Alternative Student Projects

Lately I have grown oh so tired of my customary methods of assessment: quizzes, exams, reaction papers, etc. For my culture and civ class I am pondering having students create a 5-10 minute video of some kind (a dramatization of an historical event, dramatize a scene from a comedia, a quasi-journalistic report on a current affair , etc. ). I figured it could be cool to have them upload the videos to YouTube for sharing purposes. Have any of you tried such an assignment? Any pointers, warnings you want to pass along?

Or have you fruitfully experimented with other forms of media for purposes of student projects?

Editions of DQ

A teaching question: what are the best editions of Don Quixote for students? I'm looking for something with sufficient yet not overwhelming notes. Does not have to be translated; if it's abridged, that's okay.

I'm wondering because I'm teaching an upper division Golden Age class. I've decided to title it "Lovers, Knaves, Fools and Saints", and to basically conduct the course thematically, with units oriented around enduring archetypes and their creation within a historical framework. Is this lame? Does this kind of course dodge your complaints about thematic approaches, Mike? Basically, the four units will include Garcilaso and Tirso de Molina (Lovers), San Juan and Santa Teresa (Saints), the Lazarillo and the Buscón (Knaves), and DQ (Fools).

In fact, I haven't quite decided on the Buscón. Any suggestions on short picaresque pieces that might work better with students? Selections from Guzmán de Alfarache? One of the Novelas Ejemplares? What is the title of the first book with a female pícara?

Dave Barry's Year in Review

Gentlemen, this is not, technically, related to academia, but I am pleased to announce that Dave Barry's Year in Review is up and available for reading.

Feliz Navidad

The periodo navideño is associated with looking back on the good things throughout the year, and I wanted to take this oppurtunity to marvel at the fact that we who post here have been friends for a decade now, and though we are spread all over the country, our friendship has found ways to endure. For me that has probably been the greatest reward of the graduate school process and one of the things I am giving thanks for this year.

Un fuerte abrazo a todos.

More fun with students

A student turned a paper in that was obviously far above her ability, so I googled a phrase, and it took me directly to an article on Cervantes Virtual. Word for word, gentlemen. Word for word. Maybe she felt that by rearranging a few things she was doing her own work. Sheesh.

Literary Studies

The Chronicle has an interesting piece on literary studies.

Memorable student errors

I have just been informed by a student that one of the poets of the generation of '98 is Antonio Manchado.

My eminence

It’s nice to have my “eminent medievalist” status recognized by this elite group. Perhaps when I go up for tenure, you can all write letters to that effect. It would help if you would all gratuitously cite me in your papers. It might be tricky for Kent to include my exemplary insights in his work on Peruvian poetry, but I'm sure it could be done with a little effort.

Grumpy Librarians

Why is it that research libraries seem to be a haven for cranky types? I've worked in archives and special collections in the U.S., Europe and Mexico, but my experience at the Sutro Library in San Francisco today topped them all in terms of librarian abrasiveness. I thought of you, Mike.

surrealism teaching resources

Might anyone have a syllabus on surrealism that he would like to share? Otherwise, might anyone know of some good teaching resources on the subject? I (probably foolishly) am toying with the idea of teaching a class on it this coming summer. Other than being a fan of Buñuel (and occasionally Dalí) I really have no experience in that field.

Harvard's endowment

An article in the Huffington Post notes that in the past four months Harvard's endowment has lost $8 billion--which represents a slim 22% of the total they've got socked away in their mattresses. My question is, how does that compare to the entire annual budget of the Cal State system, with its 23 campuses, 450,000 students and 47,000 faculty (among which number several participants in this blog). If I'm reading it right, 7.6 billion is what we're getting for next year.

Anyone coming to MLA?

I'm not on the market, but I'll be going to MLA anyway, since I'm on a search committee (plus I, you know, work here, so it's hard to avoid it). I know Traductor's giving a paper; is anyone else planning to come to SF for the convention? We should plan to get together.

Citing yourself

You know how when you send an article out for review, you're supposed to remove references to yourself as author in order to preserve anonymity, right? What do you do when you cite yourself? I cite my diss in a couple of places in an article I'm working on. Any thoughts on how to do that and still preserve anonymity? When I do it in the third person (... as Hammer notes...) it seems clunky and, to me, patently obvious that I'm citing myself.

Apropos of nothing...

Lately, every morning when I come into my office, I find mouse turds on my desk. Just thought I'd share.

Bawdy Birds update

I've been AWOL from the site lately, because I've been working on papers and such. I gave my presentation today on the Libro de cetreria, and it seems to have been a success.
I promised gratuitous sex and violence, and I think I delivered.

Sharing resources

Does anyone have a multiple choice SPN 101 exam they would be willing to share?

Europeana: Stay Tuned

I caught wind of this site on Spanish TV. It promises to offer a wealth of didactic materials. It is scheduled to officially open tomorrow. As of now, I found that I could not access and materials.

Teaching Introduction to Lit. Studies

As the semester winds down, I start thinking about how I would do things differently. In my Introduction to Literary Studies, which I taught for the first time, I used Aproximaciones and pretty much followed the organization of the book: Narrativa, Poesía, Drama. I think that next time I teach the course I will begin with poetry and spend more time on it than the other genres, since it seems to me that poetic language is part and parcel of good literature. I also think I would proceed in reverse chronological order, dealing with the Siglo de Oro/Baroque last, since it is more challenging and I think it would be good for students to become accustomed to poetry before diving into Garcilaso or Sor Juana. I did ask students to memorize and recite a poem this semester, though.

Any thoughts? Have you used other textbooks worth recommending?

The Onion's take on "illegal re-emigration" in light of the souring US economy

See article.

Resources for Teaching Literature

This section on the auladeletras site had some materials that may ( or may not) be useful for teaching basic literary concepts to undergraduate students. I found their powerpoint-esque introduction to _DQ_ to be quite interesting.

Publication update

I noticed that the Pastor and I are both in Volume 11 of eHumanista. Hopefully the links will be active soon.

Consensus: Speak mostly Spanish; write only in Spanish

Thanks for ya'll's thoughts on this issue. This is the first time I've given students the option of writing and presenting their work in either Spanish or English. I've had mixed results in the past but the majors and minors have done it. I think I will strongly encourage the majors to write and present in Spanish. I'm not sure what to do with the minors. Reviewing my original post I have succumbed to a false dichotomy that I have identified on this blog but have obviously yet to overcome. Why can't learning to express subtle or even basic ideas, themes, etc. in Spanish be part of a student's intellectual development? Why separate the two skills? I think I need to have more faith in my students abilities and be more comfortable with silence. But I can also imagine myself getting very exhausted and impatient as I try to help them find words to express what they really want to say in Spanish (circumlocution?). But I suppose that is part of my job here.

I think it is correct to point out that language skills or fluency is a minimum requirement for graduate school. I can't recall anywhere on an application asking for my ability to speak Spanish. I guess it is assumed. At the undergraduate level it probably needs to be a priority.

On another note, how is everyone's writing coming along this semester? I'm making good progress on my revision, slowly but surely, which is due 12/1. I also sent off an abstract Friday for a conference next April in Kentucky.

English or Spanish?

In my upper division course this semester I have given the students the option of using either Spanish or English for their final paper and oral presentation. My new division chair opposes the move. She prefers to use only the "target" language in her upper division courses. (She also loves to speak in education-ese, often talking about learning "outcomes," a term that sounds to me as if she were speaking of excrement.)

My lectures are all in Spanish as are most of the films. (The others are in French). All have English or Spanish subtitles. I encourage my students to speak Spanish, but when they can't, I don't mind at all if they speak English to make their points. I am mainly concerned with their intellectual development, and if language becomes an obstacle for them, I remove it. I'm sure most will write in English and present in English.

Have any of you had similar concerns?

My Newest Tool

No, it's not an iPhone. Have any of you used this? It seems to have what I have been looking for. I have been using RefWorks recently, but this seems a lot more flexible.

Marginalia in DQ

I just happened to notice this quote from Chapter IX of Part I. The fictional author has just found Cide Hamete Benengeli's manuscript. Is this Cervantes making fun of early modern reading practices?

...anduve mirando si parecía por allí algún morisco aljamiado que los leyese; y no fue muy dificultoso hallar intérprete semejante, pues aunque le buscara de otra mejor y más antigua lengua le hallara. En fin, la suerte me deparó uno, que diciéndole mi deseo, y poniéndole el libro en las manos le abrió por medio, y leyendo un poco en él se comenzó a reír: preguntéle que de qué se reía, y respondióme que de una cosa que tenía aquel libro escrita en la margen por anotación. Díjele que me la dijese, y él sin dejar la risa dijo: está, como he dicho, aquí en el margen escrito esto: esta Dulcinea del Toboso, tantas veces, en esta historia referida, dicen que tuvo la mejor mano para salar puercos que otra mujer de toda la Mancha.

Or is "mano para salar puercos" a double-entendre?

Women Poets

I'm teaching a course in Golden Age lyric this semester, and I've come to the conclusion that it is shockingly lacking in women poets. Anyone have any names for me? Other than Sor Juana.

A good buy

I, too, picked up an interesting find at a library book sale recently. Leather bound, published in 1875, written by one O.S. Fowler. Here's the title:
Creative and Sexual Science: Manhood, Womanhood, and Their Mutual Interrelations; Love, its Laws, Power, Etc.; Selection, or Mutual Adaptation; Courtship, Married Life, and Perfect Children; Their Generations, Endowment, Paternity, Maternity, Bearing, Nursing and Rearing; Together with Puberty, Boyhood, Girlhood, Etc.; Sexual Impairments Restored, Male Vigor and Female Health and Beauty Perpetuated and Augmented, Etc., as taught by Phrenology and Physiology.
Apparently mutually applied friction is very important in the generative function.

Small Pleasures in a Bad Economy

Today I happened across a book sale at the Santa Clara University Library and came away with a couple of steals. The first was Volume I of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (I already own Vol. II). This work is a broad-ranging classic -- sorry for the dirty word -- reference for anyone interested in the Spanish Empire and its context from cultural, geopolitical and economic standpoints. I also found a hardcover edition of The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Bollingen Series). Not the greatest translations in the world, but, once again, a solid reference work, since it contains ALL of Plato's dialogues.
Total amount spent: $3.00.

Going negative

Anyone feel their job is in jeopardy in these uncertain times? This totally sucks, and I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not up to my usual eloquence (¿?) when I express myself that way. Not only is the "Compact" not being honored, though by now that's old news, but California is borrowing 7 billion dollars or it won't make payroll. What the hell? I thought this was supposed to be a safe and sane career where the only adventure was of the intellectual kind. We eschewed business for a reason, at least I did, only to find myself a) not reaping the pecuniary benefits of a business career, b) thrust all the same into a financial cesspool created by greedy, unprincipled boors who, as I read recently, were the guys you rarely talked to in college, but occasionally did step over on sunday mornings sleeping in a pool of their own vomit, and c) doing a mediocre bureaucratic shuffle exactly the opposite of the life of the mind. How to maintain some optimism under such circumstances is the question I'm grappling with.

What to Make of Student Evaluations

See article in the NY Times mAgazine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21wwln-evaluations-t.html?scp=3&sq=student%20evaluations&st=cse

Near the end, the writer, reflecting on the viability of these evaluations wonders something I myself have been wondering: "After all, when students report having learned a lot, how do we know to trust them?"

The seeds of a new study abroad idea

I’m currently reading a book called Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages. The author, Derek Bickerton, studies creole languages. In defending his bar-hopping field research technique, he describes how he learned Spanish:

“Most of the Spanish I speak was learned from drunks in bars. In fact, drunks are the world’s most underrated language teaching resource. The stereotypic drunk speaker slurs his speech to the point of unintelligibility, but in real life this happens only in the final, immediate-pre-collapse phase of drunkenness. Prior to that, drunks speak slowly and with exaggerated care, because they know they are drunk but don’t want other people to know. Moreover, since they’re already too drunk to remember what they just said, they repeat themselves over and over, and don’t mind if you do the same. If you’re gregarious and a drinker, it’s by far the easiest way to learn a new language” (p. 29).

Not that I approve, or anything, but I think I smell the kernel of a new study abroad program.

Lazarillo vs. El lazarillo

It's common enough to use El Lazarillo, or El Quijote when referring to the books, but I have students (mostly natives) who persist in saying "el Lazarillo" when referring to the character. This bespeaks to me a false etymology, i.e., that Lazarillo gets his name because he is a lazarillo (blind man's guide) when it is actually the other way around: lazarillo as a word denoting a child who guides a blind man derives from the book. Am I wrong about this?

Lorca Grave Dispute

Erika passed along this news story, thinking it might be of interest to the Peninsularistas site. It is indeed interesting, although how Lorca managed to have descendants escapes me. Any thoughts?

In praise of tobacco

In an 1853 rag called La Ilustración, billed as a "Periodico político, científico, moral, estético y religioso," I found some choice snippets from Spanish romantic Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, friend to Larra and Espronceda. Here is a fine example:

Aunque andrajoso, abigarrado y feo
El soldado español vaya a la guerra
Y tenga que vivir el merodeo
Y descansar sobre la dura tierra
Porque las corbas uñas de un hebreo
Roban la plata que el tesoro encierra,
Derrotará al Calmoco y al Cosaco
Si no le faltan pólvora y tobaco.

But what really struck me was the bit quoted as an epigraph to the article I was looking at (which of course extolled the medicinal and economic value of tobacco). I think it will be of interest to both those pipe aficionados among us and to those wishing to follow up on the bird/body-part theme:

Yo exclamé fumando: ¡al cielo plegue
Que salga un golondrino en el sobaco
Al que sea enemigo del tobaco!

Okay, I'm wrong. Just looked up "golondrino" on the Real Academia, and here's the definition they give: "Med. Inflamación infecciosa de las glándulas sudoríparas de la axila." I still like the bird image better.

More Bawdy Birds

Evangelista, the author of my satiric hunting text, adopts a pose that reminds me somewhat of the burlesque sketches of Mark Twain. Twain wrote a piece called “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper” in which the narrative voice is that of a naïve urbanite who knows nothing of agriculture, but tries to brazen it out anyway (writing of shaking ripe turnips out of their trees, for example) and sparks a riot in the process.

Evangelista’s narrative voice is similar. He starts off confidently claiming “Pues que a Nuestro Señor plugo darme sabiduría y sciencia sobre todo hombre del mundo de los que hoy son nacidos, yerro sería en no dejar alguna obra provechosa a los que hoy son e adelante serán … acordé de ocupar la fantasía en componer esta poca y perfecta obra, la cual es la sustancia de toda la cetrería que hoy se podría pensar ni hablar en todo el mundo…”

And then he’s off and running with gems such as: “[los alfaneques] nunca tosen ni escupen, que no hay cosa más aborrecida para el cazador que halcón cosico o tosegoso.”

Fradejas Rueda, the editor, says that Evangelista’s humorous style is based on tautology or platitude, puns, and irony. By “platitude” he means the deadpan statement of the obvious in the guise of wisdom. Thus, “when you take them (alfaneques) hunting, make sure they have both wings, because they fly better with two than with one.”

Occasionally the wisdom reaches sublime levels of silliness, of the “shaking turnips” variety. In English, “you have to believe that these borníes are de carne, by the grace of God, because if they were de pescado, once you took them out of the water they would die, and you would have to make them perches under the water, and just think what that would be like in Segovia or Avila in the winter! And instead of jingle bells you would have to make them wear gourds, because otherwise they would drown, since they don’t know how to swim.”

Finally, we get this advice regarding miliones:

“If they ask you of what use is such an unusual bird, tell them it’s for stuffing up the asses of people who ask too many questions, with the tail sticking out so that if one wanted to ascend to heaven, one could do so using the tail instead of stairs.”

And people wonder why I love the Middle Ages.

Another notice from El Comercio

June 24, 1854

TEATRO

Un joven extranjero ocupó anoche uno de los asientos delanteros de cierto palco de primera fila; y como el excesivo fetor de sus piés era tan fuerte como el de una sepultura recien descubierta, que no lo podían soportar las personas de la platea que estaban debajo de él, se le suplica tenga la bondad de no concurrir á ese local en lo posterior para que no enfermen gravemente los que tengan la desgracia de sentarse a su inmediación.

Los que salieron de la platea con dolor de cabeza.

Tauromaquia

Something I found in the newspapers I'm looking at here in Lima.

El Comercio 4131 Miercoles 4 de Mayo 1853

TOROS, VACAS Y OSA.—Sobresaliente función para el Domingo 8 de Mayo.

Nada puede serle mas grato al que está encargado de un establecimiento (ó lo que es mas el empresario de este) que poder satisfacer los deseos de los que lo honran con su asistencia: este es el caso en que se halla el empresario de la plaza de Acho comprometido con muchas personas respetables á fin de que se vuelva a exhibir otra corrida en que se juegan vacas las que serviran para mascaras advirtiendo que á mas de los toreros enmascarados podrán lidiarlas bajo el mismo disfraz toda persona decente que guste hacerlo. Para dár tiempo á que puedan vestirse los toreros después de jugados los cuatro primeros toros, tendra lugar la lucha de la Osa con un toro pues habiendose hecho una prueba el lunes 25 ante muchos espectadores ha sido tal la bravura de ese animal que la empresa no ha dudado en comprarla en un precio sumamente fantástico sin mas objeto que el de satisfacer al público los deseos que tuvo de ver lidiar al Oso en tardes anteriores.

I remember reading about bear baiting in Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World. I got curious after finding this gem, so I looked up the Wiki. The whole notion of a blood sport somehow becomes more sinister when bears are involved. Does anyone know if pitting bulls (or bears) against other animals was common in Spain? I had never heard of it in Latin America until I saw this ad, and in fact I'd be curious to know what kind of bear was used. One thing that's interesting in my context is that, according to the Wiki, bear baiting was outlawed in England in 1835, which only follows the outlawing of the slave trade by two years. Makes sense, but still surprising to see the tides of humanitarianism, philanthropy and sympathy rising so uniformly. The Wiki also mentions bull baiting, but doesn't put the two together. Perhaps a Peruvian innovation?

Job List

The job list is out. Anyone looking? Or is this too public a venue in which to discuss these things?

Hunting and Yikes!

The yikes! is for Kent's magazine cover. Holy cow.

Regarding my paper: I'm thinking of doing something like "Evangelista's Hunting Parody and the History of Laughter." Suitably vague and all-encompassing, no?

Tired old topic

However, also very timely. I'm sorry about lack of freshness but could not resist posting this. I think I'll use it as the first day of my conversation class, to see what comes up. Caretas is the major weekly newsmagazine of Peru, something like Time or Newsweek. This is this weeks issue.

Any solutions?

Mike's post raises issues all of us face as we engage in the daunting task of narrowing down a topic. I'm wondering where you are at in the process, Mike? Which questions have you chosen to tackle?

More hunting humor

My problem with this paper is that I have several competing directions I want to go with it. First, I was interested in looking at the “fable” and the overall parody to which it’s attached, through the lens of humor theory. What makes it funny? How does the humor work?

Second, theories of parody. Is a parody essentially deconstructive of the text it parodies? Is parody, as a self-aware text, ipso facto a form of metafiction? Some feel that a parody is inherently hostile to the text being parodied; a parody of hunting manuals, therefore, would have to be essentially anti-hunting. This view completely ignores the fact that for a parody to work it has to assume both a writer and readers well-versed in the text being parodied. Take Don Quixote, for example. A broad and brutal parody of chivalric fiction, no? But in order to write it Cervantes had to have been well-versed in the texts he was making fun of and his audience had to be just as well-versed in order to understand half of the jokes. Is mockery inherently an attack? Or is it an homage?

Third, this goes to function. Does the parody exist as satire, in other words as a text whose purpose is to expose and ridicule the follies of the class of people who devote excess amounts of time to hunting? Maybe so, but the tone of this text is more along the lines of Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, which exposes folly, certainly, but all the while recognizes the humanity of the fools themselves.

Fourth, I wanted to look specifically at the “fable” within the parody, in which a falcon (masculine symbol) basically gets gang-raped by a bunch of sexually ambivalent shorebirds. I was particularly interested in what I saw as the “problem” of sexual violence used for comic effect. Problem is, this problem is more a 20^th century problem than a medieval problem.

Fifth, I could look at it in terms of discourses of masculinity and effeminacy and situate it within an overall fifteenth-century critique of effeminacy, but I suspect that to do justice to this I would have to be much better versed in Freudian, feminist, and/or queer theory than I am.

Sixth, I’m now leaning toward a title of “Of Birds and Bawdy Bodies” and limiting myself to an examination of sexual and scatological imagery, through the lens of humor theory, but that seems like a cop out.

So I’m being pulled in many directions at once and have to narrow it down, and fast.

Medieval humor

Some of you know that I’m working on a paper about a fifteenth-century parodic fable found in a parody of hunting manuals. The fable itself is quite a hoot, but I’m having trouble honing in on a topic.

One thing I’m having trouble with is figuring out how to describe the humor, not just of the fable, but of the overall parody. The writer’s style of humor has been described as based on platitudes. I’m wondering what you all think.

Here’s a sample. The parody plays on the fact that most hunting manuals of the period cover the minutiae of various birds of prey in great detail: where they’re from, what characteristics to look for in a good hunting falcon, etc. So in the entry on neblies (peregrine falcons), the writer concludes:

“Estos neblíes son aves que no hay hombre del mundo que sepa en qué tierra se crian; pero los que algo sabemos todavía pensamos que nacen do quiera que ello sea, que si no naciesen, no valdrían una Blanca, que nunca vistes cuán para poco son los que están por nacer.”

(Loose translation: There is no man alive who knows where these neblíes come from, but those of us who know a bit about it think they hatch, wherever in the world it may be. For if they didn’t hatch, they wouldn’t be worth a dime, for you’ve never seen anything as worthless as those that haven’t hatched yet).

Or, how about this one (just in English): "Hawks are very handsome birds ..., even though those from Castile are evil and perverse, especially the ones from Galicia, which fart a lot."

Any thoughts?

Panama begins in LAX

Here's something in the way of Mike's legendary travel accounts (though not so legendary, I suspect) which I wrote for the Blog last night.

I’m flying to Lima via Panama City on Copa, an airline exiled from the Tom Bradshaw Intl. Terminal to far-flung Termianal 6. I admit that the last time I flew to Peru we ended up in Chile in the worst air travel nightmare of all, but at least LAN has it together at the terminal. Copa, not so much. Picture three stations, eight or so employees, all looking very very busy, and a line that just doesn’t move. It doesn’t move so much that I begin having fantasies of large brooms sweeping away the clusters of people cluttering the area in front of the counter. The four Russians directly before me in line have at least 15 bags of different colors between them. One of the bags is an old, leather sample case with straps holding it together, such as one would expect to fine in the trunk of a car also carrying material for a nuclear weapon. People tend to take vast numbers of suitcases, all of which must be weighed—some paid for, some not, but all negotiated—when they travel to Panama. Or they take dogs, or electronics, which also must be paid for and wrapped in cellophane (except the dogs). A couple who had purchased a miniature bulldog in the states for import to Panama stood at the counter taking up space and attention in one form or another for at least forty five minutes. At one point I looked behind me and half the line was seated on the floor. A gentleman who reminded me of Gabriel García Márquez began shouting at an one of the employees from the actual line.

Making Time for Research

As the new semester begins I find myself reassessing my time management. I know many "teacher-scholars" from large state institutions do the lion's share of research during the summer, due to high teaching and service loads, but do any of you have any tricks for streamlining class prep in order to free up more time for research and writing?

Meerschaum

My corncob pipe has a sticker proclaiming it a Missouri Meerschaum. I don't know if my esteemed pipe-smoking colleagues have ever tried a real meerschaum, but I have not.

Your mention of The Purloined Letter reminded me of a bibliographic curiosity I came across last year. I thought I'd share it with you.

More depth vs. breadth

We do have a 300 level survey of Spanish lit., which I'm also teaching this fall, and in which we'll be reading snippets of Celestina, Lazarillo, Don Quixote, the complete Caballero de Olmedo, and a poem each (practically) by Garcilaso, Fray Luis, San Juan, Góngora, Quevedo, plus a novella by María de Zayas. Then we move on to the 19th century (don't wince, Dave), skipping the 18th entirely because of time considerations. The trade-off is that in that class I'm having the students read a complete Lorca play: Bodas de sangre.

The Golden Age class is one of three 400 level literature courses on our books, along with "Mexican Literature" and "Latin American Women Writers". I tend to follow a five-author-ten-weeks formula, shooting for a bit of both depth and breadth. I was considering branching out a bit with the Golden Age class in winter: it's the only class they'll take on Peninsular literature. Doesn't anyone know a good abridged version of DQ? (Blasphemy, blasphemy...)

No depth -- breadth

Did I spell that right? I'd go with complete readings of smaller works. Poems, a play or two, a short novel like Lazarillo, and short fiction.

My perception may be skewed, though. I've only ever taught the Quixote in a semester-length course, so my lesson plans are geared toward a more leisurely pace. And I suspect our program may be the only one in the universe that does not have a junior-level survey. All of our lit classes are 500 level. Don't ask me why. In five years I've never gotten a satisfying answer. Our intro to lit class is Spanish 500, a number that certainly sends the message that juniors should not take it, even though there's nothing preventing them from doing so. We're working to change that by, finally, adding a junior survey next semester.

Golden Age Course

I would assume that your 400 level students will have already read some of the texts mentioned in a 300 level survey. I would go with either a complete reading of DQ or complete readings of other works. Go for depth. This is 400, right?

Meerschaum pipe

How about this for a pipe? Three lines into The Purloined Letter I had to stop and look up the word meerschaum.

Golden Age, continued

I like the term Golden Age, though as a medievalist I'm supposed to object to it since it privileges the supposed intellectual and artistic superiority of the 16th/17th centuries while neglecting the accomplishments of, say, Alfonso X.

What to teach in a survey? I have taught surveys, but not exclusively of the Golden Age, and I have taught Golden Age, but never a comprehensive survey. Here are a few of my thoughts, though:

1. I can't imagine teaching Don Quijote in anything less than a semester. Perhaps it can be done, but I think it would overtax the students. Better to choose some representative Novelas ejemplares. La fuerza de la sangre is always a good one.
2. Definitely Garcilaso, San Juan, Fray Luis de Leon, Gongora, Quevedo.
3. Lazarillo. Read it in conjunction with the 1961 movie version.
4. Fuenteovejuna is a standard that must be in any G.A. survey. Other good theater: La vida es sueno, El burlador de Sevilla.
5. Balance out the ticket with some Santa Teresa, if you like, but you should definitely include Maria de Zayas. She has some really funky novelas.

Golden Age

What are the politics of the term "Golden Age" these days? Are we moving away from it for some reason? Honestly, I am not up on these questions, which is why I ask. Is "Early Modern" better? Or Renaissance/Baroque?

I will be teaching "Golden Age Literature" in Winter. My colleague, who has taught it for many a long year, finds it more congenial to teach on contract at our alma mater now that she's semi-retired--thanks perhaps to our good friend JD.

So here's my question: is there a list of essential works that 400-level students should have read in a class called "Golden Age Literature"? Here's my list of what I want to teach:

Garcilaso
Fray Luis
Lazarillo de Tormes
Don Quixote

Should such a class necessarily try to be representative? I also love to read Santa Teresa's autobiography for perverse reasons, as too Quevedo's satirical poems. Also, I really like Lope's "Arte nuevo...," though I find comedias, especially baroque ones like "La vida es sueño," boring.

For your reading pleasure

In my research on humor I stumbled across the following article by one Horace Miner: “Body Ritual among the Nacirema." Go to American Anthropologist, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Jun., 1956), pp. 503-507. To get the gist, you must read "Nacirema" backwards. It’s well worth the read. I found it on J-Store through my library. A small sample:

“The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.

“In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year.”

Regarding Peninsularistas

This blog has as a subtitle "A place for professors of Spanish Literature to complain about or defend the field." I haven't heard much concerning either of these topics. Surely one of you has a gripe about the profession you'd like to share with us.

Carlos V

The article Mike posted traced the racist derivations of some advertising images of black people such as Uncle Ben and El Negrito. Racist images or, if you're Mexican or Spanish, possibly just cariñosas. (That's the word the basketball team used to defend the slant eye gesture.) Not to trivialize the writer's argument, but her article did bring up for me the question of whether and how Carlos V of candy bar fame has changed over the years. I don't know about y'all, but for me the Holy Roman Emporer is looking remarkably like Richard Harris in Camelot, but with a brighter smile.

Memín Pinguín redux (redux): El negrito

Interesting that just when we are having this discussion, this article should appear at Slate's sister site, The Root. The author ends by asking "Am I not allowed to be offended by Memin Penguin, or by Bimbo's "negrito" packaging, simply because I am not Mexican?"

A sporting side note (Memín Pinguín) Redux

Kent (via Monsivais) brings up an important point. That is, how can Monsivais (a mestizo[?] urban intellectual) possibly speak on behalf of the Afro-Mexicans caricatured on the stamps, which he does not to defend them, mind you, but to effectively pass over the question of their racial stereotyping, favoring to spar with the Cultural Imperialists to the north? Did anybody bother asking Afro-Mexicans if Jesse Jackson and company were reasonable in their criticisms? (Not that I am a fan of JJ...) Monsivais' downplaying this act of cultural insensitivity is itself a thinly veiled act of cultural imperialism against his fellow black mexicans, tamping down as it does the entire possibility of a marginalized population having a point of view in all of this. I would say that by downplaying this question, Monsivais reveals a mindset akin to that of the fair skinned, blond haired Mexican businessmen who say things like, "When WE were conquered by the Spanish..."

A sporting side note (Memín Pinguín)

For me what's interesting to watch is the reaction in the press, as Mike suggested. In El País I noticed a couple of headlines such as "No es un gesto de racismo"--carefully couched as a quotation--where the corresponsal definitely seems on the side of the players. I'd like to read reactions by Spanish intellectuals if anyone finds any.

The "ojos chinos" polemic, if we can call it that, reminds me of the Memín Pinguín debacle. A couple of years ago the Mexican postal system published commemorative stamps of the beloved comic book hero from the 50s, sparking protests from Jesse Jackson and very quickly a diplomatic complaint from the Bush White House to Fox's government. Mexican intellectuals cried cultural imperialism, adducing Speedy González as an analogous case--and no Mexican could be bothered to be offended by him, it was suggested. Carlos Monsiváis described the situation with a certain cynical ressentiment in El universal: "Ver para descreer. El gobierno estadounidense, en su infatigable tarea de policía moral del planeta, desembarca en las playas de la minucia y descubre el Ku-Klux-Klan filatélico." And he's about as far left as you can get and still be in the mainstream. He defends the Mexican postal service against charges of racism: "La razón de ser de la historieta son las peripecias de un grupo de niños, y el tema/problema central no es la epidermis 'tatemada' sino la clase social. A Memín se le chotea pero no se le excluye, y los chistes son los inevitables. ¿De dónde vienen, entonces, las acusaciones de 'racista'?" Memín has been in the news recently (July 10) because apparently Wallmart has decided to carry the entire, re-released series.

A sporting side note

Not to go off-topic here, but the Spanish men's basketball team has apparently gotten itself into hot water over a photo they posed for prior to the Olympics. The Spaniards don't understand all the fuss, which leads to the question: are "slant eyes" a nothing issue that has been blown out of proportion by a hyper-sensitive, politically-correct press, or is Spain hopelessly out of it regarding racial issues?

American NBA stars are suggesting that if Americans had been involved in this photo, there would have been consequences.

UPDATE: Eric’s comment in the comments section about the casual racial caracaturism (as opposed to outright racism) of Spain struck me as to the point. I have several Asterix books (which, admittedly, are originally French, but the Castilian translations are phenomenal) in which minorities are treated in a way that can only be described as Sambo-esque. For example, one of the pirates that figures in several of the books is an African, complete with big lips and Buckwheat enunciation (if you can imagine that in Spanish). I was once on the verge of loaning Asterix en Hispania to a student who wanted some reading material to practice on, when I remembered, just in time, that this African-American student would no doubt get offended, and rightfully so, at what she found inside.

So the reaction by the Spanish press is telling, but also thought-provoking.

It would never occur to an internationally sensitive American to be photographed that way for publication. Often, though, those inclined toward outrage choose to get outraged on behalf of those who are not outraged. El Pais takes this tack, when it implies that the scandal, if there is one, exists solely in the minds of the Anglo Saxon world (U.S., England, with a smattering of Germany). On the contrary, says the head of the Spanish Olympic Federation, "El gesto de posado es de cariño. Las mentes retorcidas que busquen polémica, los ingleses y los estadounidenses, más vale que se preocupen de los antecedentes de racismo en sus países." (In a separate article, El Pais quotes L.A. Times sportswriter Bill Plaschke, as follows: "Es un Laker que trabaja para una de las compañías más progresistas en una de las ciudades más globales del mundo . . . . Que los españoles actúen de forma racista en la privacidad de su pequeño país."

El Pais implies that China hasn’t complained, but takes care to note that the New York Post dug up a representative of the Chinese-American community, “según el cual el mensaje no es de deportividad y no es respetuoso con los asiáticos.”

A curious situation.

JJyA's mustacheod women, Foucault, and CBJ

She certainly is positioned at the center of the canvass and her face draws our eyes. And is it my imagination or does she have a shadow of a mustache? There is another woman in the picture, standing to the far right half out of the frame, arms crossed, who is sporting a distinct 'stache. Did Jiménez y Aranda like his women masculine, or is that just how they do it in Sevilla?

The gaze issue (a fellow graduate student of ours, whose name I won't mention, went so far as to refer to 'gaze theory' on one occasion) puts me in mind of Foucault's analysis of Las Meninas at the beginning of The Order of Things, which seems not entirely off-topic here. It includes such predictably Foucauldian passages as the following:

"we are looking at a picture in which the painter in turn is looking at us. A mere confrontation, eyes catching one another's glance, direct looks superimposing themselves upon one another as they cross. And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints. The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by the gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we were: the model itself. But, inversely, the painter's gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather, in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvass, subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their roles to infinity" (4-5).

Very Borgesian. Did anyone ever read this passage with CBJ? I'd be interested to have heard his take on it. I remember him riffing on the gaze and power in a reading of a passage from Montemayor's Diana in which a jealous shepherdess, hidden behind a bush, watched a shepherd compose a love song to another shepherdess further away, whom he in turn was watching. Talk about a 'loco ameno,' CBJ certainly was one.

Holy Week in Sevilla, continued

Kent raises some good questions about "Holy Week in Sevilla, 1879." I suppose the leaning lends a dynamism to the scene that would be lost if everyone were standing around all stoic-like.

I send my culture students to the Palace of the Legion of Honor for one of their class projects. The one element that my students have tended to comment on, but which Kent has neglected, is the young woman who is looking directly at the viewer. Is she distracted by the galán? Is she flirting with the viewer? She directs her gaze outward when all around her, including the viewer, have their gazes directed inward, toward the preacher, or toward the scene in general. Does she transgress by so boldly ignoring the preacher and flirting with the viewer? Do we transgress for flirting back?

Kilts in the News...

Will the US Postal Service be the impetus for bringing kilts into the mainstream? I sure hope so. Read on:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080807/ap_on_fe_st/odd_postal_kilt;_ylt=AnNUPibBgHEWLQeIalBMpKIDW7oF

What's with the leaning?

A couple of observations about "Holy Week in Sevilla, 1879. Bear with me, I got carried away:

A) More than a few of the figures seem to be leaning uncomfortably. The elderly sharp-faced gentleman in the red cloak caught my attention first, but then I noticed that not only was the friar also leaning forward towards the crowd (excusable in his case, since he's preaching), but the man in green near the center of the crowd is also leaning unnecessarily forward. That's an uncomfortable position for someone who wants to keep his eyes raised preacher-ward. The man in the violet coat is also leaning forward, a posture emphasized by the erect and comfortable appearance of the young man in black with the impressive cane. The don Juan figure at the center of the action (obvious seducing the girl while disregarding her midget-like dueña) has his foot out in the pose of what C.B.Johnson once called a "teapot actor," and is leaning slightly from the waist. So what's with the leaning? A simple ruse of the painter to lend dynamism to the scene, or a sudden onset of backaches?

B) Going back to the dandy in the middle, I'd just observe that the guy is putting the event to a different use than it is perhaps intended for. I've been perusing Michel de Certeau Practice of Everyday Life, a book that examines how the uses to which 'users' (i.e. consumers) put 'products' (Certeau, who was a Jesuit, even invokes Spanish Catholicism in the 'new' world as a product used by the Indians) often varies from what the 'producers' envisioned. Users, in Certeau's scheme, become producers of sorts: "users make innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules" (xiv); he discerns "in these practices of appropriation indexes of the creativity that flourishes at the very point where practice ceases to have its own language"--in other words, when we stop talking about producing and start talking about using or consuming (xvii). Certeau sees a small kind of resistance in those deviations from the proper use of products. Might this be an example? While undoubtedly a 'user' of the religious spectacle, the dandy's putting it to his own use, and is thus a producer whose product is 'the practice of everyday life'--in this case, a seduction, something going back at least to the Arcipreste de Hita.

C) I think we might go so far as to consider the flirtatious socializing in a religious context a quotation in as much as it appears in practically every Comedia ever written (though I have to admit, I haven't read them all). In the costumbrista context, that quotation says something abut Spanishness, but what does it say?

D) Does anyone know anything about the procession? What's up with the lamps? I'd be curious to know more...

E) The indumentaria and hairstyles are fascinating. One doesn't often see depictions of the Spanish 19th century--at least I don't, not as often as I see photos from the English and US 19th century. I guess I haven't watched enough cinematic recreations of Galdos novels. While the women are pretty much what I'd expect, the men are dressed all different ways. The colors are remarkable, first of all. Was that usual? The more stylish gentlemen are holding toppers and canes, but they wear their hair in a small ponytail. Was this the style? (I just went hunting for a comparable picture from England, and though I didn't find anything exact, I found a painting by William Powell Frith that shows a middle-class crowd scene: Ramsgate Sands: 'Life at the Seaside', 1852-4. It is zoomable like Damian's picture. These are the kind of 19th-century people I'm more used to seeing.)

F) What's with the absence of rogues and urchins? One would expect at least one Lazarillo among the crowd, but all seem comparatively well-dressed and prosperous.

Fishing Philosophy

This scanned large, so you have to click on the image to see the whole thing. Imagine the kid with all the fish is me, and the kid with the flyrod is Kent. The cartoonist was H.T. Webster, who was popular in the early 20th century. Apparently the word "milquetoast" came from his character Caspar Milquetoast, who starred in a series of cartoons called "The Timid Soul."

Alone in the Wilderness

Mike's enticing narrative about the backwoods writer's camp conjured memories of Dick Proenneke, who, if you have not heard of him, lived several years alone in the Alaskan wilderness of the Twin Lakes area. Proenneke was a true outdoorsman--he hand built his own cabin, grew and hunted his own food. He was a meticulous chronicler of his experiences which became a book and then a documentary both titled _Alone In the Wilderness_ (available for purchase on Amazon, PBS, and elsewhere). His life appears quite idyllic on film, but how he endured such solitude I cannot comprehend. You can get an idea of his experiences from this YouTube clip of _Alone..._. The voiceover is not Proenneke but he is the man appearing in the footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsfB6oJ55wM

Something totally different...

Damian, fantastic painting. It calls for more serious commentary than I am prepared to come up with right now. As does Mike's account of the Santander Maritime Museum.

However, if you want to know what Tara and I are up to in our spare time, check this out. She made it and sent it to me.

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Santander Maritime Museum

Nice to see Damian on the site and moving the discussion backward chronologically. In honor of Damian’s recent sojourn in Santander (and his affinity for odd museums), I dug up this old email about the Museo Marítimo.

Thurs. Aug. 3, 2000
I have found in my wanderings a museum that surpasses in sheer weirdness even the crinkled, stuffed and preserved animals in the Monasterio de Santo Tomas in Avila. I´m referring to the Museo Maritimo de Santander.

I´ve been looking for this place for days, because I always love a good marine museum. I realized today that I had walked right by it a handful of times and never recognized it. This is not a museum that jumps out at you. It´s tucked under some trees near the waterfront, beyond the little marina, beyond the bulk of the town. It´s rather non-descript and announces itself with a small faded sign. You don´t wander in off the street to check it out. You kind of have to be looking for it. I found it after following the seawall past rows of fishermen (who have yet to catch anything of substance in my presence, by the way. I´m beginning to suspect that they´re just subsized by the tourist board to pose for visitors), down a little side street littered with the refuse of the previous night´s sexual activity and boom, I was there.

The main floor is rather boring. Displays and explanations on the history of shipbuilding in Santander will only take you so far. Some of the models were really cool, but most of it looked kind of thrown together. Walk downstairs, though, and you enter a wonderland of oddities. Vast quantities of local and non-local sea life float preserved in bottles of formaldehyde, some as big as aquariums. Sea snails, clams, mussels, worms, eels, a sardine (caught in 1918. For the life of me I could not understand why a sardine captured in 1918 merited preservation), sponges, jellyfish, two jars of dolphin fetuses and a whale fetus. It didn´t specify what kind of whale, but there it was, looking pale and ghostly, wondering why it only saw the light of day sealed in a jar. Reminds me of a teacher I knew in sixth grade who sponsored the elementary school science fair. She had a human fetus floating in a jar, cut in half lengthwise so you could see the development of organs and things. Every year she had one of her students do a booth with the fetus for the science fair.

Anyway, along with the floating exhibits there were quite a few mounted and stuffed fish some of which looked like models. A sturgeon definitely was not a model, nor were many of the more withered examples of the local fauna. The swordfish looked fake, though. Hanging overhead were the skeletons of half a dozen whales and whale relatives that had washed up on Santander shores over the years (or perhaps been taken alive). A massive skeleton of a baleen whale of some kind (perhaps a fin whale. The sign said it was a ballena comun: all I know is it was not a blue whale) hung next to a sperm whale. Nearby hung the skeletons of various dolphins and a killer whale. In back a few tanks exhibited live fish, but somehow these were not nearly as interesting as the dead ones.

Holy Week in Seville, 1879

I recently visited San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor museum. Though originally intended to display works of art from France, the Legion of Honor now houses what was the fine art collection of Golden Gate Park's De Young Museum. I was surprised and fascinated to see this work by José Jiménez y Aranda, "Holy Week in Seville, 1879." This is a painted cuadro de costumbres if there ever was one. I am intrigued to find out more about JJyA.

Writer's Camp

Great report, Mike. I'll be saving my pennies for next year's sequel. If things go my way just maybe I'll meet up with ya'll in the Sierras next year.

Writing Camp

The first annual writing camp at Poso Cabin was a raging success.

Tuesday, July 22
Damian and I set out about 1 p.m. We crossed the Central Valley and stocked up with food in Porterville, before heading up to the cabin. Porterville, which has surprisingly hard to locate grocery stores, proclaims itself an All America City on every street sign, with banners proclaiming “100 Years of the Good Life.” Despite the charms of the All America City, we soldiered on toward the cabin, which is in Sequoia National Forest in the Sierra foothills about an hour southeast of Porterville.

As we climbed in elevation, the valley shifts to rolling grassland dotted with live oaks, a terrain very reminiscent of the train ride from Madrid to Escorial and Avila. Damian and I decided it would be perfect for raising Iberian pigs (the best jamón ibérico is raised on an exclusive diet of acorns, as you no doubt know). The road wound, and I found myself getting motion sick for the first time in years; hard to tell whether it was because I wasn’t driving, or because Damian was. As we transitioned from live oak to evergreens, a black tarantula crossed the road in front of us. An omen?

We arrived at the cabin at 7 p.m. We met up with Kent and had the first of four nightly campfires.

Wednesday, July 23
Reveille at 6:15, which we ignored. The cabin has two beds in the bedroom and a sofa bed in the main room. I took the sofa bed the first night, and it felt like I was sleeping on jagged rocks. None of us had slept well that first night, and it seemed that a little laziness was in order. We were up by 7, showered, breakfasted and working by 8 a.m.

The plan was to work for a couple hours, take a break, work some more, have lunch, work some more, then be done by 2 or 2:30, with the rest of the day for fishing.

It was a good plan; usually it’s hard to sustain writing for more than a few hours. I had two papers I was attempting to finish, though, and was convinced I could finish one of them if I just kept working, so when it came time to knock off for the day, I decided to keep going. As it got closer to evening, though, Kent was getting antsy about doing some fishing, so we walked down to the nearby creek to look around. Kent tried fishing the creek with his fly rod, declared himself disgusted and decided to drive to a spot up the road about 16 miles which he had seen on the map.

I finished the draft of my paper at about 7 p.m. that first day, then decided I had had enough. Kent returned, disappointed in the fishing up the road. We shooed some cattle away from the cabin, and stoked up the fire. I cooked dinner that night: pork chops and a sort of ersatz pisto manchego.

The Rest of the Trip
More work. We were all in a groove by this time, working heavily. Kent was absorbed in his work, and Damian was charging through the translation he’s working on at a rate of about 20 pages a day.

On the fishing front, I discovered that trout like sharp cheddar better than dry flies. We grilled the trout outdoors, and ate it with chorizo.

Good work, good food, good friends, roaring fire. What more could we ask for? We're definitely doing it again next year.

Not a mysoginst!

The violence in the poem is absolutely crucial since it cannot be separated from eroticism. The violent death and erotic feelings operate on the same plane in the primitive psychology of the lover. In nature there are many examples of one insect devouring another after sex.

Maybe the lover anticipates treason or the betrayal of his real lover and destroys her before pain and sacrifice become a reality. By making himself vulnerable, which we all must do if we are to love deeply, he also fears the rejection by his lover.

Maybe the lover is so guilt ridden that any erotic feelings which he has, which are perfectly natural, are accompanied by an awareness of sin, which is a construct. This produces a conflict between nature and culture. It seems that violence is the dialectical result from the drive for death and love. In all three cases, eroticism and death cannot be separated.

Serial!!!

I once had a student who dressed all in black for Halloween, and affixed individual portion sized boxes of Fruit Loops and Rice Krispies to his clothing.

Cereal murderer?

Would that be someone who pulverizes his shredded wheat before adding milk and sugar?

Salinas misogynist?

I appreciate both Dave's and Mike's take on the poem, but what I don't get is why if he loves a woman who presumably has a body and a voice--in other words, a physical presence--does he feel the need to destroy everything individual about her in order to reach an ideal plane of purified eroticism in which she's not involved? It's the ominous note betraying the specific, perhaps compromising situation that makes me wonder about it all: your voice "ya iba a traicionarnos," so I had to silence it. Is he in a warehouse that some unfortunate policeman will come upon later, spattered with blood? Because that's what it sounds like. He sounds like a crazed cereal murderer.

Dark night of the soul

Apropos San Juan’s “Noche oscura,” I find it interesting to see how the phrase “dark night of the soul” has migrated into popular culture for all the wrong reasons. Wikipedia writes “It has become an expression used to describe a phase in a person's spiritual life, a metaphor for a certain loneliness and desolation.” “Dark night of the soul” is a cool phrase that seems to evoke existential despair. Hence, an interview with Christian Bale about the new Batman movie is titled … “Dark Knight of the Soul.”

But in my reading of San Juan’s poem, the dark night is not fearsome; certainly not desolate. The dark night is quiet, absent of distractions and thus enables mystic union. If the soul is lonely it is a necessary, even welcome loneliness. The house is quiet, the soul is "dichosa." How did this essentially positive, optimistic phrase become a metaphor for harrowing angst? Perhaps there’s something in San Juan’s lengthy treatise, which I guess I need to read carefully. Any thoughts?

Salinas

I like Dave's analysis.

My thoughts are kind of scattered at the moment, so bear with me. The poem is powerful in part because the violent imagery is the antithesis of what we would expect love poetry to sound like. He has to forcefully remove the presence of the beloved in order to reach a higher "spiritual" plane. In a way it's like San Juan de la Cruz's "Noche oscura;" the soul has to shake off all vestiges of the physical to reach a more pure union. That this is accomplished through the violent imagery makes it jarring, perhaps, but strangely beautful.

Presence, absence, and memory are a running theme in La voz a ti debida. It's very melancholy, but in a way, hopeful. The beloved is all the more present by her absence. (**Real life just intruded; Gabe had a video game crisis and has derailed my train of thought, never to be recovered.)

Morality and other items

Lawyers don't care about morality. They're interested in proving guilt or no guilt. Whether the action was right or wrong is open to interpretation, right? I think the definition definitely overlaps and confuses law and morality.

This is a great poem. It's been a while since I've read Salinas. The poem reminds me a little of Neruda's poem Me gusta cuando callas. Both poems are structured around absence, a void, a lack, in order to find some absolute form of freedom, peace or love and to create desire out of this absence and endless search for the physical. Salinas' disarticulation of the shadow body is certainly more graphic and violent than Neruda's poem.

Thanks for the directions on including a link. I see the icon now.

I've been reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. To see the analysis unfold--to see how is mind works--is a pure delight. Totem and Taboo will be interesting to read in relation to religion, law, morality.

Mike: What is the status of Latin in Spanish Middle Age teaching and research? Does anyone learn it anymore?

Kent: How did you learn French? I'm realizing my French preparation over the years is not enough to deal with the surrealists. I've been on and off with French. I even took a course here. It's the pronunciation. The BBC has a pretty good web site for French lessons.

Conferences

Do any of you belong to a society, association or attend conferences entirely dedicated to your fields or to the writers, themes, issues you work on? I'm trying to find a conference narrow enough to expect some useful feedback and to discuss similar ideas, arguments, etc with those working on the same time period, authors, themes, etc.

Morality and law (and Salinas)

"Almost all the categories that we use in moral and religious judgments are in some way contaminated by law: guilt, responsibility, innocence, judgment, pardon.... (sic)" (Giorgio Agamben Remnants of Auschwitz 18).

What do y'all think of this idea? It seems to me that it may be misframed--that morality and law are in some sense similar and overlapping sets of principles for social behavior, or that perhaps law is dependent on morality.

A couple of responses to some of your previous comments:

A) Mike, can you reproduce the obscene doodle you found and post it?

B) To include a link in a post, click the chain icon at the top of the post window. You have to position the text of your link between the first ">" and the second "<".

C) I love La voz a ti debida. It's one of the best books of love poetry I know. However, the masculine voice raises questions not addressed by an appeal to readerly empathy or understanding--the faculty that allows us to read texts from the past as if they were present-day. I'm referring to "Me estoy labrando tu sombra," which could be read as praise of the spirit of the beloved, transcending the physical, and as fear of sexuality and the need to quiet it before reaching a state of non-physical veneration like courtly love. But, it is also manifestly a handbook for torture in its violent mysogyny. Why must the poet violently dismantle the woman's body to achieve peace?

Me estoy labrando tu sombra.
La tengo ya sin los labios,
rojos y duros: ardían.
Te los habría besado
aún mucho más.

Luego te paro los brazos,
rápidos, largos, nerviosos.
Me ofrecían el camino
para que yo te estrechara.

Te arranco el color, el bulto.
Te mato el paso. Venías
derecha a mí. Lo que más
pena me ha dado, al callártela,
es tu voz. Densa, tan cálida,
más palpable que tu cuerpo.
Pero ya iba a traicionarnos.

Así
mi amor está libre, suelto,
con tu sombra descarnada.
Y puedo vivir en ti
sin temor
a lo que yo más deseo,
a tu beso, a tus abrazos.
Estar ya siempre pensando
en los labios, en la voz,
en el cuerpo,
que yo mismo te arranqué
para poder, ya sin ellos,
quererte.

¡Yo que los quería tanto!
Y estrechar sin fin, sin pena
—mientras se va inasidera,
con mi gran amor detrás,
la carne por su camino—
tu solo cuerpo posible:
tu dulce cuerpo pensado.

Moral

What I'm learning about Buñuel y otros is they take nothing for granted. Everything is questioned. Perhaps they went too far, but as Kent said the times merited such questioning of reason, meaning of art, truth, etc. Such questions are still vital today and can be seen in post modernism's attempts at the revision of truth itself.

How do I include a link in the body of a post?.

Re: The things one finds in books

Why can't I ever find such things in books? The closest I ever came was an obscene doodle I found in a 14th-century manuscript in El Escorial (the Libro de la montería).

The things one finds in books

This article from Saturday's El Mundo will certainly interest those bibliophiles among you. Is one of them a Magnum?

"Moral"

I'm riding to Dave's defense with irrefutable proof that the surrealists in general (including Buñuel) were "moral". According to Miriam Webster, the word in the first instance means:

1 a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ethical "moral judgments" b: expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior "a moral poem" c: conforming to a standard of right behavior d: sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment "a moral obligation" e: capable of right and wrong action "a moral agent"

Keep in mind that Surrealism emerged directly from Dadaism. The main surrealists were dadaists-come-lately in the very early twenties before the 1924 founding of the movement, and they always revered certain people associated with Dadaism such as Tristan Tzara and Francois Picabia, conscientiously making space for them in the new movement. Dada was the performance of overpowering moral revulsion at the values (including bourgeois values of art and beauty) that had senselessly led to senseless slaughter in WWI. Remember that people like Appolinaire and even some of the surrealist themeselves had served in the medical corps. I see them as incredibly moral, and incredibly serious about their adolescent stunts, precisely because everything they did was driven by a conviction that if the human mind wasn't fixed--that is, if the patterns of thinking that led to WWI weren't eradicated through a sort of shock treatment provided by art--it all could be repeated. This is why so many fell away during WWII, and why it signaled the end of the movement: art had failed to stop the carnage a second time. In any case, the definition above doesn't suggest any particular right and wrong as necessary for 'moral' behavior.

Examples

Simon of the Desert (1965), is based on La leyenda aurea, a hagiography from the XIII century. The chapter Simeon el Estilita, specifically. Bunuel was attracted to this saint who lived on a column in the middle of the desert. In fact, Bunuel loved the Middle Ages--nostalgically. The idea of putting characters in isolation and in extreme situations, like Robinson Crusoe or the game warden in La joven (you will like this movie), and then presenting moral challenges is what I like so far about his movies. I guess that's what I mean by a moral sense rather than describe Bunuel's morality. It's the way he challenges certain moral codes like the bourgeoisie, as you say, and religion. But there is more there.

I highly recommend La joven. Here, he's not taking any sides but trying to understand racism and Freudian issues. This is a good film to see because it repeats many of Bunuels images, ideas and fetishes: feet and legs, spiders, chickens, other animals, amour fou, priests, and it's impartial (the film is neither pro black or white), love/death, etc.

Buñuel, redux

Dave: Can you give examples of Buñuel's moral sense? From what little I've seen of him (Andalusian Dog, part of The Golden Age, las Hurdes, Viridiana, part of Milky Way, and a long-ago film class viewing of Belle de jour), his moral sense seems to be driven by a cookie-cutter anti-clericalism and an all-consuming need to tweak the bourgeoisie.

Video

I've seen this video twice--once here and previously in the email. I'm intrigued. The connection with Dalí is interesting. What I take away from both viewings are the maternal images that seem to be staged on an altar. Perhaps a reworking of Abraham's sacrifice. There's a lot here. Maybe I can use it in class.

What I admire so far about surrealism via Buñuel are his unswerving moral convictions regardless of his contradictions and often simplistic and incorrect interpretations of Freud. He is imprecise in his terminology but he is not a scholar. He is able to uphold high morals without becoming dogmatic or doctrinaire, like the Marxists he despised.

Spanish goth?

I'm posting here the video I recommended by email a couple of days ago. It has a Surrealism connection because Monica Naranjo was born in Figueres, birthplace of Dalí.

What's in a name?

I don't mind being classed as a "peninsularista" for the purposes of this blog. But if it's going to be "peninsularistas" shouldn't we by rights include professors of Portuguese, Basque, Galician, Valencian and Catalan literature as well?

What intrigues me most about Surrealism, like other incarnations of the Avant-Garde (though much exaggerated), is just how seriously they went about what they were doing. Two examples from L'Amour fou, Mad Love. The first has to do with the concept of hazard objectif or objective chance--that is, the calling forth from the world that which one needs by desire, a sort of reaction of the world to desire:

“A person will know how to proceed when, like the painter, he consents to reproduce, without any change, what an appropriate grid tells him in advance of his own acts. This grid exists. Every life contains these homogenous patterns of facts, whose surface is cracked or cloudy. Each person has only to stare at them fixedly in order to read his own future. Let him enter the whirlwind; let him retrace the events which have seemed to him fleeting and obscure among all others, which have torn him apart. There—if his questioning is worth it—all the logical principles, having been routed, will bring him the strength of that objective chance which makes a mockery of what would have seemed most probable. Everything humans might want to know is written upon this grid in phosphorescent letters, in letters of desire.” (Mad Love 86-7)

The second has to do with Breton's concept of convulsive beauty, which I'll let him explain:

“And it is there—right in the depths of the human crucible, and this paradoxical region where the fusion of two beings who have really chosen each other renders to all things the lost colors of the times of ancient suns, where however, loneliness rages also, in one of nature’s fantasies which, around the Alaskan craters, demands that under the ashes there remain snow—it is there that years ago I asked that we look for a new beauty, a beauty ‘envisaged exclusively to produce passion.’” (8)

“Such beauty cannot appear except from the poignant feeling of the thing revealed, the integral certainty produced by the emergence of a solution, which, by its very nature, could not come to us along ordinary logical paths.” (13)

“Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial, or it will not be.” (19)

Surrealism etc.

Surrealism is a new thing for me. I decided to teach a film course when we started tweaking the curriculum soon after I started working here. It is now time to prepare and perform. I decided to focus on one major film maker who happens to be at the same time a surrealist. I can also include theory, poetry, prose, Freud, etc. who all tie into Bunuel's cultural formation. Kent is far better prepared to tackle this question, especially for bibliography.

I missed out on the cafe comercial but ate at cafe gijon across from the national library. I wonder if the air is better there?

We should change the name of the blog. How about hispanistas?

Theory of Surrealism

I am deeply involved in medieval matters at the moment, so I don't think I'm going to have time to absorb the bibliography on surrealism. Can you (Dave or Kent) tell me in a nutshell what is appealing to you about the theory of surrealism?

Madrid's air

From an article on air pollution in Spain we get this lovely quote: "Cada madrileño pierde entre dos y tres años de esperanza de vida por respirar aire contaminado."

I felt like I dropped at least 10 years every time I used the internet at the Cafe Comercial.

Betancourt and FARC

This may be off topic, but I'm intrigued by this whole rescue of the hostages story out of Colombia. I just read this story from El Pais, and I can't help but think Ingrid Betancourt may be suffering from a little Stockholm Syndrome.

bunuel continued

I confess to being hopelessly bourgeois, but isn’t “making use of a sleeping woman” beyond the pale? I guess that was the whole point.

By the way, maybe we should change the name. It just occured to me that Kent isn't a peninsularist.

Buñuel

Many of B's. scenes come from personal memories and experiences so studying his life and reading interviews about his films are helpful. Take the scene in Viridiana where she is drugged by her Uncle so he can sleep with her. According to B., this scene originates in one of his juvenile obsessions where he dreams of drugging the Queen of Spain in order to sleep with her. He also commented much later in life that the idea of making use of a sleeping woman is a stimulating idea. He enjoyed dressing up in his mother's and father's clothing, often combining various articles of clothing from his mother's and father's wardrobes. The uncle attempts to try on the shoe of his dead wife and caresses her wedding dress in Viridiana. The name of the film, according to B., comes from the latin viridium, sitio verde. Is the poet always in the poem?

The language of fascism

I've always found the language of fascism to be incomprehensible:

Golden Age

I'm teaching my Golden Age poetry seminar for the second time in the fall. I really enjoyed it last time, and had the satisfaction of having a few students tell me I had converted them from poetry haters to poetry lovers. That said, I must admit that I'm more comfortable teaching prose.

When it comes to poetry I'm a bit of a traditionalist. We talk of form, language, historical context. I have delved into the 20th century, though, from time to time. Last year in my graduate survey of peninsular literature (yes, we have one of those, to my dismay) we read all of La voz a ti debida, by Salinas, and I have to say that it was one of the more satisfying experiences I've had. I know some regard Salinas as overly intellectual and cold, but La voz a ti debida moves me like nothing else.

So, here's a question to begin our blog: what work of Spanish literature moves you like nothing else? Instead of replying in comments, which are a pain to read, reply in a new post.

By the way, we can always change this blog layout and the description. I threw this together fairly quickly just a few minutes ago.