1616: Anuario de Literatura Comparada

Ancient Insights in Modern Discourse: Literary Topoi in the Pursuit of Peace

Zahra Nazemi — 2024-11-28

This study explores a significant aspect in the analysis of literary topoi, which involves connecting texts from diverse cultural, historical, and literary backgrounds. Building upon a previous investigation into the position of topoi in comparative literature studies, the aim of the present research is to illustrate how these recurring concepts can bridge texts from different contexts. This facilitates a meaningful exchange among readers, enhancing the comprehension of shared ideas and potentially contributing to peace and harmony. Furthermore, this study reveals that the presence of topoi extends beyond the realm of literature and can be found in diverse cultural mediums such as television or cinema. To support these arguments, the analysis focuses on the portrayal of «madness of love» in an Iranian television series called Shahrzad (2015), directed by Hassan Fathi, and in the American play Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) by Eugene O’Neill. By tracing their origins to Shakespeare’s Othello, itself highly influenced by western classical literature, this analysis highlights the enduring impact of topoi across different periods and cultural contexts.

Gothic Language (Feminine) and Framed Narratives in The Weir, by Conor McPherson

José Manuel Correoso Rodenas — 2024-11-28

In 1997, The Weir would become the first major success of young Irish dramatist Conor McPherson. Using the model of embedded narrations, McPherson adds a new dimension to the scene. As it happened in gothic novels, women will become the nexus between the supernatural and the quotidian. A fairy, an old lady with alcoholic tendencies, a molested girl, and a rural schoolmistress will mark the milestones of this path. Through the character of Valerie, it will also be appreciated how women will leave their traditional role as victims, which will be substituted for a new role as narrators. This article has a double purpose. On one hand, I am to analyze how the female characters articulate the play; on the other hand, I also aim to discern the mixture of drama and narration offered by the author.

Emotions and Cognitive Poetics: A Round-Trip Passage to India

Francisco Javier Rubio Orecilla — 2024-11-28

In the 20th century, Comparative Literature and Cognitive Poetics encountered classical Indian literary theory, based on a systematic classification of the states of mind that manifest themselves as the aesthetic experience of an emotion (rasa) in the viewer or listener; this emotion is actualized through the suggestiveness (dhvani) of the text. This paper presents a critical analysis of some recent approaches to ancient Sanskrit Poetics, considering its historical development. It offers various models for analyzing of the emotions triggered by a literary work and their relationship to the text and its aesthetic enjoyment, such as some postulates of Cognitive Poetics. Intercultural dialogue will be fruitful if if literary criticism is approached through a contextualized understanding of respective cultural traditions.

Rethinking the Heroes of Antiquity: Flash and the Classical Reception

Alejandro Cabrera Martínez — 2024-11-28

This paper offers an analysis on the connections between the Classical World and American superhero comic books. The study focuses on one character in particular, The Flash, who, as one of the first superheroes to inaugurate the genre, allows us to delve into the use of the Greco-Latin world in the founding of the medium. The work focuses on the two areas on which a medium such as the comic book is based: on the one hand, it looks at the aesthetic aspect of the character, on the other, it offers a narratological analysis of his stories. Both show important connections with the Classical World.

Winstanley, William. El paladín de Essex. Trad. por Pedro Javier Pardo y María Losada Friend. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca - Instituto Cervantes, 2022, 289 pp. El paladín de Essex, de William Winstanley: una reescritura didactista del Quijote entre lo caballeresco y lo picaresco.

Jorge Arroita — 2024-11-28

González Iglesias, José Antonio y Guillermo Aprile (eds.). La felicidad en la Historia. Representaciones literarias de la felicidad desde la Antigüedad al presente. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2023, 270 pp.

Antonio Cascón Dorado — 2024-11-29

reseña

Alfaro, Margarita; Lalagianni, Vassiliki, Polycandrioti, Ourania (coords.). Voyage et idéologie. Les politiques de la mobilité (Orient, Afrique, Asie – xxe siècle). Montrouge: Éditions du Bourg, 2022, 483 pp.

Beatriz Cristina Mangada Cañas — 2024-11-28

Rigal Aragón, Margarita y González Moreno, Fernando (eds.). Reflexiones en torno al comparativismo en Literatura y Arte. Tendencias clásicas y modernas. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2022, 348 pp.

Daniele Arciello — 2024-11-28

Arias, Rosario y Zaro, Juan Jesús (eds.). Género, heterodoxia y traducción. Difusión del ocultismo en España y en el ámbito europeo (1840-1920). Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2023, vi + 262 pp.

Carlos Sánchez Pérez — 2024-11-29

reseña

Losada, José Manuel. Mitocrítica cultural. Una definición del mito. Madrid: Akal, 2022, 828 pp.

Laura Castillo Bel — 2024-11-28

Review of the volume on cultural mythocriticism by José Manuel Losada: Mitocrítica cultural. Una definición del mito.

Urraco-Solanilla, Mariano; Mesa-Villar, José María y Filhol, Benoît (eds.). Imágenes distópicas. Representaciones culturales. Madrid: Catarata, 2022, 288 pp.

Luis Unceta Gómez — 2024-11-29

reseña

Andrade Boué, Pilar y Correoso Rodenas, José Manuel (Coords.) Estudios de Literatura Comparada 4: Misoginia y filoginia en el discurso literario europeo de la Edad Media. Teatro y Literatura. Literatura y animales. Ed. selgyc, 2024, pp. 241.

Gema Martínez Ruiz — 2024-11-29

Memory and Trauma in Spanish and German Literature

Patricia Cifre-Wibrow — 2024-11-29

The Memory of the International Brigades in the European Literature

Maria Luisa Siguan Boehmer — 2024-11-28

The text proposes an analysis of the narrative, both testimonial and fictional, that has shaped the memory of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War over the course of time up to the present day. It studies texts by the combatants themselves and later generations, autobiographical and testimonial documents, autofictions and novels up to the present day. It focuses on the study of the mechanisms of writing from memory and post-memory, the problematic changing relationship between memory and narration, between document, testimony and fiction. The works studied are by Alfred Kantorowitz, Gustav Regler, George Orwell, Ilsa Barea Kulcsar, Moisés Broggi, Erich Hackl, Jordi Martí Rueda, Helena Janeczek, Jordi Cantavelles, Maria Barbal, John Christopher Sansom and Marc Arnold Wiederkehr.

Trauma and Tradition. The Challenge of Literary Genealogies after Exile and the Shoah

Linda Maeding — 2024-11-28

Trauma and tradition are two concepts with which literatures of exile and of the Shoah must confront themselves – because of the violent nature of the historical conditions that are their very raison d’être and because of the cultural orphanhood involved. They thus pose serious challenges for their authors. This problem is exacerbated in the attempts of Spanish and German exiles to inscribe themselves in a literary tradition that gives a past to their own extraterritorial location. The marked tendency of exile and survivor literature towards a memoiristic writing can thus be linked to the difficult relationship between historical trauma and literary tradition. To address this issue, my contribution examines a series of literary genealogies in German and Spanish texts, elaborated from the traumatic experiences of the 1930s and 1940s in order to resignify one’s own literary production.

Repressed Memory: Mutilated Literature under Political Repression

Johanna Vollmeyer — 2024-11-28

Restrictive cultural policies are very frequent in dictatorial systems such as Franco’s Spain or the German Democratic Republic. Measures of restriction and suppression manifested themselves mainly in acts of censorship or in the persecution of cultural producers, sometimes with devastating consequences, such as prison sentences, forced labor or even death sentences. The works of ‘reluctant’ authors were mutilated, suppressed and eradicated from the cultural landscape of both countries, resulting in a deformation of their cultural heritage, which forms an integral part of their memory and present identity.

However, the custody of documentation from these periods, whether through existing or newly created archives, can offer a relevant opportunity to rescue at least part of this heritage from oblivion and thus create a storage memory that has the potential to enter into circulation again. This way, biased discourses about the past and the literary history of both societies can be completed or corrected.

Present-Pasts in Spanish and German Postmemory Narratives.

Patricia Cifre Wibrow — 2024-11-28

Here we will analyse the articulation of the present-past relations in German and Spanish literature of memory. The aim is to show that the cultural turn of memory that took place in Spain around 2007 is bringing these two literary traditions closer together, one of the shared elements being the post-memorial perspective, which makes it possible to detect both discontinuities and genealogical continuities. This will be exemplified through the analysis of a series of family narratives that offer themselves to be interpreted through the notion of postmemory developed by Marianne Hirsch (2008): El jinete polaco (1995) by Antonio Muñoz Molina, A paso de cangrejo (2002) by Günter Grass, Tras la sombra de mi hermano (2003) by Uwe Timm and Lo que a nadie le importa (2014) by Sergio del Molino.

The Puzzle of Memory in Spain and in Germany: Retrospective Approaches to Childhood in Autobiographical or Autofictional Writings

Juan Manuel Martín Martín — 2024-11-28

Recalling the experiences of childhood or adolescence during convulsive times such as the Spanish Civil War or the Third Reich requires a considerable effort. It was not easy for the authors to find the right moment to do so, not only because of their personal circumstances but also because of the context that surrounded them. In both Spain and Germany, after 1939 and 1945 respectively, there were successive stages in which the way of looking at the past diverged. After reviewing some basic concepts, as well as the changing frameworks in each of the two countries, this article analyses the childhood and youthful memoirs mainly of Fernando Fernán-Gómez, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Tere Medina-Navascués and Ruth Klüger, relating them to those of other authors of their time who have also written autobiographical or autofictional works. Beyond the many differences, it is also possible to find analogies between them, not only in what they tell, but also in their need to wait many decades before they decided to write down what they had experienced.

Behind the Shadows. Javier Cercas and Uwe Timm against the Family Taboo of the Perpetrator Soldier

Maria Loreto Vilar Panella — 2024-11-28

The fate of a relative who belonged to the rebel army in the Spanish Civil War or to the Waffen-SS in the Second World War is, even today, a taboo subject. Focusing on the experience of the perpetrator soldier, and with a coinciding formal approach, are Javier Cercas’s Lord of All the Dead (2017) and Uwe Timm’s In My Brother’s Shadow (2003), the works discussed in this article. After considering the ethical-aesthetic function of two stories that interweave personal records with historical documents and literary references, the article explores the particularities of the metaautobiographical writing of Cercas and Timm in order to finally establish the parameters of their post-memoristic position with respect to the memoristic one of direct testimonies. The ultimate aim is to show how they manage to break the taboo.

Political Conflicts in Post-Dramatic Documentary Theatre. Cases from the Germanic and Spanish-Speaking Worlds

Arno Gimber — 2024-11-28

The dramatic genre, when performed publicly, serves as a unique medium for addressing political and social conflicts. It allows for a critical perspective that incorporates historical information and personal recollections of those involved. This is particularly prevalent in post-dramatic documentary theatre, where sometimes the protagonists themselves are brought on stage. Reflection on reality and authenticity in performance is a common denominator in contemporary theatre, despite the thematic differences between German-speaking countries and Spain.

Fernando Aramburu’s Los peces de la amargura: A Transnational and Multidirectional Dialogue

Rosa Pérez Zancas — 2024-11-28

This article focuses on the anthology Los peces de la amargura by Fernando Aramburu. It examines the effects of ETA terrorism on its victims from different perspectives. The main purpose of this study is to analyse the recurrent themes in the literature of memory that Aramburu uses to situate himself in the context of the transnational culture of memory of the recent past. To this end, we will draw on concepts such as ‘Multidirectional Memory’ and ‘The Implicated Subject’, developed by Michael Rothberg. Literary topoi will be explored, using German-language works that deal with the violence of Nazism and right-wing extremism, taking into account spatio-temporal differences and avoiding a ‘competition of victims’.