The Muses Las Musas

Galileo never set foot on the Iberian Peninsula, yet, as Enrique García Santo-Tomás unfolds in The Refracted Muse, the news of his work with telescopes brought him to surprising prominence—not just among Spaniards working in the developing science of optometry but among creative writers as well. While Spain is often thought to have taken little notice of the Scientific Revolution, García Santo-Tomás tells a different story, one that reveals Golden Age Spanish literature to be in close dialogue with the New Science. Drawing on the work of writers such as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, and Quevedo, he helps us trace the influence of science and discovery on the rapidly developing and highly playful genre of the novel. Indeed, García Santo-Tomás makes a strong case that the rise of the novel cannot be fully understood without taking into account its relationship to the scientific discoveries of the period.

"Employing a broad historical perspective that forces the reevaluation of historical and literary commonplaces, Soufas artfully illuminates the complex responses of Spanish Golden Age authors to major shifts in European intellectual outlook during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century."--Publishers website.

The reader will find in this anthology a diversity representative of the new Hispanic sensibility being formed in the three Americas. Spanish has become an extensively used language, crossing frontiers with workers that migrate through regions, helping to unite these beings separated by nationalities but who are brothers because of common feelings and the same cultural and linguistic heritage. The poetry in this book performs a reparative role, trying to come closer to another being, the spirit of creativity, and make it more a part of the poetic self. It does so through the magic of the lyrical word. El lector encontrará en esta antología una diversidad representativa de la nueva sensibilidad hispana en formación en las tres Américas. El español se ha vuelto una lengua de uso extendido, que cruza las fronteras con los trabajadores que se desplazan por su territorio, ayudando a unir a estos seres separados por las nacionalidades pero hermanados por un sentir común y una misma herencia cultural y lingüística. La poesía aquí tiene un papel reparador, tratando de acercar al otro y hacerlo más íntimo para el yo, mediante la magia de la palabra poética. Because the anthology is thematic, its poetic form is eclectic. The poets come from distinct poetic schools, employ different styles. Juana Arancibia writes verse that is reflective and unpretentious, a manner fostered by her regional roots and the poetry of Northwest Argentina for which she is a passionate spokesperson. Rubén Vela cultivates a stirring Poetry Americana that defends American values and is linked to the great movement initiated by Neruda in his Canto General. Ester de Izaguirre creates poetry that is intimate, colloquial and urban, idiomatic to the area of Rio de La Plata. José Cuervo associates more with Hispanic poetry written in North America, Chicano poetry, in which social meditation bears priority over the form of verse. Fitzgerald expresses great affection for nature, a common theme in the poetry of his country and enters into a transcendental poetic dialog with creation, cultivating impressive images of exquisite construction. Porque la antología es temática su forma poética es heterogénea, los poetas vienen de distintas escuelas poéticas, cultivan estilos diferentes. Juana Arancibia escribe una poesía reflexiva y sencillista derivada de sus raíces regionales, la poesía del noroeste argentino, de la que es continuadora; Rubén Vela cultiva una poesía americanista, de defensa de los valores americanos, vinculada al gran movimiento que inició Neruda en su canto General; Ester de Izaguirre escribe una poesía intimista, coloquial y urbana, rioplatense; José Cuervo se vincula más a la poesía hispana escrita en Norteamérica, la poesía chicana, en que la meditación social tiene prioridad sobre la forma; Fitzgerald, poeta norteamericano, expresa el gran amor a la naturaleza de la poesía de su país, el diálogo trascendental del poeta con la creación y cultiva imágenes visuales llamativas de exquisita factura. Alberto Julián Pérez, Ph.D. Texas Tech University

Mexican and Mexican American women have written about Texas and their lives in the state since colonial times. Edited by fellow Tejanas Inés Hernández-Ávila and Norma Elia Cantú, Entre Guadalupe y Malinche gathers, for the first time, a representative body of work about the lives and experiences of women who identify as Tejanas in both the literary and visual arts. The writings of more than fifty authors and the artwork of eight artists manifest the nuanced complexity of what it means to be Tejana and how this identity offers alternative perspectives to contemporary notions of Chicana identity, community, and culture. Considering Texas-Mexican women and their identity formations, subjectivities, and location on the longest border between Mexico and any of the southwestern states acknowledges the profound influence that land and history have on a people and a community, and how Tejana creative traditions have been shaped by historical, geographical, cultural, linguistic, social, and political forces. This representation of Tejana arts and letters brings together the work of rising stars along with well-known figures such as writers Gloria Anzaldúa, Emma Pérez, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Carmen Tafolla, and Pat Mora, and artists such as Carmen Lomas Garza, Kathy Vargas, Santa Barraza, and more. The collection attests to the rooted presence of the original indigenous peoples of the land now known as Tejas, as well as a strong Chicana/Mexicana feminism that has its precursors in Tejana history itself.

This volume addresses the representation of history and collective memory in Latin American literature. The book presents a variety of novel perspectives on the subject, linked by the common themes of the subjectivity of time and history, literature used as a political tool and the representation of marginalized groups. The collection takes an original approach to viewing national histories as represented in literature by adopting a cross-disciplinary position. While there are other publications addressing some of the issues raised in this collection, this book goes beyond literary representations of history. The essays collected here examine technological, political and social developments as a means of creating, re-structuring and (in some cases) potentially destroying nations.

This book combines archival and rare book research with a case study of the fiction of Baltasar Gracián to investigate the degree to which the Spanish elite circumvented Inquisitorial and state publication controls in early modern Spain.