La Carta Research Articles

Argentinian Children's Literature and Independent Publishing Houses: Emerging Forms in the Re-editions of María Teresa Andruetto's Poems

This article addresses the relationship between children's literature and the ecosystem of independent publishing houses in Argentina. The first part of the article focuses on describing the editorial operations carried out by independent Argentinian publishers and, by virtue of the examination of their editorial practices, it is argued that their interventions (i.e., their re-editings of literary works) seek to introduce both textual and material innovations to Argentina's editorial landscape. It is also argued that the emergence of these editorial practices manages to resignify literary textualities and book materialities, as well as reading practices. The second half of the article offers an analysis of two works by María Teresa Andruetto that have been re-edited by independent presses in Argentina: Peras and Poesía a la carta. Both re-editions are analysed in view of their editorial kinship to their corresponding collections and catalogues. The analysis of these works (re-edited in picturebook and playbook formats, respectively) illuminates and acknowledges the existence of editorial gestures that, in their mediations/modulations of the canon, strive to challenge age boundaries and intended readerships, as well as conventions on literary genres and their materialities. Ultimately, these features profile the re-editions of Peras and Poesía a la carta as disruptive literary artefacts, insofar as they manage to challenge aesthetic and editorial orthodoxies.

The Silent Mother. A Literary and Biographical Analysis of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and María Zambrano

In this literary paper on the traumas of unwed motherhood and the silence surrounding it, I compare the experiences of two mother-poets: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and María Zambrano. Although these women writers are from two separate centuries and countries, the motherly pains they experience and the scholarly silence surrounding their motherhoods closely mirror one another's. Through their cartas (letters) and poems, the silence surrounding their losses as unwed mothers with deceased young children is shattered, seeing as their traumas are forever recorded within their written words. Utilizing biografías (biographies), las cartas, Susan Stanford Friedman's birth theory, and poetic analysis, I make the argument that both Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and María Zambrano encapture their motherly pains in their poetry unlike that of any of the scholarly work written about either of them.

“Un libro no convencional”: Communities of Response and Finding Jewishness in Alex Appella’s Writing

This article analyzes Alex Appella’s art book published in Argentina in English as The János Book and in Spanish as Entonces el libro and Después de la carta, along with the reception of the book among “communities of response” in classrooms throughout Argentina through a program called the Biblioteca Ambulantes, or Traveling Libraries. I argue that Appella’s writing is multidirectional and nonlinear, two significant characteristics of Jewish writing that necessitate greater attention to the flow of ideas and people across borders in the Western hemisphere, such as between the United States and Argentina, as well as across the Atlantic, such as in contact with Eastern Europe or Israel. Moreover, this multidirectionality draws in “communities of response” in Argentina, even students in a largely Catholic and/or indigenous society who may have previously known little or nothing about Jewish history or the Holocaust. Thinking with the concept of “communities of response” (Davis 1997), my article means to draw attention to the many possibilities for resonance or meaning, which go beyond simple and perhaps misguided assumptions that attempt to fix the Jewishness of Appella or her writing.

Respuesta a la carta al editor: “Estrategia farmacoinvasiva: herramienta para evitar la Paradoja de Reperfusión en redes de infarto”

Respuesta a la carta al editor: “Estrategia farmacoinvasiva: herramienta para evitar la Paradoja de Reperfusión en redes de infarto”

Prologue

Prologue Elizabeth R. Wright Plot twists delight and challenge us as readers, teachers, and scholars of Golden Age theater. But the year of this issue, 2021, united us with a series of unexpected, previously unimaginable turns of events, some welcome, many decidedly not. Though readers who open this issue or download it in the spring of 2022 will need no reminders, this prefatory space serves, in part, as an explanatory gloss for scholars and students in the decades ahead. So, it bears mention that as we began the editorial work for this issue in early 2021, people all over the world marveled at the seemingly miraculous scientific plot twist of safe and effective vaccinations for COVID-19, produced in a matter of months rather than years. With all the gratitude and admiration due to the scientists and public health officials who made this possible, we would urge readers—whether today or in the decades to come—to save large measures of appreciation for fellow travelers in the humanities and arts whose feats of ingenuity and resilience nourish our imaginations, souls, and scholarly communities. The articles, book reviews, and interview within this issue are powerful testaments to the unceasing labors of love that have kept humanities research going at a time when this mode of exchange has been so crucial, given that conferences and other gatherings in person continued to be postponed, canceled, or shifted online. In addition to our regular features, this issue includes the second installment of our Touchstones section, which celebrates and recontextualizes scholarship from past generations. Stefano Arata's "Candor y tragedia: Federico García Lorca y la poética de La Barraca" was the last major research completed before his untimely death in July of 2001. To honor Arata on the twentieth anniversary of his passing and, most importantly, to continue the scholarly conversations he proposes in "Candor y tragedia," we offer a reedition, with some updates to the bibliography and to the accompanying illustrations. In so doing, the seminal essay will now be available through the major online portals and printed copies of this issue. To provide new perspectives on Stefano Arata's scholarship, Fausta Antonucci looks back on the scholarly practices and sociability that shaped the generation of Italian Hispanists to which both belong. We are also mindful that if scholarship from the past is to live on in the future, it must also be generative. With this idea in mind, José Manuel Pedrosa takes stock of Arata's methodology as a point of departure for his own wide-ranging exploration of the literary tradition and latter day echoes of the versos [End Page 5] encadenados that shape the anonymous entremés Los habladores. In so doing, this homage and response to Arata's "Candor y tragedia" invites us to think in new ways about how Golden Age theater connects to global literary traditions, past and present. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Cover of vol. 73, no. 1, Retrato de Federico García Lorca con un kimono amarillo y al fondo la carta marina "Mare Oceanum" con parte de la Península Ibérica, las Islas Canarias y la Atlántida, by Gregorio Toledo, 1931. ©Huerta de San Vicente, Casa-Museo Federico García Lorca / Ayuntamiento de Granada. Photograph furnished by Art Resource, NY. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Stephano Arata, April of 1990. Photograph by Franco Arata, furnished by Laura Arata. In closing, we must remark one particularly unwelcome turn of events from 2021. Don W. Cruickshank died suddenly. We are grateful to Germán Vega for taking on the Herculean and paradoxical task of rendering a concise portrait of Cruickshank's boundless erudition and generosity to colleagues. Our condolences go out to the many colleagues and friends he leaves behind. [End Page 6] Copyright © 2021 Bulletin of the Comediantes

ОМОНІМІЯ І ПОЛІСЕМІЯ В ТЕРМІНОЛОГІЇ АЗАРТНИХ ІГОР В ІСПАНСЬКІЙ МОВІ

The aim of the research is to analize polysemy and homonymy in gambling terminology in the Spanish language. In modern linguistic terminological studies polysemy and homonymy are considered to be negative phenomena in terminological system, as terms should be clear, precise and monosemic to avoid misunderstanding or ambiguity in professional communication. The main methods of studies are lexical semantic analysis and contextual analysis. The homonymic terminological nominations in gambling in Spanish are conditioned by the existence of the same proper names and common names as in el triunfo (la carta de triunfo) and el triunfo (the name of the game), meanwhile polysemantic terms are mainly caused by the parallel usage of hyponymic and hyperonymic names, as in poker (game) and poker (the winning card combination in the game of poker). Very often the use of the definite article before the noun may serve as a distinctive feature, for example, el poker (game) and poker (game winning combination of cards). It is stated that the game is regulated by the rules and special game situation which help to understand the meaning of polysemantic terms, as each game situation requires the use of a special term. The illustrative material revealed the situational character of the game. Contextual analysis proved to be effective means of defining the meaning of polysemantic terminological nominations of gambling in the Spanish language. Situational usage of gambling terms contributes to avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding among the gamblers. The future studies may be dedicated to comparative analysis of terminological nominations of gambling in Spanish and other languages whether of the same language group or different language groups, which may be of practical value in terminological and translation studies.

Death of the Emissary: Language, Metonymy, and European Complicity in Juan Diego Botto’s “La carta”

Juan Diego Botto’s 2005 monologue “La carta” explores the real-life death of Yaguine Koita and Fodé Tounkara, two Guinean boys who in 1999 died attempting to reach Europe with a letter addressed to European officials. A close reading of Botto’s monologue illustrates how the letter by Yaguine and Fodé functions as an archive that explores and redefines the liminal spaces, and therefore the relationship, between Europe and Africa. The monologue and the letter elucidate the boys’ position as emissaries who seek to reconcile the European continent with its complicity in the state of Africa.

Tetralogía de la soledad: introducción a la narrativa de Javier Tomeo

Este estudio analiza cuatro novelas de Javier Torneo, uno de los más significativos autores de la nueva narrativa española. En el contexto general de esta narrativa, el autor extrae los perfiles más característicos de su semántica y estilo, que le permiten definidas como miembros de un proyecto narrativo unitario, bajo el nombre de "Tetralogía de la soledad", constituida por El castillo de la carta cifrada, Amado monstruo, El cazador de leones y La ciudad de las palomas. Tras analizar la intertextualidad de las cuatro novelas y su semántica, presta especial atención al análisis de su discurso narrativo, singularmente el "récit de paroles" y las distintas fórmulas del estilo directo, técnicas en las que Javier Tomeo ha mostrado gran originalidad estilistica.

Preamble to Part II

This Preamble introduces and discusses nine literary-critical articles contributed to Part II of Studies on Spain, Portugal and Latin America in Memory of William C. Atkinson, each of which, through the country, period, topic and/or author dealt with, reflects in some way or degree William Atkinson’s own most significant scholarly interests. First, two articles by Patricia Anne Odber de Baubeta and David G. Frier, deal with Portugal and its literature—Camões’ sonnets in the one case, and a novel by Camilo Castelo Branco, in the other. Then follow three studies by Anne Holloway, D. Gareth Walters and Margaret Tejerizo relating to modern Spain’s literature, culture and society, which discuss respectively a novella by Ángeles Vicente, the late poetry of Antonio Machado and Chekhov’s theatre as recently performed in Spanish before audiences in Madrid. Next come three articles concerned with works emanating from modern Latin America: a short novel by the Uruguayan writer Felisberto Hernández is studied by Frank Lough; the Brazilian poetry of Mário Quintana is edited, translated and interpreted by the late Giovanni Pontiero; and Nuala Finnegan analyses Rafael Bonilla’s documentary film, La carta (2010), which seeks to elucidate the causes and the consequences of gender-related murders (feminicidios) being perpetrated in present-day Mexico. In ‘Re-Writing the Estado Novo: Antonio Tabucchi’s Sostiene [Afirma] Pereira’, Bernard McGuirk achieves, inter alia, an informative assessment of the state of affairs in Portugal under Salazar in the late 1930s; moreover, through deftly interwoven allusions he sheds further light on the attitudes and personality of his former professor at Glasgow University, William Atkinson. McGuirk’s multifaceted study, which on one level is interdisciplinary and comparative, and on another socio-linguistic and literary-theoretical, concludes not only Part II, but the entire Festschrift.

Note di lettura su La carta delle arance e alcuni inediti di Pietro De Marchi

A reading of the collection of poems by Pietro De Marchi entitled La carta delle arance (published in 2016 by Casagrande), which won the prestigious Keller Prize in Switzerland where the author teaches Italian literature at Zurich University. The analysis is carried out in the context of a study of all the author’s poetry, which is characterised by linguistic and cultural hybridity typical of this “Italy outside Italy”.

Staging Reconciliation: The Possibilities of Mourning in Rafael Bonilla's La carta (2010)

Rafael Bonilla’s documentary film La carta (2010), takes Paula Flores—mother of feminicidio victim Sagrario Flores González from Ciudad Juárez—as its centre point. This article traces Paula’s filmic construction as victim, survivor and committed political activist. The documentary is of particular interest for the way in which it reveals the device of letter-writing as a vehicle through which reconciliation between the centre (Mexico City) and its troubled periphery (Ciudad Juárez) can be achieved. I argue that the film stages a moment of national solidarity and mourning at a critical time in the narratives of violence in Mexico since 2006.

Four Commentaries on the Pope’s Message on Climate Change and Income Inequality. IV. Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, Global Environmental Risks, and the Future of Humanity.

Four Commentaries on the Pope’s Message on Climate Change and Income Inequality. IV. Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, Global Environmental Risks, and the Future of Humanity.

ALCANCE DE LAS REFORMAS NORMATIVAS EN DERECHO SUCESORAL A RAÍZ DE LA CARTA CONSTITUCIONAL DE 1991 SEGÚN PRONUNCIAMIENTOS DE LA CORTE CONSTITUCIONAL

En este artículo se pretende contestar la siguiente pregunta: ¿Cuál ha sido el alcance de las reformas normativas en materia de Derecho sucesoral a partir del año 1991? Tomando como referente los pronunciamientos de la Corte Constitucional relacionados con la materia, para ello se espera describir lo resuelto en los pronunciamientos seleccionados, en aras de proporcionar a los estudiosos del Derecho sucesoral un compendio de la temática.
 Palabras clave: Derecho sucesoral, Reformas normativas, Sentencias de constitucionalidad.
 Abstract
 This paper focuses on to answer the following question: What has been the scope of the regulatory reforms in the field of law successoral from the year 1991? Taking as reference the pronouncements of the Constitutional Court relating to the matter, for this is expected describe what resolved in the pronouncements selected, in the interests of providing the scholars of the right successoral a compendium of the theme.
 Keywords: Law successoral, The regulatory reforms, Judgments of constitutionality.
 Resumo
 Neste artigo se pretende responder à seguinte pergunta: Qual foi o alcance das reformas normativas em matéria de Direito das Sucessões a partir do ano de 1991? Tomando como referências os pronunciamentos da Corte Constitucional relacionados com a matéria; para isso espera-se descrever a decisão nos pronunciamentos selecionados, de modo a proporcionar aos estudiosos do Direito das Sucessões um compêndio da temática.
 Palavras-chave: Direito das sucessões, Reformas normativas, Sentenças de constitucionalidade.

Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors' standardized letter of recommendation: the program director's perspective.

The standardized letter of evaluation (SLOE) was created in 1997 to provide residency program directors (PDs) with a summative evaluation that incorporates normative grading (i.e., comparisons to peers applying to emergency medicine [EM] training). Although the standard letter of recommendation (SLOR) has become increasingly popular and important in decision-making, it has not been studied in the past 12 years. To assess the SLOR's effectiveness and limitations, the perspective of EM PDs was surveyed in this study. After validation of the questionnaire by 10 retired PDs, the survey was sent to the PD of each of the 159 EM residencies that existed at that time. The survey was circulated via the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors' (CORD) listserv from January 24, 2013, to February 13, 2013. Weekly e-mail reminders to all PDs served to increase participation. A total of 150 of 159 PDs (94.3%) completed the questionnaire. Nearly all respondents (149 of 150; 99.3%) agreed that the SLOR is an important evaluative tool and should continue to be used. In the application process, 91 of 150 (60.7%) programs require one or more SLORs, and an additional 55 (36.7%) recommend but do not require a SLOR to be considered for interview. When asked to identify the top three factors in deciding who should be interviewed, the SLOR was ranked first (139 of 150; 92.7%), with EM rotation grades ranked second (73 of 150; 48.7%). The factors that were most often identified as the top three that diminish the value of the SLOR in order were 1) "inflated evaluations" (121 of 146; 82.9%), 2) "inconsistency between comments and grades" (106 of 146; 72.6%), and 3) "inadequate perspective on candidate attributes in the written comments" and "inexperienced authors" (60 of 146; 41.1% each). The SLOR appears to be the most important tool in the EM PD's armamentarium for determining which candidates should be interviewed for residency training. Although valuable, the SLOR's potential utility is hampered by a number of factors, the most important of which is inflated evaluations. Focused changes in the SLOR template should be mindful that it appears, in general, to be successful in its intended purpose.

Praise for the Muses of José Luis Guerin

This article offers an analysis of the unique and complex work of José Luis Guerin, one of Spain’s most prominent film directors, taking as a point of reference the cinematic correspondence that Guerin has recently exchanged with Jonas Mekas within the collective project titled Todas las cartas. Correspondencias fílmicas. The correspondence between both filmmakers from December 2009 to April 2011 is of special relevance as the five letters that Guerin sent to Mekas capture the innermost feeling underpinning his work. As a result, these cinematic letters constitute the perfect pretext, the ideal point of reference for an exploration of the main themes or motifs that have inspired Guerin’s cinematic work, from Innisfree (1990) to his most recent works released in 2011.

Characterization of the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors' Standardized Letter of Recommendation in 2011-2012

The Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD) introduced the standardized letter of recommendation (SLOR) in 1997, and it has become a critical tool for assessing candidates for emergency medicine (EM) training. It has not itself been evaluated since the initial studies associated with its introduction. This study characterizes current SLOR use to evaluate whether it serves its intended purpose of being standardized, concise, and discriminating. This retrospective, multi-institutional study evaluated letters of recommendation from U.S. allopathic applicants to three EM training programs during the 2011-2012 Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) application cycle. Distributions of responses to each question on the SLOR were calculated, and the free-text responses were analyzed. Two pilots, performed on five applicants each, assisted in developing a strategy for limiting interrater reliability. Each of the three geographically diverse programs provided a complete list of U.S. allopathic applicants to their program. Upon randomization, each program received a list of coded applicants unique to their program randomly selected for data collection. The number of applicants was selected to reach a goal of approximately 200 SLORs per site (n = 602). Among this group, comprising 278 of 1,498 applicants (18.6%) from U.S. allopathic schools, a total of 1,037 letters of recommendation were written, with 724 (69.8%) written by emergency physicians. SLORs represented 57.9% (602/1037) of all LORs (by any kind of author) and 83.1% (602/724) of letters written by emergency physicians. Three hundred ninety-two of 602 SLORs had a single author (65.1%). For the question on "global assessment," students were scored in the top 10% in 234 of 583 of applications (40.1%; question not answered by some), and 485 of 583 (83.2%) of the applicants were ranked above the level of their peers. Similarly, >95% of all applicants were ranked in the top third compared to peers, for all but one section under "qualifications for emergency medicine." For 405 of 602 of all SLORs (67.2%), one or more questions were left unanswered, while 76 of all SLORs (12.6%) were "customized" or changed from the standard template. Finally, in 291 of 599 of SLORs (48.6%), the word count was greater than the recommended maximum of 200 words. Grade inflation is marked throughout the SLOR, limiting its ability to be discriminating. Furthermore, template customization and skipped questions work against the intention to standardize the SLOR. Finally, it is not uncommon for comments to be longer than guideline recommendations. As an assessment tool, the SLOR could be more discerning, concise, and standardized to serve its intended purpose.

An encounter with ethics and documentary images in the exhibition ‘Totes les cartes’/‘Todas las cartas’/‘All the Letters’

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the video letters that were exhibited in the exhibition ‘Totes les cartes’/‘Todas las cartas’/‘All the Letters’ at the CCCB in Barcelona and interrogates their formal properties in relation to moving images displayed in the gallery. It analyses the representation of the documentary subjects and their relationship to the film-makers that depict them—Isaki Lacuesta and Naomi Kawase, Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerin, So Yong Kim and Fernando Eimbcke—highlighting issues of corporeality, proximity, memory and mortality and in particular how these tropes might be altered by our experience of viewing these images in the gallery. The notion of the moving image as a form of correspondence raises questions of the ethics of documentary form in the gallery and the intimacy of these individual pieces develops this notion of our embodied presence and our relationship with and responsibility to these images and the subjects of them.

Anne L. Walsh, Arturo Pérez-Reverte: Narrative Tricks and Narrative StrategiesArturo Pérez-Reverte: Narrative Tricks and Narrative Strategies. Anne L. Walsh. Suffolk and Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2007. Pp. vii+172.

<i>Anne L. Walsh,</i> Arturo Pérez-Reverte: Narrative Tricks and Narrative Strategies<i>Arturo Pérez-Reverte: Narrative Tricks and Narrative Strategies</i>. Anne L. Walsh. Suffolk and Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2007. Pp. vii+172.

Memory and Fantasy: The Imaginative Reconstruction of a Lost Past in &lt;em&gt;Las cartas que no llegaron&lt;/em&gt;

Since the end of World War II literature has generated an intense debate regarding the relationship between historical reality and its representation through fiction. One could even say that representation itself, when faced with the collective trauma of the Holocaust, entered into a profound crisis. As philosophers and thinkers of all kinds struggled to come to terms with the horrors endured by millions in Nazi concentration camps, they began to question the possibilities and limits of representation as well as the problems associated with collective and individual memory. Adorno's well-known dictum, To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbarie (34), often serves as a point of departure for this discussion and has provoked different reactions from many, ranging from those who reject any artistic approach to the Holocaust to those who defend fiction as a possible means of overcoming the limits of historical representation. Although it does not necessarily fall within the category of literature, the autobiographical novel Las cartas que no llegaron (2000)' by Uruguayan playwright and novelist Mauricio Rosencof can be read within the context of this debate. Rosencof is the son of Jewish parents, who emigrated from Poland in the late 1920s hoping to improve their life in Uruguay. In the 1960s, Rosencof became one of the leaders of the National Liberation Army (the socalled Tupamaros), an urban guerilla group that was overthrown by the Uruguayan army in 1972, leading to his arrest and subsequent imprisonment during the military dictatorship (1973-1985). In Las cartas que no llegaron^ Rosencof tells us the story of his life, in which he confronts not only his memories of thirteen years of terror and deprivation, but also an earlier traumatic episode in his family's life— the disappearance of the relatives left behind in Poland, all of whom

El sueno literario en Espana. Consolidacion y desarrollo del genero

El sueno literario en Espana. Consolidacion y desarrollo del genero. By Teresa Gomez Trueba. Madrid: Catedra, 1999. 322 pages. To commend his new book, La muerte de Abel. Poema moral (Madrid, 1789), to the favor of the Real Sociedad de Asturias, Joaquin Jose Queipo de Llano described an imaginary dream that came upon him as he sat on the shores of the Narcea. From the waters of the river emerged a venerable old man and a young lad, each carrying a book that they invited the author-- dreamer to read. Their intentions were to inspire Noble Juventud de Asturias with the thought that the attainment of all knowledge rested on virtue. Queipo de Llano, hoping to insert some freshness into the conventional dedication, drew on a time-honored literary form, the free-standing dream, in which the author falls asleep, and in the ensuing dream encounters a guide who will lead him, in many cases to fantastic places, there to reveal a satiric perspective on human folly, or to impart knowledge or a moral message. Time-honored indeed, the genre that in the Peninsula included creations by Santillana, Bernat Metge, Vives and, of course, Quevedo, had become at the end of the eighteenth century something of a cliche or a set piece. We know, for example, that P. Joaquin Lorenzo Villanueva in prison wrote Buenos, y parte de otro, alusivos a los rams sucesos de aquella epoca; los cuales fueron entregados a las llamas en un momento de terror, que entonces crei prudente, y ahora no (Vida literaria [2 vols.; London, 1825, II, 150]. And that Aragonese writer of such cheerful conceitedness, Jose Mor de Fuentes, writes that he was once asked by a young lady to compose a letter with which she could chide her friends who had failed to answer her letters. Me sobrevino de improviso, he relates sometime before 1836, el arranque de contestarle si queria que pusiese la carta en verso, y me replico que le era indiferente. Con este motivo me empene en referir en silva una especie de sumo que lei en una tertulia de guardian espanolas, y mi estreno merecio universal aprobacion (Bosquejo de su vida y escritos [Madrid, 1943], 20-21). These three obscure references, understandably missing from the good and useful volume that Teresa Gomez Trueba has written, help to document a surprisingly lively genre of literature with similarities, in one or another instance, to Menippean and Lucianesque satires, the humanistic colloquium, imaginary voyages and utopian fiction. The principal task, therefore, is to try to define the genre of the literary dream, and, once defined, to attempt to draw the variations within the lines of its evolution. …