Playas del Árbol: Una visión transatlántica de las literaturas hispánicas (review)

Marrero-Fente, Raúl. Playas del Árbol: Una visión transatlántica de las literaturas hispánicas. Madrid: Huerga y Fierro, 2002. 250 pp. In Playas del Árbol: Una visión transatlántica de las literaturas hispánicas , Raúl Marrero-Fente marks the space of the beach as the symbolic point of contact between the cultures of Spain and Spanish America. The fluid consistency of the Caribbean waters that converge with the sandy shores serves as a significant, yet ambiguous setting which makes possible the infinite transgressions of language, culture and literature shared by both sides of the Atlantic. A closer look inland reveals the tree situated in the forefront of this imagined beach, which much like the complex dialectic between both cultures, strives to grow outward and upward, while at the same time planting its roots firmly into the ground. It is within this complex dialectic between time and space, conquest and resistance and growth and stagnation that Marrero-Fente explores the shared commonalities between both cultures offering a critical literary investigation beginning with Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor and ending with the dualistic approximations of the chronicling of the Latin American experience by twenty first-century writer and critic Carlos Fuentes. In each of the nine chapters of this highly condensed book, Marrero-Fente celebrates the indeterminate and ambiguous space of literature, noting the constant movement and transformations that occur transculturally. He embarks upon the medieval text of Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor, showing how the character of Trotaconventos takes on a symbolic role of the future trajectory of literature as she pushes the borders of medieval life with her erotic suggestions and her assistance in the archpriest’s pursuance of amorous adventures. Fiction mixes with reality in the following chapter as this critic explores the fictional characteristics of the “Capitulaciones de Santa Fe,” which consequently open up a space for a re-interpretation of the “Legalities” of the Discovery and Conquest . In chapter 3, “‘Espíritu desnudo y sombra muda’: El fantasma de la épica y los estudios coloniales,” he laments the forgotten genre of the epic poem, which he argues to be an important and valuable source of the convergence of two cultures. Using the interdisciplinary focus of the phantom theory made popular by Agamben, Derrida, Schmitt and Rabaté, he approaches the epic poem as a phantom genre due to its lack of critical attention during the colonial era. The focus of the next three chapters relies on the transgressions of literary technique and style as boundaries are pushed and prodded while identities are shown to be in a continual mode of transition. In chapter 4, Marrero-Fente examines Silvestre de Balboa’s appropriation of European literary models including Homer and Virgil as he introduces a new national identity of Cuba in his epic poem “Espejo de paciencia.” The American depiction of epic heroes is now multi-dimensional revealing the collective community of the New World including Creole, Portuguese, Amerindian, African and Spanish Reseñas 109 inhabitants confronted with a common enemy. While the Americas are celebrating new racial identities in the New World, Miguel de Cervantes tests the limited waters of gender in his world renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha. Marcela, dissatisfied with the gendered limitations of the pastoral novel, refuses the amorous approaches of Grisóstomo, and instead searches for a more appropriate space or genre that will meet her needs. In this analysis, both gender and genres are challenged, thus opening this chapter and the text to broader interpretations. The concluding four chapters offer critical investigations of more modern narrative including works written by José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes. In chapter six, Marrero-Fente discusses the importance of the changing historical context of Mexico in the time period in which Lizardi wrote Don Catrín de la Fachenda. Departing from traditional readings of the novel focusing on its picaresque origins, he argues that the multiple levels of irony employed in the text reveal its rupture from both traditional and authoritative modes of discourse. In this way, Don Catrín differs from peninsular models...