Spanish-Language Contributions

Since our last entry the most noteworthy development in Spanish-language scholarship has been the emergence of electronic journals. As in other fields of literary scholarship, this technology has increased the accessibility, range, and variety of critical studies; journals such as Cyberletras and Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios have become valuable resources. For instance, Blasina Cantizano Márquez offers a very interesting exercise in literary history in "Washington Irving y Fernán Caballero: Influencia y coincidencias literarias" (Espéculo 23 [2003]: n.p.). Márquez's intriguing study of "influence and literary coincidence" turns on Irving's visit to Spain in 1828, where he gathered material for A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and Tales of the Alhambra (1832). In Sevilla Irving met Cecilia Bohl de Faber, who wrote under the masculine pseudonym Fernán Caballero. Márquez proposes that Irving and Calallero were kindred spirits and became fast friends. Their conversations and Caballero's writings supplied the tales and legends of Spain that became the subject matter of Tales of the Alhambra. The upshot was that Caballero directly influenced the spirit and content of Irving's book and the American writer encouraged Caballero's further work: "This special relation between authors of different sex, origin, and education enriched both writers and served as a contrast and stimulus, as much in their personal relations as in their respective literary careers."

Notably, Edgar Allan Poe—through electronic journals or conventional means—continues to be the most profusely studied American author in Spain and Latin America. Blasina Cantizano Márquez in "La caida de la casa Usher: de E. A. Poe a Dagoll-Dagom" (Espéculo 26 [2003]: n.p.) offers a close-reading of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and extends commentary to popular culture and the adaptations of Poe in film and theater. Márquez concludes that the tale is one of Poe's greatest compositions and that it encapsulates the essence of his genius: it "is one of the stories that best approximates the world of Poe, a unique world in which the greatest and the most hidden fears of the human subconscious are exposed." Amparo P. Gutiérrez's "Variaciones en torno e 'El Cuervo' de Poe" (Espéculo 20 [2002]: n.p.), as the title implies, investigates various translators of Poe, from Baudelaire to more contemporary figures. Gutiérrez provides a detailed analysis and interpretation of Poe's famous poem "The Raven" and its impact on European letters. The essay offers a comparative study of several translations of "The Raven" and demonstrates how ill served Poe has been in translation. Also in the context of Poe studies, Abelino Mártinez Rocha's "'Los crimines de las calle morgue': un ejercicio de análisis de contenido por el méthodo sinótipo" (Káñina 24 [2000]: 47–58) examines "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" as a self-referential story that dramatizes Poe's thesis: "The faculty of resolution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by the highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis." Rocha's essay is precisely a mathematical study and analysis of Poe's problematic story and a clever exercise on multiple points of view. Replete with charts and diagrams, Rocha's critique studiously breaks down the versions of the six witnesses to the murders in the Rue Morgue by national and linguistic characteristics to underscore Poe's brilliant conceit on narrative point of view and the relativity of truth. In "Estética del horror: La sublimidad en dos relatos de Edgar Allan Poe y Leopoldo Lugones" (RChL 57 [2000]: 95–104) Carolina Depetris provides a historical sketch of "the aesthetics of horror" and then offers her thesis—that genius can take that aesthetic to the apex of sublimity. Depetris chooses Poe's "MS. Found in a Bottle" and Lugones's "Rain of Fire" to illustrate the totality of evect in the horror story and to demonstrate Poe's influence on Lugones.

Also notable: Arthur Miller was given extended recognition on...