ABSTRACT:
In this essay, I examine how the set of Japanese decorative items present in Benito Pé... more ABSTRACT:
In this essay, I examine how the set of Japanese decorative items present in Benito Pérez Galdós's La familia de León Roch (1878) elucidates a reformulation of the Krausist model of masculinity embodied by the novel's hero. Focusing on Buddhist imagery in the text, I explore how allusions to the Eastern religion provide a symbolic framework to explore other modes for the liberal hero to be in the world that renders his apparent excesses into the positive behaviors necessary to effect reform and social change. Considering the rudimentary understandings of Buddhism that reached Spain amid the late-nineteenth-century Japan craze, Japonisme, then, I interpret León Roch not as a failed model of masculinity, but rather as an alternative within Galdós's broader revision of the Krausist ideal of the "hombre nuevo" in the late 1870s.
En este ensayo examino las impresiones de Filipinas que aparecen en los libros de viajeros españo... more En este ensayo examino las impresiones de Filipinas que aparecen en los libros de viajeros españoles, en castellano y en catalán, que dieron la vuelta al mundo entre el final de la Gran Guerra de 1914 y el comienzo de la Guerra Civil Española, en 1936. La que se considera época dorada del viaje, y del relato de viajes, es también la que inicia el fenómeno de los cruceros de circunnavegación que permiten experimentar en el mismo trayecto de ida y vuelta, lugares como Nueva York y Shanghái, La Habana y Calcuta o Marsella y Manila.
In this paper I examine the way in which Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s narrative “Viaje a Macao” in La ... more In this paper I examine the way in which Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s narrative “Viaje a Macao” in La vuelta al mundo de un novelista functions within the broader vindication of Spanish and Portuguese enterprises in East Asia that is a key subtext of the 1924 travelogue. Throughout the description of his journey around the Pacific, the Spanish novelist invokes the travails of the sixteenth-century Iberian navigators, explorers and missionaries who first discovered the wonders of the Far East to the Western world. Stops in Japan and China occupy the better part of the first two volumes of the three-volume travel book, however for obvious reasons, calls at the ports of Manila and Macau are especially significant, in spite of their brevity. If in the Philippines Blasco witnessed the vestiges of a lost empire, in Macau he observed with certain elation a continued presence as well as a potential for the reassertion of Iberian power in Asia. By retracing the story and the history that are woven together in the author’s the account of his visit to the Portuguese colony, I explore how, from a Republican and cosmopolitan perspective, Macau’s past and present are configured in the text as a representation of Pan-Iberian modernity vis-à-vis the turbulent geopolitical context of the 1920s.
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 2014
Asia in the Hispanic World: The Other Orientalism. Eds. Yeon-Soo Kim & Kathleen Davis. Spec. sect... more Asia in the Hispanic World: The Other Orientalism. Eds. Yeon-Soo Kim & Kathleen Davis. Spec. section of Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies.
The study of early Spanish film can be a melancholy enterprise. Most of the film stock from the s... more The study of early Spanish film can be a melancholy enterprise. Most of the film stock from the silent period has disintegrated, and hundreds of original prints have been lost. Roman Gubern is of the opinion that only 10% of all Spanish films made before 1939 remain in viewable ...
Transnational Philippines: Cultural Encounters in Philippine Literature in Spanish, edited by Ortuño Casanova, Rocío, and Axel Gasquet, U. of Michigan P, 2024
ABSTRACT:
In this essay, I examine how the set of Japanese decorative items present in Benito Pé... more ABSTRACT:
In this essay, I examine how the set of Japanese decorative items present in Benito Pérez Galdós's La familia de León Roch (1878) elucidates a reformulation of the Krausist model of masculinity embodied by the novel's hero. Focusing on Buddhist imagery in the text, I explore how allusions to the Eastern religion provide a symbolic framework to explore other modes for the liberal hero to be in the world that renders his apparent excesses into the positive behaviors necessary to effect reform and social change. Considering the rudimentary understandings of Buddhism that reached Spain amid the late-nineteenth-century Japan craze, Japonisme, then, I interpret León Roch not as a failed model of masculinity, but rather as an alternative within Galdós's broader revision of the Krausist ideal of the "hombre nuevo" in the late 1870s.
En este ensayo examino las impresiones de Filipinas que aparecen en los libros de viajeros españo... more En este ensayo examino las impresiones de Filipinas que aparecen en los libros de viajeros españoles, en castellano y en catalán, que dieron la vuelta al mundo entre el final de la Gran Guerra de 1914 y el comienzo de la Guerra Civil Española, en 1936. La que se considera época dorada del viaje, y del relato de viajes, es también la que inicia el fenómeno de los cruceros de circunnavegación que permiten experimentar en el mismo trayecto de ida y vuelta, lugares como Nueva York y Shanghái, La Habana y Calcuta o Marsella y Manila.
In this paper I examine the way in which Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s narrative “Viaje a Macao” in La ... more In this paper I examine the way in which Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s narrative “Viaje a Macao” in La vuelta al mundo de un novelista functions within the broader vindication of Spanish and Portuguese enterprises in East Asia that is a key subtext of the 1924 travelogue. Throughout the description of his journey around the Pacific, the Spanish novelist invokes the travails of the sixteenth-century Iberian navigators, explorers and missionaries who first discovered the wonders of the Far East to the Western world. Stops in Japan and China occupy the better part of the first two volumes of the three-volume travel book, however for obvious reasons, calls at the ports of Manila and Macau are especially significant, in spite of their brevity. If in the Philippines Blasco witnessed the vestiges of a lost empire, in Macau he observed with certain elation a continued presence as well as a potential for the reassertion of Iberian power in Asia. By retracing the story and the history that are woven together in the author’s the account of his visit to the Portuguese colony, I explore how, from a Republican and cosmopolitan perspective, Macau’s past and present are configured in the text as a representation of Pan-Iberian modernity vis-à-vis the turbulent geopolitical context of the 1920s.
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 2014
Asia in the Hispanic World: The Other Orientalism. Eds. Yeon-Soo Kim & Kathleen Davis. Spec. sect... more Asia in the Hispanic World: The Other Orientalism. Eds. Yeon-Soo Kim & Kathleen Davis. Spec. section of Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies.
The study of early Spanish film can be a melancholy enterprise. Most of the film stock from the s... more The study of early Spanish film can be a melancholy enterprise. Most of the film stock from the silent period has disintegrated, and hundreds of original prints have been lost. Roman Gubern is of the opinion that only 10% of all Spanish films made before 1939 remain in viewable ...
Transnational Philippines: Cultural Encounters in Philippine Literature in Spanish, edited by Ortuño Casanova, Rocío, and Axel Gasquet, U. of Michigan P, 2024
“George, David R., Jr., y Wan Sonya Tang, eds. Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction ... more “George, David R., Jr., y Wan Sonya Tang, eds. Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First- Century Costume Dramas." Hipania. Vol. 102.4 (2019): 620-621.
On New Year’s Day in 1888, the readers of Barcelona’s newspaper La Vanguardia (1881 present) were... more On New Year’s Day in 1888, the readers of Barcelona’s newspaper La Vanguardia (1881 present) were greeted with an open letter from the editors announcing significant reforms in the content and format of the paper under its new director, Modesto Sánchez Ortiz. During the first seven years of existence, the daily had been just one among several Spanish-language papers published in Catalonia. However, with the arrival of Sánchez Ortiz, the decade that followed ‘‘fou l’única etapa en què La Vanguardia s’apropià vagament al que el seu nom suggeria: a una posició capdavantera en la renaixença espiritual catalana’’ [was the only period during which La Vanguardia would take on what its name suggested: an avant-garde position in the renaissance of the Catalan spirit] (Gaziel 34). The new director recognized that: ‘‘Uno de los signos más seguros de la cultura y de la vida de un pueblo se ofrece en su prensa periódica’’ (Sánchez Ortiz 1). During the second half of the century, Barcelona’s economic growth and emergence as the industrial engine of Spain was paralleled by a strengthening of regional identity and the desire of its inhabitants to create a truly great city on a par with Paris and London. It is only fitting, then, that the new director would set out to redefine the journal by modeling it after one of the great newspapers of the late-nineteenth century: The Times of London. As a result of this determination, La Vanguardia would be transformed and refashioned into a symbol of Barcelona’s ascendancy and a mirror of the anxieties of its growing middle-class at the beginning of the modern era. The paper would emerge as the primary venue for the representation and expression of the economic elite who had already set about to vastly change the architectural and cultural landscape of the Catalan capital. ‘‘Part of what it means to live in a modern society’’, John Durham Peters observes, ‘‘is to depend on representations of that society . . . Modern men and women see proximate fragments with their own eyes and global totalities through the diverse media of social description’’ (79). The push and pull between the local and the global, and the need to comprehend both, is best exemplified by the incorporation of foreign correspondence and travel writing into the daily offerings of newspapers such as La Vanguardia. Although the primary goal of the paper’s redefined mission was to reflect life in Barcelona and Catalonia, its true innovation lay in the explicit aim of connecting everyday realities to the events and trends of Europe’s major cities. As early as 1881, the newspaper had set in place an extensive network of reporters at home and abroad, but Sánchez Ortiz sought to go beyond merely reporting from further afield and from a broader perspective. Taking advantage of personal contacts cultivated at the Barcelona Athenaeum, he was responsible for bringing to the paper the signatures of many prominent and up-and-coming Catalan intellectuals and artists Elena Cueto Ası́n & David R. George, Jr.
Page 1. »La casa de la riqueza « //' / vi y ^ Francisca López / Elena Cu... more Page 1. »La casa de la riqueza « //' / vi y ^ Francisca López / Elena Cueto Asín / David R. George, Jr. (eds.) Historias de la pequeña pantalla Representaciones históricas en la televisión de la España democrática V ervuert Iberoamericana Page 2. - Page 3. ...
espanolDe la pelicula que Vicente Blasco Ibanez dirige con Max Andre en 1916, titulada La vieille... more espanolDe la pelicula que Vicente Blasco Ibanez dirige con Max Andre en 1916, titulada La vieille du cinema, quedan apenas algunas anecdotas recogidas por criticos y biografos, y el guion convertido en novela corta. Tampoco existe copia del film que hace Minoru Murata en 1924, Osumi to haha (Osumi y su madre), perdido en la II Guerra Mundial como tantas cintas del primer cine japones, pero cuyos fotogramas y resenas permiten identificar como adaptacion de la novela La vieja del cinema. Si se dispone de Natsukashi no kao (Un rostro inolvidable), que Mikio Naruse realiza en 1941, y que puede considerarse un remake del film mudo de Murata, y por tanto una adaptacion no reconocida de la obra de Blasco. Un analisis de estas obras en relacion con la emotividad y el cine de guerra revela las estrategias que hacen hueco al mensaje antibelico en una industria que se rige progresivamente por la censura y los imperativos de propaganda. La trayectoria de adaptaciones que lleva una historia ambi...
In this chapter, David George proposes a reading of costume dramas Acacias 38 (2015–) and El secr... more In this chapter, David George proposes a reading of costume dramas Acacias 38 (2015–) and El secreto de Puente Viejo (2015–) as “heritage revival” in the sense that both bring the past back to life in a format that substitutes surface spectacle for historical understanding. Key to understanding the possible significance of the late Restoration for contemporary audiences, he argues, is a consideration of how Acacias and Puente Viejo revivify the period as televisual heritage. His “close-reading” of storytelling and historical references reveals how these daily serials appeal to collective memories of depictions of the period created for television during the Transition and Post-Transition (1975–1992), considered to be the golden age of quality television in Spain.
In this chapter, David George proposes a reading of costume dramas Acacias 38 (2015–) and El secr... more In this chapter, David George proposes a reading of costume dramas Acacias 38 (2015–) and El secreto de Puente Viejo (2015–) as “heritage revival” in the sense that both bring the past back to life in a format that substitutes surface spectacle for historical understanding. Key to understanding the possible significance of the late Restoration for contemporary audiences, he argues, is a consideration of how Acacias and Puente Viejo revivify the period as televisual heritage. His “close-reading” of storytelling and historical references reveals how these daily serials appeal to collective memories of depictions of the period created for television during the Transition and Post-Transition (1975–1992), considered to be the golden age of quality television in Spain.
Abstract:This essay examines how Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's narrative "Viaje a Macao" ... more Abstract:This essay examines how Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's narrative "Viaje a Macao" in La vuelta al mundo de un novelista functions within the broader vindication of Spanish and Portuguese enterprises in East Asia that is a key subtext of the 1924 travelogue. If in the Philippines Blasco witnessed the vestiges of a lost empire, in Macau he observed with certain elation a continued presence as well as a potential for the reassertion of Iberian power in Asia. Retracing the story and the history that are woven together in the author's account of his visit to the Portuguese colony and literary pilgrimage to the Gruta de Camões, uncovers how, from a Republican and cosmopolitan perspective, Macau's past and present are configured in the text as a representation of Pan-Iberian modernity vis-à-vis the turbulent geopolitical context of the 1920s.
Juana of Castile: history and myth of the mad …, 2008
... Halfway through her final declarations there is a sudden:" Indeed, implacable Death,... more ... Halfway through her final declarations there is a sudden:" Indeed, implacable Death, I will evade your intentions. ... In the push and pull between the feelings of attraction and repulsion, necrophilia and its concomitant necrophobia, act as con-servative forces that stem change and ...
El simil que compara a la protagonista de Tristana con una ‘dama japonesa’ salida de un grabado u... more El simil que compara a la protagonista de Tristana con una ‘dama japonesa’ salida de un grabado ukiyo-e ofrece el instante mas explicito del intento de Galdos de incorporar en su obra la estetica japonista popular en la Europa finisecular. Tomando como punto de partida esta imagen, este ensayo examina las alusiones japonistas que aparecen a lo largo de la novela, a fin de sugerir como el autor logra una aplicacion mas profunda, tanto en la estructura como en los contenidos, de los preceptos esteticos japoneses. The simile comparing the main caracter of Tristana to a ‘Japanese lady’ from an ukiyo-e represents the most explicit attempt by Galdos to incorporate into his literature the Japoniste aesthetic popular in fin-de-siecle Europe. Using this image as a point of departure, this paper examines Japoniste alusions contained in the 1892 novel in order to suggest the ways in which the author achieves a more profound application of Japanese aesthetics.
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 2014
Asia in the Hispanic World: The Other Orientalism. Eds. Yeon-Soo Kim & Kathleen Davis. Sp... more Asia in the Hispanic World: The Other Orientalism. Eds. Yeon-Soo Kim & Kathleen Davis. Spec. section of Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies.
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In this essay, I examine how the set of Japanese decorative items present in Benito Pérez Galdós's La familia de León Roch (1878) elucidates a reformulation of the Krausist model of masculinity embodied by the novel's hero. Focusing on Buddhist imagery in the text, I explore how allusions to the Eastern religion provide a symbolic framework to explore other modes for the liberal hero to be in the world that renders his apparent excesses into the positive behaviors necessary to effect reform and social change. Considering the rudimentary understandings of Buddhism that reached Spain amid the late-nineteenth-century Japan craze, Japonisme, then, I interpret León Roch not as a failed model of masculinity, but rather as an alternative within Galdós's broader revision of the Krausist ideal of the "hombre nuevo" in the late 1870s.
In this essay, I examine how the set of Japanese decorative items present in Benito Pérez Galdós's La familia de León Roch (1878) elucidates a reformulation of the Krausist model of masculinity embodied by the novel's hero. Focusing on Buddhist imagery in the text, I explore how allusions to the Eastern religion provide a symbolic framework to explore other modes for the liberal hero to be in the world that renders his apparent excesses into the positive behaviors necessary to effect reform and social change. Considering the rudimentary understandings of Buddhism that reached Spain amid the late-nineteenth-century Japan craze, Japonisme, then, I interpret León Roch not as a failed model of masculinity, but rather as an alternative within Galdós's broader revision of the Krausist ideal of the "hombre nuevo" in the late 1870s.