Questioning the traditional association between machismo and Hispanic culture, this collection of essays focuses on revisiting archetypes of masculinity from medieval Iberia to the present by placing them in the context of the divergent counter-images that have always existed below the radar. The essays in this volume investigate both the construction and de-construction of masculinity in Iberian cultures and literatures from different genres and historical periods and from different disciplines (literary studies, film studies, art, religion, visual culture, etc.) and methodological perspectives (masculinity studies, feminist theory, queer studies, cultural studies, etc.). Queering Iberia is particularly concerned with exploring alternative models that examine or challenge canonical models of manhood, placing special emphasis upon re-visions of Iberian masculinities, especially as they are manifested in Catalonia, the Basque country, Galicia, and the Americas. This book starts off from the critical assumption that rethinking masculinities from these counterpoints will contribute different perspectives on the topic, and that by exploring Iberian cultures through masculinities new aspects of the relationships among these cultures can be understood. Queering Iberia will be of interest to courses on queer, gender, and masculinity studies as well as Hispanic cultures and literatures.

Homer and the Poetics of Gesture is the first book of its kind to consider the epic formula in terms that are gestural as well as verbal. Drawing on studies from multiple disciplines, including movement theory, dance studies, phenomenology, and early film, it suggests new approaches for interpreting the relationship between repetition and embodiment in Homer. Through a series of dynamic close readings, Purves argues that the deep-seated habits and gestures of epic bodies are instrumental to our understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey, especially insofar as they attune us to the kinetic structures and sensibilities that shape the meaning of the poems. Each of the chapters isolates a scene in which a specific action, posture, or gesture (falling, running, leaping, standing, and reaching) emerges from the background of its other iterations in order to make larger claims about its poetic significance within the epics as a whole. Beginning from the premise that gestures are shared between characters and often identically repeated within the poems' formulaic system, the book reconsiders long-standing arguments about Homeric agency and character by focusing on those moments when a gesture diverges from its expected course, redirecting the plot or drawing the poem in new and surprising directions. Homer and the Poetics of Gesture not only affords new insights into the nature of epic repetition and poetic originality but also reveals unnoticed connections between Homeric structure and technique and the embodied habits and movements of the characters within the poems.

What are the points of contact between the study of language and the study of history? What are the possibilities for collaboration between linguists and historians, and what prevents it? This volume, the proceedings of an international conference held at the University of Bristol in April 2009, presents twenty-two articles by linguists and historians, exploring the relationship between the fields theoretically, conceptually and in practice. Contributions focus on a variety of European and American languages, in historical periods from the Middle Ages to the present day. Key themes at the intersection of these two disciplines are the standardization and classification of languages, the social and demographic history of medieval and early modern Europe, the study of language and history 'from below', and the function of language in modern politics. The value of interdisciplinary collaboration is demonstrated in a wide-ranging set of case studies, on topics including language contact in Northern and Central Europe, the relationship between peninsular and transatlantic Spanish, and new approaches to the recent histories of Nicaragua, Luxembourg and Bulgaria. The volume seeks out the interdependencies between the two fields and asks why exchanges between linguists and historians remain the exception rather than the rule.

This book focuses on Cuban and Cuban-American crime fiction of the 1990s and early twenty-first century. Contemporary authors, writing in both English and Spanish, have created new hybrid forms of the crime fiction genre that explore the problematic cultural interaction between Cuba and the United States. Through an analysis of the work of writers such as Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Jose Latour and Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, the author investigates issues which include the oppression of the individual by the state within Cuba, constructions of masculinity and femininity, and the problems facing Cuban immigrants entering the United States. The author demonstrates how contemporary writers have been influenced both by the American hard-boiled crime fiction genre and by the legacy of the socialist detective fiction that was promoted in Cuba by the Castro regime in the 1970s. By focusing on works produced both within and outside of Cuba, the book taps into wider debates concerning the concept of post-nationality. The cultural fluidity that characterizes these new variants of crime fiction calls into question traditional boundaries between national literatures and cultures.

This multi-authored volume offers the first extensive exploration of cultural memory in Portugal and Spain, two countries that are normally studied in isolation from one another due to linguistic divergences. The book contains an important theoretical survey of cultural memory today and a comparative analysis of the historical background influencing studies of memory in the Iberian Peninsula. It includes the work of eleven specialists on contemporary Spanish and Portuguese history, culture and literature and establishes a series of parallel themes that lace the chapters together: resistance; literary and popular representations of the figure of the dictator; gender; intergenerational links and changing paradigms of war stories; and the performance of memory. The essays gathered here will be of interest to scholars of both national cultures as well as those concerned with issues of memory, trauma and the historical legacy of war and dictatorship.

Narrating the Portuguese Diaspora presents a variety of perspectives on the Portuguese diaspora, from literature to identity discourse to biography and autobiography. The book is divided into three parts: reading literary identities within and without borders; constructing/constructed extra-literary identities at home and abroad; and literary ethnic voices from the North American diaspora and beyond. The 22 texts presented in this volume highlight the diasporic themes and backgrounds upon which the scope of the scholarly texts - as well as the personal contributions of short stories, poetry, interviews, and autobiographical memory - can be interwoven in a narrative identity construction.

This book is a collection of essays developed from the meetings of the 'Poetics of Resistance' network in Leeds (2008) and Santiago de Compostela (2009). The volume contains contributions from an international group of researchers and cultural producers, who are committed to the activation, promotion and analysis of counter-hegemonic practices both in the development and transmission of knowledge and in the emancipatory tools of cultural production. The essays in the collection are written by scholars, activists and artists from around the world and concern subjects as diverse as poetry, film, philosophy, literary theory, plastic arts and television. The relationship between cultural production and resistance lies at the heart of the book's concerns. Creativity and its manifestations in art, cultural production and knowledge production are a vital resource for a type of resistance that draws upon the resolve and contribution of the individual to the same degree that it emphasizes the importance of collective reflection and action. The interaction between artistic production, emancipation and resistance therefore cannot be reduced to a commitment to particular ideologies as expressed in art or writing. Rather, the poetics of resistance and emancipation are produced through the negotiation of the subjective and the collective, of reflection and action, and of cultural practices and ideologies. The volume contains contributions in English and in Spanish.

The Fifth International Workshop on Balto-Slavic Accentology took place in 2009 at the Silesian University in Opava (Czech Republic). This volume contains papers presented at the workshop. The papers treat thematically various aspects of Baltic and Slavic prosodic development as well as provide synchronic descriptions of individual Baltic and Slavic languages and their dialects.

This book brings together twelve specially commissioned essays that showcase current research on Spanish Republican exile theatre and performance, including work by some of the foremost scholars in the field. Covering a range of periods, geographical locations and theatrical phenomena, the essays are united by the common question of what it means to 'stage exile', exploring the relationship between space, identity and performance in order to excavate the place of theatre in Spanish Republican exile production. Each chapter takes a particular case study as a starting point in order to assess the place of a particular text, practitioner or performance within Hispanic theatre tradition and then goes on to examine the case study's relationship with the specific sociocultural context in which it was located and/or produced. The authors investigate wider issues concerning the recovery and performability of these documentary traces, addressing their position within the contemporary debate over historical and cultural memory, their relationship to the contemporary stage, the insights they offer into the experience and performance of exile, and their contribution to contemporary configurations of identity and community in the Hispanic world. Through this commitment to interdisciplinary debate, the volume offers a new and invigorating reimagination of twentieth-century Hispanic theatre from the margins.

Perhaps no classical writer has been so consistently in vogue as Horace. Famous in his own lifetime as a close associate of the Emperor Octavian, to whom he dedicated several odes, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 BC) has never really been out of fashion. Petrarch, for example, modelled his letters on Horace's innovative Epistles, while also borrowing from his Roman forebear in composing his own Italian sonnets. The echo of Horace's voice can be found in almost every genre of medieval literature. And in later periods, this influence and popularity if anything increased. Yet, as Paul Allen Miller shows, while Horace may justifiably be called the poet for all seasons he is also in the end an enigma. His elusive, ironic contrariness is perhaps the true secret of his success. A cultured man of letters, he fought on the losing side of the Battle of Philippi (42 BC). A staunch Republican, he ended up eagerly (some said too eagerly) promoting the cause of Julio-Claudian imperialism. Viewed as the acme of Roman literary civilization, he was shaped by his Athens education at Plato's famous Academy. This new introduction reveals Horace in all his paradoxical genius and complexity.

The 2006 discovery of the Old Saxon Heliand manuscript fragment (MS L) in Leipzig is conspicuous. Besides its proximity to Wittenberg, the Leipzig University Library - site of the discovery - was first dedicated by Martin Luther in 1545. Given this relationship between the Reformer and the discovery location, it seems possible that the Reformer once had access to an original version of the Old Saxon Heliand, perhaps as an aid in his efforts to render Biblical Hebraisms into vernacular German idioms at a time of budding German nationalism. Indeed, long before the Old Saxon epic received the name by which it is currently known, rumors arose about Luther's possession of an ancient vernacular Germanic Bible with a Latin preface. Even so, the source and age of these rumors are enigmatic. Were these rumors merely a myth created by later Protestants to counter Rome's denunciation of Luther as a heretic? Following the trail of the rumors' sources, Luther's Heliand untangles historical relationships between the builders of the Leipzig University Library and several of their students - all men who comprised Luther's innermost circle of Reformation thinkers. In their student notes, letters to colleagues, and printed diatribes against the Church and the Empire, these men recorded vital hints regarding the timing and location of their own discovery of the ancient Germanic Bible. Dating of these published accounts indicates that already several years prior to its dedication by Luther, the fledgling Leipzig University Library housed a medieval codex with features identical to those of the extant Old Saxon Heliand manuscripts, in particular MS L.

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE ANGLO-HELLENIC LEAGUE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2022 'Peter Fiennes's road trip around Greece [is] engagingly described' Mary Beard, TLS 'Fiennes is a brilliant and generous guide through Greece' Observer 'A wonderful... really profound meditation on what it means to hope... a gorgeous excursion into Greece and across the centuries on an environmental quest' BBC Radio 4 Open Book Book of the Year choice by Anita Roy What do the Greek myths mean to us today? It's now a golden age for these tales - they crop up in novels, films and popular culture. But what's the modern relevance of Theseus, Hera and Pandora? Were these stories ever meant for children? And what's to be seen now at the places where heroes fought and gods once quarrelled? Peter Fiennes travels to the sites of some of the most famous Greek myths, on the trail of hope, beauty and a new way of seeing what we have done to our world. Fiennes walks through landscapes - stunning and spoiled - on the trail of dancing activists and Arcadian shepherds, finds the 'most beautiful beach in Greece', consults the Oracle, and loses himself in the cities, remote villages and ruins of this storied land.

(Re)Considering Blackness in Contemporary Afro-Brazilian (Con)Texts critically interrogates the issue of Blackness in Brazil under the lens of cultural studies - broadly defined to include utterances on transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. From a multidisciplinary perspective, this collection of scholarly articles queries the notions of national and racial identity and ambivalence, through critical analysis of contemporary (mid-twentieth century to the present) Brazilian cultural materiality, including literature, religion, film/video and theatrical production, and cultural anthropological manifestations. The book's purpose is to understand how multiethnic nations, such as Brazil, negotiate issues of Blackness in contemporary contexts. All of the contributing authors are leading Brazilian scholars in the areas of race, gender, theatre, music, literature, film, and religion studies. By concentrating on how these disciplines and ideologies relate to matters concerning Blackness in the construction of identities in Brazil, this book will be of significant value to scholars in the areas of Brazilian studies, Latin American studies, interdisciplinary studies, cultural studies, and African Diaspora studies.

Introduzione al commercio italiano: An Introduction to Business Italian, now in its second edition, represents a new approach in teaching Italian with a focus. Readings are prepared or selected for their emphasis on business and social life. Comprehension questions and communicative exercises of a functional nature present the student with a situation that he or she must resolve. The exercises are varied and stimulating, hence fostering progressive and positive development of oral and written skills. This text meets the needs of today's communication-oriented student and offers materials which will enhance student interaction. Introduzione al commercio italiano will provide the student with the necessary skills to enter the business world of today.

Il presente volume contiene una raccolta di saggi dedicati alla figura e all'opera di Piergiuseppe Scardigli (Altopascio 1933 - Firenze 2008), insigne docente di filologia germanica e geniale studioso del mondo germanico antico e medievale, apprezzato in Italia e all'estero. Il libro comprende una serie di contributi che trattano aspetti e problematiche delle letterature e delle lingue germaniche antiche, medievali e moderne, prescelti tra quelli cari al dedicatario. Alcuni di questi saggi traggono spunto da indicazioni fornite dallo stesso Scardigli, altri seguono le linee di pensiero da lui tracciate o fanno un bilancio della ricerca in campi nei quali egli ha profuso il suo impegno scientifico, come la lingua, la letteratura e la civilta gotica, i longobardismi in italiano e il germanico nell'ambito dell'indeuropeo. Il libro contiene 16 contributi in italiano, quattro in tedesco e tre in inglese ed e corredato da una bibliografia completa e particolareggiata di tutti gli scritti di Piergiuseppe Scardigli, anche di ambiti diversi da quello germanico.

"The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and it was the easiest book I knew and the best suited by its content to my tender age." -Michel de Montaigne The Lover's Assistant; or, New Art of Love (1760) is an updated translation of Ovid's Ars Amatoria; or, The Art of Love (2 AD) by English satirist Henry Fielding. Divided into three books, Ars Amatoria; or, The Art of Love was immensely popular-if a little controversial-in its time, and has survived numerous charges of indecency over the centuries. For the modern reader, it should prove a surprisingly relatable work on intimacy from an author of the ancient world. Fielding's translation, of the first book alone, remains true to Ovid's Latin while updating its examples and historical context for the contemporary English reader. At times serious, at others humorous, The Lover's Assistant; or, New Art of Love uses a mix of down-to-earth examples and relatable references to mythology in order to offer salient advice for the reader longing for love. Maintaining much of Ovid's content, Fielding replaces the context of the poem-ancient Rome-with that of his contemporary England. Topics include etiquette, remembering birthdays, avoiding unhealthy jealousy, being open to older and younger lovers, and nurturing honesty. With his wry wit and clear-eyed sense of English aristocratic life, Fielding-who is seen as a pioneer of English literature for his work, including the comic novel Tom Jones (1749)-provides a loyal reinterpretation of Ovid's classic study of romance between men and women. The Lover's Assistant; or, New Art of Love, although frequently tongue-in-cheek, is an earnest and effective attempt to enlighten and encourage its readers to partake-responsibly-in one of life's greatest pleasures. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Ovid's The Lover's Assistant; or, New Art of Love is a classic work of Roman literature reimagined for modern readers.

This volume presents a number of close readings of Latin American literary and cultural phenomena. The overarching theme of the collection is the revision of the accepted view of Latin American national identities as represented in twentieth-century Latin American literature and culture. The book examines the complexity of national identities forged among political crises, economic upheaval and intercultural influences. The essays included here focus upon internal contradictions of national identity and the factors contributing to this discord. Among these are the nature of the Latin American intellectual, Latin American modernity and exile, and the psychological underpinning of the re-creation of history. Some of the chapters challenge the existing theoretical framework for Latin American literary analysis by employing non-literary theories to analyse hitherto overlooked textual anomalies. The book is a Festschrift for Professor Peter R. Beardsell, reflecting the importance of his contribution to Latin American literary and cultural studies.

One of the most outstanding properties of Russian postmodernist fiction is its reliance on metafictional devices which foreground aspects of the writing, reading or structure, and draw attention to the constructed nature of fiction writing. Some common metafictional strategies include overt commentary on the process of writing, the presence of an obtrusive narrator, dehumanization of character, total breakdown of temporal and spatial organization and the undermining of specific literary conventions. This book examines the most representative postmodernist texts and addresses the following questions: How widespread is the use of metafiction in contemporary Russian literature? What are its most pronounced forms? What is the function of metafictional devices? How innovative are Russian postmodernist writers in their use of metafictional techniques? This study reveals the unique contribution of postmodernist writers to the development of Russian literature through their systematic use of metafiction and their bold experimentation with new metafictional devices on all the principal levels of the text, including narration, plot, characterization, setting and language.

This collection of essays can be situated in a development that has been underway in translation studies since the early 1990s, namely the increasing focus on translators themselves: translators as embodied agents, not as instruments or conduits. The volume deals with different kinds of emotion and different levels of the translation process. For example, one essay examines the broad socio-cultural context, and others focus on the social event enacted in translation, or on the translator's own performative act. Some of the essays also problematize the linguistic challenges posed by the cultural distance of the emotions embodied in the texts to be translated. The collection is broad in scope, spanning a variety of languages, cultures and periods, as well as different media and genres. The essays bring diverse questions to a topic rarely directly addressed and map out important areas of enquiry: the translator as an emotional cultural intermediary, the importance of emotion to cognitive meaning, the place of emotion in linguistic reception, and translation itself as a trope whereby emotion can be expressed.

Inspired by the work of their colleague David Gascoigne, a group of scholars from the UK and France examine in this book the narrative strategies of some of the most interesting and important French writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Stretching chronologically from 1905 to 2005, the volume examines a wide variety of prose genres, from pornography to Bildungsroman to magic realism, as well as poetry. Michel Tournier figures in several of the contributions, emerging as something of a touchstone for many of the thematic preoccupations that are common throughout the period: values and authority, self and other, identity, spirituality, migration and exile, sexuality, the body, violence and war, and language. The authors also examine the flourishing of intertextuality, as well as the use of traditional forms, such as mythical structures and the 'robinsonade', to undermine authoritative 'metarecits'. Probing these themes and forms, and their metamorphoses across 100 years, the essays demonstrate a striking degree of continuity, linking writers as different as Apollinaire and Houellebecq or Valery and Fleutiaux, and highlight the difficulty of dividing the period neatly into chronologically ordered categories labelled 'modern' or 'postmodern'.

Crossing Cultures/Cruzando culturas focuses on the creation of literary works and how these works reflect the life experiences of the authors. The purpose of this book is to inspire young Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Latino people by demonstrating that education is the key to life through the example of authors who have become successful in spite of their modest beginnings. Their love for education and their drive to improve themselves has turned them into nationally and internationally known authors recognized by major publishing companies. Their books in English have been translated quickly into other languages. The interviews reveal not only the authors' origins but also how they were able to overcome difficulties and challenges in their lives. The interviewed novelists include Mario Bencastro, Aristeo Brito, Rolando J. Diaz, Graciela Limon, and Demetria Martinez. Interviews conducted in English with Mexican-American writers are included in their original English version along with a proper Spanish translation. This book comprises a valuable resource for university students who are pursuing a degree in Spanish, Chicano studies, and ethnic studies that facilitates understanding the various dynamics of the Hispanic experience through literature. Crossing Cultures/Cruzando culturas se enfoca en la creacion de obras literarias y como estas obras reflejan las experiencias de los autores. El proposito de este libro es inspirar a los jovenes Mexico-Americanos, Hispanos y Latinos al demostrar que la educacion es la llave que les abre las puertas del triunfo en la vida. El ejemplo de los autores que han sido exitosos a pesar de sus raices humildes les estimulara a salir adelante. El amor por la educacion de estos escritores y su motivacion para mejorarse los ha convertido en autores reconocidos nacionalmente e internacionalmente por las editoriales mas reconocidas del mundo entero. Sus libros en ingles han sido traducidos a otras lenguas rapidamente. Las entrevistas revelan no solamente los origenes de los escritores pero como lograron vencer las dificultades y desafios en su vida. Los novelistas entrevistados incluyen a Mario Bencastro, Aristeo Brito, Rolando J. Diaz, Graciela Limon y Demetria Martinez. Las entrevistas realizadas en ingles con los escritores Mexico-Americanos estan incluidas en su forma original en ingles acompanadas por una traduccion al espanol. Este libro comprende un recurso valioso para los investigadores universitarios que buscan especializarse en literatura o historia latina, chicana, o estudios etnicos que facilitan el entendimiento de las dinamicas variadas de la experiencia hispana a traves de la literatura.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the writing of Monika Maron. Her biography charts a complex relationship with the GDR state, from initial ideological identification to sustained, radical rejection. Situating its reflections on her work against the backdrop of a changing critical landscape, this analysis takes account of the re-contextualisation of her writing necessitated by the collapse of the GDR. The author charts the development of a number of seminal themes in Maron's oeuvre. The search for an authentic form of expression in her earliest texts gave way to a focus on the writing and the rewriting of history. The demise of the political system in 1989 led to an exploration in her work of more intimate themes. Maron's post-Wende writing makes an important East German contribution to debates on memory transmission and generational forgetting. Her most recent novels are concerned with the rupture and the ultimate refashioning of biographies in a post-GDR age. Rereading her texts in a post-Wende light, the author explores the complexity of Maron's relationship with the state from which she emerged and demonstrates how this complexity manifests itself in her writing before and after 1989. This study offers new perspectives on Maron's work and illuminates the significance of her contribution to contemporary German literature.

Cities are both real and imaginary places whose identity is dependent on their distinctive heritage: a network of historically transmitted cultural resources. The essays in this volume, which originate from a lecture series at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, explore the complex and multi-layered identities of European cities. Themes that run through the essays include: nostalgia for a grander past; location between Eastern and Western ideologies, religions and cultures; and the fluidity and palimpsest quality of city identity. Not only does the book provide different thematic angles and a variety of approaches to the investigation of city identity, it also emphasizes the importance of diverse cultural components. The essays presented here discuss cultural forms as various as music, architecture, literature, journalism, philosophy, television, film, myths, urban planning and the naming of streets.

Ramon del Valle-Inclan (1866-1936) was undoubtedly the most controversial literary figure of his generation. Whilst his genius was recognised by fellow writers, the reading public was slow to accept his work, and his theatre taxed directors and audiences alike. One of the harshest criticisms levelled against him concerned his use of repetition. This study shows how the reuse, recycling and development of material becomes one of the hallmarks of Valle-Inclan's writing during the first three decades of his literary career, linking one genre with another and blurring the borders between different aesthetics. The repetition of themes and motifs, characters and stylistic devices reveals an underlying interdependence among works that on the surface appear unconnected or even contradictory. Many of Valle-Inclan's works have been studied in isolation, rather than as pieces of a whole. This book examines the elements that provide significant links in his writing between 1889 and 1922, most of which shares the common backdrop of Galicia, and demonstrates that apparently unrelated works are part of a larger picture. Despite changes in perspective and genre, there are constants that relate individual works to those that precede and follow, creating a unifying pattern of continuity.

This volume, which takes its title from an international conference held at the University of Cambridge in November 2006, aims to shed new light on Schnitzler's oeuvre and his period by focusing on his as yet largely unpublished literary remains, his 'hidden manuscripts'. Among the key topics covered in this collection are: the reconstruction of the adventurous rescue of the manuscripts from Vienna in 1938 and a description of their current locations; an overview of the author's life, in its historical context, on the basis of such private documents as his diaries and letters; the plethora of existing variants, both published and unpublished, and their usefulness for our understanding of Schnitzler's work, from the Anatol cycle to the 'scandalous' Reigen - in the light of the discovery of its original manuscript - and Schnitzler's planned (but never completed) work on the historical figure of Emperor Joseph II; Schnitzler's difficult relationship with one of the most influential journalists of his time, Karl Kraus, and his literary friendship with a close but hitherto neglected contemporary, Gustav Schwarzkopf; the network of intertextual references 'hidden' in the revolutionary monologue novella Lieutenant Gustl against the background of Hermann Bahr's modernist theory of literature; and finally, Schnitzler's 'hidden legacy' in our own epoch. This book contains contributions in both English and German.