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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 243 propósito de convertir a los anglicanos a la fe católica. Su misión, según su autobiografÃ-a, es llegar a ser mártir de la fe y sacrificar su vida por Cristo. Cruz propone que se deben interpretar sus intenciones como impulsadas no por su pasión religiosa, sino por su deseo, como mujer, de alcanzar la subjetividad que le ha negado la jerarquÃ-a dominante. En su totalidad, el libro cumple con su propósito de poner en manos del lector, de forma práctica y asequible, una variada selección de temas acerca de las mujeres de la familia Mendoza. Es una publicación de interés por su riqueza informativa y por la novedad de datos presentados. Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain es, sin duda, un valioso texto complementario a cursos del Siglo de Oro y como libro de consulta para estudiosos de la época. Alfonso J. GarcÃ-a Osuna The City University of New York, Kingsborough. The Twentieth Century Spanish-American Novel University of Texas Press, 2003 By Raymond Leslie Williams The Twentieth Century Spanish-American Novel, by Leslie Williams, is an extensive study of the literature of this period. In the first section, dedicated to the period classified as modernismo, Williams observes how novelists of this time tended to be more concerned with political circumstances than with the aesthetics of fiction. According to him, exceptions to this rule were Mariano Azuela in Mexico and Manuel Gálvez in Argentina. In the second chapter of this section he reviews various works, including Azuelas Los de abajo and Gálvez's El mal metafÃ-sico. Part two deals with the criollista and vanguardia novels of the '20s and '30s. While the criollistas celebrated local and regional values, the writers of the vanguardia began experimenting with European avant-garde aesthetics, such as the use of interior monologues. But as the author notes, the novels of the vanguardia occupied a limited space and were met with criticism, while some criollista novels enjoyed great success. The criollista classics discussed in the next section are La vorágine by José Eustasio Rivera, Don Segundo Sombra by Ricardo Guiraleds, and Las memorias de Mamá Blanca by Teresa de la Parra, all canonical works. Williams also dedicates a chapter to various works of the vanguardia that were either ignored or rejected by the predominant criollista literary culture of the time. The next section deals with the 1940s and 1950s. It begins with a discussion of how during this period modernist writing began to flourish, due in large part to the influence of Borges. Novelists such as Miguel Õ ngel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel GarcÃ-a Márquez and others began to deal with the problem of identity through such modernist narrative strategies as transcendent regionalism and oral culture, or magic realism, setting the stage for the Boom ofthe 1960s. Williams includes analyses of El Señor Presidente, by Asturias, Al filo del agua by AgustÃ-n Yáñez, Adán Buenosayres by Leopoldo Maréchal, Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo and La región más transparente by Carlos Fuentes. As in other parts of this book, in the section dealing with the Boom, Williams does a good job of giving credit to less-known writers ofthe period without lessening the importance of the more famous. In addition to Fuentes, Vargas Llosa, GarcÃ-a Márquez, and Cortázar, he also mentions writers such as José Donoso, Clarice Lispector, and many others. He also talks ofthe importance of certain works in the transition to postmodern fiction, such as Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Tres Tristes Tigres, Fuentes's Zona sagrada and Cambio de piel, and others. He includes analyses of Fuentes's La muerte de Artemio Cruz, Cortázar's Rayuela, Vargas Llosa's La casa verde, and Márquez's Cien años de soledad. In keeping with his theme of inclusion, Williams also dedicates a chapter to the analysis of lesserknow modernist works of the period. In his discussion ofthe Post-Boom period of the 1970s and 1980s, Williams mentions the novel of dictator, exile, and history. He also talks ofthe...

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