This study focuses upon the work of the Catalan woman poet Maria-Merce Marcal. It analyses the interaction between body and language in her first five books of poetry. Drawing on the Italian feminist thought of il pensiero della differenza sessuale, it examines the ways in which Marcal's poetic images display her Catalan feminine subjectivity, including the function of the poet, the space of poetry and the representation of love. It also explores the potentiality of the space of poetry to reconstruct female identity and reconfigure reality. In addition, it unravels the way in which the poet uses poetry to express the love for the other whilst also extending the boundaries of the self. The central concern is to bridge the fissure between female experience and universal precepts on the art of poetry through the predominance of an embodied and natural iconography. This study presents Marcal's poetic compositions within the international panorama of poetry and feminist studies and aims to open up new terrains of discussion in the field of language, body and writing.

This study focuses upon the work of the Catalan woman poet Maria-Mercè Marçal. It analyses the interaction between body and language in her first five books of poetry. Drawing on the Italian feminist thought of il pensiero della differenza sessuale, it examines the ways in which Marçal’s poetic images display her Catalan feminine subjectivity, including the function of the poet, the space of poetry and the representation of love. It also explores the potentiality of the space of poetry to reconstruct female identity and reconfigure reality. In addition, it unravels the way in which the poet uses poetry to express the love for the other whilst also extending the boundaries of the self. The central concern is to bridge the fissure between female experience and universal precepts on the art of poetry through the predominance of an embodied and natural iconography. This study presents Marçal’s poetic compositions within the international panorama of poetry and feminist studies and aims to open up new terrains of discussion in the field of language, body and writing.

This study focuses upon the work of the Catalan woman poet Maria-Merce Marcal. It analyses the interaction between body and language in her first five books of poetry. Drawing on the Italian feminist thought of il pensiero della differenza sessuale, it examines the ways in which Marcal's poetic images display her Catalan feminine subjectivity, including the function of the poet, the space of poetry and the representation of love. It also explores the potentiality of the space of poetry to reconstruct female identity and reconfigure reality. In addition, it unravels the way in which the poet uses poetry to express the love for the other whilst also extending the boundaries of the self. The central concern is to bridge the fissure between female experience and universal precepts on the art of poetry through the predominance of an embodied and natural iconography. This study presents Marcal's poetic compositions within the international panorama of poetry and feminist studies and aims to open up new terrains of discussion in the field of language, body and writing.

This volume helps us to understand that the current political disorders in Catalonia have deep cultural roots. It focuses on the rise of Catalan cultural, national and linguistic identity in the 20th century. What is happening in Catalonia? What lies behind its political conflicts? Catalan identity has been evolving for centuries, starting in early medieval ages (11th and 12lve centuries). It is not a modern phenomenon. The emergence of imperial Spain in the 16 c. and the French Ancien Régime in the 17 c. correlates with a decline of Catalan culture, which was politically absorbed by the Spanish state after the conquest of Barcelona in 1714. However, Catalan language and culture flourished again under the stimulus of the European Romantic Nationalism movement (known as the Renaixença in Catalonia). During the first Dictatorship (Primo de Rivera, 1923-1930), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the long Francoist era (1939-1975), Catalan language and culture were repressed, yet refurbished and reconstructed at the same time. This rise of a plural, complex, and non-homogeneous Catalan identity constitutes the subject matter of this volume. National conflicts that emerged later in the Spanish democratic state leant heavily on the life engagement and vital commitment experienced by the entrenched intellectual movements of the twentieth century in Catalonia, Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands. This book reveals the cultural and literary grassroots of these conflicts.

This title explores the rich literary history of Spain which resonates with contemporary debates on transnationalism and cultural diversity. It introduces readers to the ways in which Spanish literature has been read in and outside Spain explaining misconceptions, outlining insights of scholarship and suggesting new readings.

With this important new book, Susan Suleiman lays the foundation for a postmodern feminist poetics and theory of the avant-garde. She shows how the figure of Woman, as fantasy, myth, or metaphor, has functioned in the work of male avant-garde writers and artists of this century. Focusing also on women's avant-garde artistic practices, Suleiman demonstrates how to read difficult modern works in a way that reveals their political as well as their aesthetic impact. Suleiman directly addresses the subversive intent of avant-garde movements from Surrealism to postmodernism. Through her detailed readings of provocatively transgressive works by André Breton, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and others, Suleiman demonstrates the central role of the female body in the male erotic imagination and illuminates the extent to which masculinist assumptions have influenced modern art and theory. By examining the work of contemporary women avantgarde artists and theorists--including Hélène Cixous, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, Luce Irigaray, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Leonora Carrington, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and Cindy Sherman--Suleiman shows the political power of feminist critiques of patriarchal ideology, and especially emphasizes the power of feminist humor and parody. Central to Suleiman's revisionary theory of the avant-garde is the figure of the playful, laughing mother. True to the radically irreverent spirit of the historical avant-gardes and their postmodernist successors, Suleiman's laughing mother embodies the need for a link between symbolic innovation and political and social change.

This is the first collection of articles devoted entirely to less translated languages, a term that brings together well-known, widely used languages such as Arabic or Chinese, and long-neglected minority languages — with power as the key word at play. It starts with some views on English, the dominant language in Translation as elsewhere, considers the role of translation for minority languages — both a source of inequality and a means to overcome it —, takes a look at translation from less translated major languages and cultures, and ends up with a closer look at translation into Catalan, a paradigmatic case of less translated language, in a final section that includes a vindication of six prominent Catalan translators. Combining sound theoretical insight and accurate analysis of relevant case studies, the contributors to this collection make a convincing case for a more thorough examination of less translated languages within the field of Translation Studies.

Addressing religion and feminism on a global scale, this unprecedented book contains a nuanced and fine-tuned treatment of seven of the world's religions from a feminist perspective by leading women scholars. The fact that these authors share a dual but undivided commitment both to themselves as women and to their traditions as adherents imparts to their voices a prophetic quality, and if Mahatma Gandhi is to be believed, even scriptural value.

A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula is the second comparative history of a new subseries with a regional focus, published by the Coordinating Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association. As its predecessor for East-Central Europe, this two-volume history distances itself from traditional histories built around periods and movements, and explores, from a comparative viewpoint, a space considered to be a powerful symbol of inter-literary relations. Both the geographical pertinence and its symbolic condition are obviously discussed, when not even contested. Written by an international team of researchers who are specialists in the field, this history is the first attempt at applying a comparative approach to the plurilingual and multicultural literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. The aim of comprehensiveness is abandoned in favor of a diverse and extensive array of key issues for a comparative agenda. A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula undermines the primacy claimed for national and linguistic boundaries, and provides a geo-cultural account of literary inter-systems which cannot otherwise be explained.