This book offers a comprehensive account of modern Spanish culture, tracing its dramatic and often unexpected development from its beginnings after the Revolution of 1868 to the present day. Specially-commissioned essays by leading experts provide analyses of the historical and political background of modern Spain, the culture of the major autonomous regions (notably Castile, Catalonia, and the Basque Country), and the country's literature: narrative, poetry, theatre and the essay. Spain's recent development is divided into three main phases: from 1868 to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; the period of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco; and the post-Franco arrival of democracy. The concept of 'Spanish culture' is investigated, and there are studies of Spanish painting and sculpture, architecture, cinema, dance, music, and the modern media. A chronology and guides to further reading are provided, making the volume an invaluable introduction to the politics, literature and culture of modern Spain.

Publisher Description

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.

First published in 1961, A New History of Spanish Literature has been a much-used resource for generations of students. The book has now been completely revised and updated to include extensive discussion of Spanish literature of the past thirty years. Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, both longtime students of the literature, write authoritatively about every Spanish literary work of consequence. From the earliest extant writings though the literature of the 1980s, they draw on the latest scholarship. Unlike most literary histories, this one treats each genre fully in its own section, thus making it easy for the reader to follow the development of poetry, the drama, the novel, other prose fiction, and nonfiction prose. Students of the first edition have found this method particularly useful. However, this approach does not preclude study of the literature by period. A full index easily enables the reader to find all references to any individual author or book. Another noteworthy feature of the book, and one omitted from many books of this kind, is the comprehensive attention the authors accord nonfiction prose, including, for example, essays, philosophy, literary criticism, politics, and historiography. Encyclopedic in scope yet concise and eminently readable, the revised edition of A New History of Spanish Literature bids fair to be the standard reference well into the next century.

This collection explores the role of memoria histórica in its broadest sense, bringing together studies of narrative, theatre, visual expressions, film, television, and radio that provide a comprehensive overview of contemporary cultural production in Spain in this regard. Employing a wide range of critical approaches to works that examine, comment on, and recreate events and epochs from the civil war to the present, the essays gathered here bring together research and intercultural memory to investigate half a century of cultural production, ranging from “high culture” to more popular productions, such as television series and graphic novels. A testament to the conflation of multiple silencings – be they of the defeated, victims of trauma or women – this project is about hearing the voices of the unheard and recovering their muted past.

This study examines the concepts and role of women in selected Spanish discourses and literary texts from the late fifteenth to seventeenth centuries from the perspective of feminist disability theories, concluding that paradoxically, femininity, bodily afflictions, and mental instability characterized the new literary heroes at the very time Spain was at the apex of its imperial power.

A paperback of Gerald Brenan's account of Spanish literature from Roman times to the present, which has won praise from every quarter for its original and enthusiastic approach, its wide-ranging scholarship and elegant style. First published in paperback in 1976, this book remains a useful study of Spanish literary history.

This rich sampling of Spanish poetry, prose, and drama includes more than seventy selections from the works of more than forty writers, from the anonymous author of the great medieval epic The Poem of the Cid to such 20th-century masters as Miguel de Unamuno. The original Spanish text of each work appears with an excellent English translation on the facing page. The anthology begins with carefully selected passages from such medieval classics as The Book of Good Love by the Archpriest of Hita and Spain's first great prose work, the stories of Count Lucanor by Juan Manuel. Works by writers of the Spanish Renaissance follow, among them poems by the Marqués de Santillana and excerpts from the great dialogue novel La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas. Spain's Golden age, ca. 1550-1650, an era which produced its great writers, is represented by the mystical poems of St. Teresa, passages from Cervantes' Don Quixote and scenes from Tirso de Molina's The Love-Rogue, the drama that introduced the character of Don Juan to the world, along with other well-known works of the period. A cavalcade of stirring poems, plays and prose selections represent Spain's rare literary achievements of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The translations were chosen for their accuracy and fidelity to the originals. Among the translators are Lord Byron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edward FitzGerald and John Masefield. As a treasury of masterly writing, as a guide for the student who wants to improve his or her language skills and as a compact survey of Spanish literature, this excellent anthology will provide hours of pleasure and fruitful study.