspicuous writings such as San Pedro Pascual's gloss of the Lord's Prayer that unpacks the meaning of its seven petitions to God and prohibits Moors, bad Christians, and Jews from reciting it. Following that, a copy of Alonso de Cuenca's will and testament preaches the joy of death as a second birth, allowing us to leave behind this valley of tears for the bliss of heaven wherein we eternally experience God's glory. This common medieval topos precedes a letter written by San Bernaldo advising Don Remon, knight of the castle of Santo Ambrosio, on how to live according to his station and save his soul. To sum up, here are the texts included in RAE 15, and the order in which these works appear: (1) part I of El Conde Lucanor (fol. 1r-62v), (2) El libra de los enganos (fol. 63r-79v), (3) San Pedro Pascual's Glosa del Pater Noster (fol. 80r-85r), (4) El testamento del maestro Alfonso de Cuenca (fol. 85r-85v), (5) a letter from San Bernaldo to Don Ramon (fol. 85v-86v), and (6) the Lucidario (fol. 87r-159v).The physical condition of the codex is excellent, with the exception of the folio which is illegible in parts. The Gothic cursive script is written in a clear, easy-to-read hand that appears to be the same throughout the codex, with a possible exception in the column of folio 84 recto where a second scribe's hand is visible, and finally a third hand has made multiple corrections and interlinear emendations that will be discussed further on. For these reasons, and especially because of the didactic nature of the other scripta in the codex that make up its physical and literary context, the Punonrostro manuscript is an indispensable material witness to how Juan Manuel's exempla were read from the fifteenth to the early sixteenth century.The value of this manuscript has never been in question. Alberto Blecua, in his study of the manuscript witnesses of El Conde Lucanor, appreciated the special evidence of the scribal reading process involved in manuscript production (71-72). Eugenio Krapf, its last private owner, went so far as to claim in his introduction to El libro de Patronio that this codex was el mas llano and primordial of all those containing El Conde Lucanor (xxiv). More recently, Reinaldo Ayerbe-Chaux has suggested that this copy may in fact be more closely related, stemmatically, to a first writing of the book that Juan Manuel revised at a later date for his complete works represented by Biblioteca Nacional MS 6376-known as manuscript S-which has long been considered to be the best copy for textual scholars editing Juan Manuel's opus (28).This essay, however, is not concerned with traditional philological projects such as reconstructing Juan Manuel's originally intended work in another critical edition of El Conde Lucanor; instead, it asks the reader to place the notion of authorial intention aside in order to examine the physical evidence of this codex and arrive at a better understanding of how El Conde Lucanor was received and put to use by its late medieval and early modern readers through a study of the organizing principles at work in RAE 15. …

La Abuela Osejo: Un arquetipo de la Dea-Mater, inscrita en una hierofanía selénico-telúrica: A propósito del <i>Libro de los Gozos</i> de Carlos Villalobos Villalobos

En este artículo, la autora realiza un análisis mítico de la figura de la Abuela Clemencia Osejo, un personaje de El libro de los Gozos de Carlos Villalobos, y la inscribe como un arquetipo de la Dea Mater, que se presenta como la divinidad de un culto iniciático. A partir de este análisis, la autora concluye que la Abuela Osejo se manifiesta como una hierofanía selénico-telúrica.

"¿Qué dizes de las Mugeres?": Donzella Teodor as the Conclusion to Bocados de Oro

"¿QUE DIZES DE LAS MUGERES?": DONZELLA TEODOR AS THE CONCLUSION TO BOCADOS DE ORO Emily C. Francomano Georgetown University "Que dize el sabio que aunque se tornase la tierra papel, e la mar tinta, e los peçes délia péndolas, que non podrían escrevir las maldades de las mugeres." The concluding rhetorical figure in El libro de los engaños reflects ironically upon the very purpose of the collection of exempla that it brings to a close. Curiously, this proverbial gem of wisdom about women suggests that, despite the encyclopedic nature of sapiential literature, women will always escape, at least in part, the reduction to a finite and masterable category.' The conclusion of four fifteenth-century manuscript versions of Bocados de oro [=Bocados] reveals the same anxiety about woman's ability to confound even the wisest ofmen while ultimately contributing to the compendium's model of mastery ofwoman as both category of knowledge and sexual object. Given the profound concern with sexuality, femininity, and gender relations in medieval Iberian sapiential literature, the frequent appearance ofthe "Capítulo de la Donzella Teodor" [= Donzelh Teodor] 1 Sapiential literature seeks to make all aspects of life masterable by providing its audiences with hard and fast rules, definitions, and codes of prudent behavior, all encapsulated in a variety of brief generic forms generally drawn together by frame narratives and/or in compendia. As Maria Jesus Lacarra observes, the intention of medieval Iberian wisdom literature is to present readers and listeners with the keys to safe passage through this life and into the next (Cuentistica 33). Within the corpus, wisdom itselfis presented as received and unchallengeable knowledge: "El saber se concibe como un sistema acabado, completo [...] algo cerrado, estático, que no necesita acrecentarse, lo cual no implica que pueda acabarse ni deteriorarse con su utilización" (María Jesús Lacarra Cuentistica 100). Barry Taylor offers the following succinct definition of medieval wisdom literature: "Texts which give advice on conduct, expressed in the form of La corónica 30.1 (Fall, 2001): 87-110 88Emily C. FrancomanoLa coránica 30.1, 2001 as the final "bocado" in fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Bocados is most intriguing. Of the five extant medieval manuscript versions of the story, four appear as the concluding chapter oíBocados.2 Bocados is the medieval Castilian translation of the eleventh-century Arabic Mukhtâr al-hikam wa-mahâsin al-kalim [The Choicest Maxims and Best Sayings], translated into Spanish before 1257 and subsequently translated into Latin as the Liber philosophorum moralium antiquorum. Many other European vernacular translations followed. Observing that there is "no generally accepted definition of Bocados", Barry Taylor identifies three basic versions of medieval Castilian translations based on the nine manuscripts described by Mechthild Crombach, labeling them A, B, and C (71-85). A corresponds to the Arabic version, B begins with the narrative about king Bonium and concludes with the "Capítulo délas cosas que escrivio por respuestas el filosofo segundo alas cosas que le pregunto el enperador adriano" [= Segundo], and C concludes with Donzella Teodor. The versions ??Bocados that include Donzella Teodor are otherwise fairly close translations of the original Arabic text.3 The story of Teodor is a popular and long-lived tale that has traveled from Arabic and medieval Spanish manuscript sources to the Golden Age stage, to multiple printed editions that circulated in Spain and Colonial Latin America, shifting languages, genres and intended audiences. Throughout its long journey across continents and centuries , the story's tellers, scribes and editors added and subtracted brief sentences arranged paratactically" (71). Fernando Gómez Redondo remarks that sapiential literature incorporates a "mosaico de géneros" (458). Marta Haro, noting the many genres incorporated in wisdom texts, proposes a definition based solely on intentionality : wisdom literature, in contrast to works composed with only implicit or highly general moral messages, is composed with exclusively moral and didactic intentions and seeks to mold human conduct (Los compendios 15). 2 The fifth manuscript version is a fragment included in MS 6545 ofthe Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, which also contains Libro del conocimiento de todos los rregnosy señoríos, the Historia de los reyes godos, and...

Original and Translation in the Czech Fiction of Milan Kundera

'Translation is everything', wrote Milan Kundera, underlining the centrality of the translation process to his novels.1 Kundera's novels written in Czech were read almost exclusively in translation following a ban on his work in the then Czechoslovakia, effective from 1970 until the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. After 1989, it seemed that translation would no longer be a necessity for achieving a wide readership; Kundera began to write novels in the language of his adopted homeland, French, and also regained his Czech audience. By the end of the 1990s, however, only three of his six novels written in the Czech language had appeared in print in the Czech Republic.2 Aggrieved readers prompted Kundera to explain the delay: he commented that no original Czech manuscript existed, and that, before they could be published, these novels had to be rendered 'definitive'.3 In this article, I wish to invert Kundera's statement and suggest that, in Kundera's fiction written in Czech, everything is translation: that the original version of each of his Czech prose works has been displaced and rewritten, partly because of their translation into French and English.4 Seven works of fiction are involved. Kundera's first two prose works written and published in Czech, Zert (The Joke) and Smesne Idsky (Laughable Loves), have been altered, the originals replaced by new versions in Czech as well as in translation. The Joke will be discussed in full shortly. Smesne Idsky was published first as three separate collections of ten short stories between 1963 and 1968, then in a collated version containing eight of the stories in 1970. The 1968 Czech version was reprinted in 1981 and contained seven stories; Kundera had decided to omit the eighth when proofing the French translation. Smesne Idsky was published in the Czech Republic as a collection of short stories in 1991, with numerous alterations from the initial versions of the stories published 1963-8 and from the 1981 version. On Kundera's initiative, Smesne Idsky is published as a novel in German and Spanish (Das Buch der lacherlichen Liebe, Frankfurt, 1989, and El Libro De Los Amoves Ridiculos, third edition, Barcelona, 1998), while remaining a collection of

The Relational Self in Almudena Guzm�n's Dialogic Poetry

The Relational Self in Almudena Guzman's Dialogic Poetry Anita M. Hart University of North Carolina at Charlotte One of the most recent voices in contemporary Spanish poetry, Almudena Guzman writes of personal issues and changing relationships . Frequently narrative in style, Guzman's poetry offers the reader a look at a woman's mental and emotional concerns as she observes herself connecting with others and disconnecting from them. Born in Navacerrada in 1964, Guzman has published four collections of poems: Poemas de Lida Sal (1981), La playa del olvido (1984), Usted (1986), and El Libro de Tamar (1989).1 Her work reflects some of the developments in Spanish poetry ofthe 1980s, analyzed recently by Andrew Debicki: "the 1980s mark a certain return to immediacy, to explicit referents in poetry—which involves the presence of personal and emotive concerns in some works, and of satirical and critical visions in others" (51). Guzman's poetry, exhibiting the "personal and emotive concerns" that Debicki points out, shares two of the characteristics of contemporary works noted by Elena de Jongh Rössel in her anthology, Florilegium: Poesía última española (1982)—"una recuperación de la anécdota" and renewed importance of "los temas 'eternos'—Amor, Vida, Tiempo, Soledad, Muerte" (25). In this study of Guzman's two latest works, Usted and El Libro de Tamar, I incorporate observations from recent theory on women's psychological development and the significance of relationship to women. In Guzman's poetry, personal matters are often revealed through the speaker's verbal interaction with an "other." Emphasizing that "women develop in a context of connections with others," psychologist Jean Baker Miller explains that "women's sense of self becomes very much organized around being able to make and then to maintain affiliations and relationships" (83). Similarly, Janet L. Surrey, working with Baker and other scholars on a theory of women's development , writes: "Our conception of the self-in-relation involves the recognition that for women, the primary experience of self is relational , that is, the self is organized and developed in the context of important relationships" (54). Guzman's poems, showing the self as linked to others, feature dialogue, or at least one side of a dialogic 143 144Rocky Mountain Review exchange. The reader listens or even eavesdrops on the speaker's part of a conversation, as well as her inner dialogue with herself. In this interchange, the reader often observes the speaker in a disadvantageous situation, expressing discomfort and embarrassment. Such vulnerability, though seemingly connoting weakness, may, in light of Miller's theories, be viewed as a strength. A close look at Almudena Guzman's Usted and El Libro de Tamar reveals an attempt to capture in words a woman's changing connections with others, demonstrating her capacity to tolerate vulnerability and move toward strength. Conversational, ironic, and at times humorous, the collection Usted narrates from the perspective of the first-person speaker the process of an amorous relationship from the beginning to the end.2 The speaker addresses the formal "you"—"usted"—in 38 of the 47 poems or acknowledges this "other" in third-person singular and first-person plural verbs and adjectives. The epigraph, "A usted, en obediencia," immediately raises questions for the reader. What kind of relationship is this? Why would one express the connection in this way, with the word "obediencia"? Is this phrasing serious or tonguein -cheek? Usted is divided into five sections where, as John Wilcox has observed , "se despliega la trayectoria amorosa en toda su amplitud: desde la primera mirada inocente hasta la absoluta soledad del fracaso " (111). Biruté Ciplijauskaité emphasizes the "enfoque autoir ónico" with which the collection presents "la historia del desencanto amoroso paso a paso" (121). The third poem in Usted tells the story of the meeting of the speaker and "usted" and introduces the subject of vulnerability: Justo el día en que llevo gafas y un jersey horroroso usted descubre mi arrinconada existencia. Le hablo con la sorpresa de no sorprenderme al tocar una ardilla. Y contengo como puedo este alud de labios para no abalanzarme sobre su nuca mientras guarda, de espaldas a mi sombra creciente, unos papeles en la carpeta. (13...

The Rhetoric of Power in Juan Manuel's "El Conde Lucanor"

One of the benefits of an oral literary tradition is its flexibility. A singer or jongleur could change or modify myths and legends according to the perceived needs of his audience. With the development of literacy and the reliance on fixed modes of discourse (which in turn fixed traditions and their inconsistencies) during the Middle Ages, the flexibility of orality disappears and allegoresis replaces it as a means to (re)interpret fixed cultural tradition. Allegoresis, the dominant method of literary figural interpretation to this day, serves to explain problems or inconsistencies that become apparent in a written text and in turn leads to further investigation of the original problem and its proposed solution. In other words, the growth of the written word effectively fixed traditions in texts and encouraged complaints against perceived inconsistencies between the ideal (expressed in the text) and the actual. According to Janet Coleman, literacy caused social change rebellion and complaint rather than through silent evolution and selective remembering associated with the oral tradition.1 The rebellion and discomfort of societies in transition during the Middle Ages gave rise to collections of sermon handbooks and collections of exempla in the vernacular as well as in Latin. Clergy and layman alike used these collections to teach citizens how to behave in relation to their God, their king, and their lords. The two orders most influential in the development of vernacular preaching, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, compiled collections such as the Liber Exemplorum Ad Usum Praedicantium, Exempla Communia, Exempla Deodati, Gesta Romanorum, Alphabetum Narrationum, and the Dialogus Creaturaru. In Spain similar handbooks abound in secular titles such as the Bocados de oro, Calila e Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, El libro de los buenos proverbios, Libro de los engaNos, Barlaam yJosafat, Sendebar, Libro de los gatos, Exemplos muy notables, and the Conde Lucanor. The exemplary tales mixed sacred and secular tales that were organized so as to make the material easily accessible to the reader. The ordinatio of these collections was generally based on an alphabetical arrangement which employed key words to which a given exemplary tale could be applied; for example, Abstinentia. What is important to note is that not only was the content of the exemplum important but also the physical structure and ordering of the compilation. The structure of the text as much as the tale itself was designed

History, Truth and Dialogue: Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias (Bk XXXIII, Ch LIV)

Fernandez de Oviedo's concept of the making of history figures is one of the distinguishing characteristics of his Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535, 1547, 1557). Living in the geographical and chronological center of the Spanish Conquest of the New World, Oviedo, as Charles V's official Court Chronicler, recorded the momentous events of the Spanish encounter with the New World as they occurred.1 History was being made by the Spaniards, and Oviedo was responsible for gathering information and compiling reports for a history of the New World, which would preserve authentic evidence of the Conquest. Because he lived in the midst of the history about which he wrote, Oviedo's accounts often lack the breadth of information and the perspective time can lend to the writing of history. Writing over a period of thirty years, however, enabled the Court Chronicler to gather new information about incidents he had already recorded and this led him to engage in a process of continual correction, expansion, and revision of the history. Yet more significant to the understanding of Oviedo's concept of history than his own geographical and chronological situation is his preoccupation with writing a truthful representation of historical events. His dedication to the idea of a history that would mirror, as closely as possible, men's actions as they actually occurred, as the omnipresent God would have witnessed them, helps to explain his use of multiple reports of a single incident.2 In keeping with the biblical model of using multiple representations to indicate the author's desire for accuracy, if new information contradicted a previous report, Oviedo often revised the account or wrote another version of it in order to see again the events he had recorded; this methodology, he hoped, would reveal the true nature of the moral and natural history of the Indies.3 The Spanish historian's concept of a truthful history becomes clearer when viewed in light of the intellectual currents and political ideology that influenced him. For example, Oviedo's early exposure to Italian humanism and the classical historian's moralizing tendency;4 the author's belief in Spain's destiny to establish a universal Catholic empire and, therefore, his belief in the need to testify to the validity of the Spanish Conquest; and the author's recent conversion to Erasmian illuminism (about 1525) and its alternative to the novels of chivalry, el libro de verdad (Bataillon 247),5 are all influences that inform Oviedo's historical criteria, which he often elaborates in prologues and passages that correct his own earlier accounts of the same event. One of the most famous sections of the Historia general devoted to revising previous accounts about the Conquest of Mexico is the dialogue between Oviedo and Juan Cano. Included in the narration on the Conquest of Mexico (Bk XXXIII of the Second Part), the dialogue is one of the concluding chapters of the Book (Ch LIV).6 Situated among an assortment of information from various sources, which includes Cortes's Relaciones and Antonio de Mendoza's letters, the colloquy reflects Oviedo's data-collecting methods and his inclusion of multiple reports about the same event in his history.7 Given the frequency with which the Spanish chronicler employs multiple accounts, one is not surprised at his return in Chapter LIV to material treated earlier in Chapters XIV-XV. Rather, what does catch our attention is the historian's use of a new

The chivalric dragon: hagiographic parallels in early Spanish romances

The chivalric dragon: hagiographic parallels in early Spanish romances