This volume offers a critical study of a representative selection of Latin American women writers who have made major contributions to all literary genres and represent a wide range of literary perspectives and styles. This volume offers a critical study of a representative selection of Latin American women writers who have made major contributions to all literary genres and represent a wide range of literary perspectives and styles. Many of these women have attained the highest literary honours: Gabriela Mistral won the Nobel Prize in 1945; Clarice Lispector attracted the critical attention of theorists working mainly outside the Hispanic area; others have made such telling contributions to particular strands of literature that their names are immediately evocative of specific currents or styles. Elena Poniatowska is associated with testimonial writing; Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel are known for the magical realism of their texts; others, such as Juana de Ibarbourou and Laura Restrepo remain relatively unknown despite their contributions to erotic poetry and to postcolonial prose fiction respectively. The distinctiveness of this volume lies in its attention to writers from widely differing historical and social contexts and to the diverse theoretical approaches adopted by the authors. Brigida M. Pastor teaches Latin American literature and film at the University of Glasgow . Her publications include Fashioning Cuban Feminism and Beyond, El discurso de Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda: Identidad Femenina y Otredad; and Discursos Caribenhos: Historia, Literatura e Cinema Lloyd Hughes Davies teaches Spanish American Literature at Swansea University. His publications include Isabel Allende, La casa de los espiritus and Projections of Peronism in Argentine Autobiography, Biography and Fiction.

In 1842, a young Cuban woman living in Spain published a novel that was so passionate and boldly feminist in content, it did not appear in her homeland until more than seventy years later. Two Women tells the riveting tale of a tumultuous love triangle among three wealthy Spaniards: a brilliant, young, widowed countess named Catalina, her inexperienced lover Carlos, and his pure and virtuous wife Luisa. The two women start out as rivals, yet in an insightful twist, they ultimately find they are both victims of a patriarchal society that ruthlessly pits women against each other. As the story builds to its thrilling climax, they confront the stark truth that in nineteenth-century Spain, women have few paths to a happy ending.   This first English translation of the novel captures the lyrical romanticism of its prose and includes a scholarly introduction to the work and its author, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, a pioneering feminist and anti-slavery activist who based the character of Catalina on her own experience. Two Women is a searing indictment of the stern laws and customs governing marriage in the Hispanic world, brought to life in a spellbinding, tragic love story.

The proceedings of the Second International Conference on [title] held in Barcelona, Spain, September/October 1991, comprise papers on topics in ocean circulation, wave structure interaction, water quality and biological modeli harbor resonance, coastal circulation, random waves description, sedimen