Gender and Society in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema (review)

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 303 With meticulously scholaily acumen, Guillen guides the teadei through avast maze of topics, always demonstrating the multiplicity and complexities inherent in literatures, societies, and the human being, homo multiplex. As a compatatist, he utilizes a variety of theories to study literature, which he believes to be a sistema de tendencias, processes that are comparable and similar. The highlight of this book is the fust essay, a fascinating piece on exile and literature from the classics to the present that demonstrates the connection between exiles and the sun, moon, and stars. With peispicacity Guillen studies two models —the exile of Ovid (lamentation) and that of die Stoics and Cynics (solidarity, universal citizenship ). His commentary on classical references to the stars and the moon, particularly those ofthe Stoics, is a mark of his extensive knowledge and fertile imagination. The Stoics, who believed that all pans ofthe cosmos were related, thought that the sun, moon, and stars confirmed their alliance with the oidei ofthe universe, and thus, in exile, they considered themselves to be citizens of the world. While some authois write from exile a literature of contra exilio, otheis leam to share theii exile with their fellow humans, forming a solidaiity , which at times is philosophical, religious, political or poetic. This section also includes studies on the exile of die sage in China, Dante, du Bellay, Shakesperare, Madame de Staël, Foseólo, Julio Cortázar, Alberti, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Anothei essay on landscape in literature and art explains how landscape at times merely accompanies or serves as decoration to a work, or at times becomes embodied in the work. His treatment of Wordsworth, Leopardi, and ClarÃ-n is especially outstanding. A piece on liteiature and obscenity treats Bocaccio, Rabelais, Aretino, KingLear, and La lozana andaluza. The essay on the specificity and peculiarity, fiction and reality of epistolary writing, another highlight ofthe book, will be of special interest to scholars ofthe picaresque and testimonial literature. Here, he refers to an autobiographical double pact, a double process with its four protagonists: "el yo del autor, el yo empÃ-rico que escribe; el yo textual; el tú textual, el destinatario ; and el receptor empÃ-rico quien lee" (188), and he convincingly concludes that the epistolary form cannot be reduced to the text itself. Especially noteworthy are Guillen's discussions on the letters of Petrarch, Aretino, Garcilaso's epistles in veise, and the fictional letteis ofthe anonymous La monja portuguesa (1669), which until recently were considered to be real. An essay on the beginnings of national literatures illustrates the problems with teiritorial focuses and stereotypes, and the final piece on Europe, ciencia e inconsciencia best exemplifies complex multiplicity. Guillen masterfully discusses the blurring of boundaries of Europe, its islands, cultural enclaves, multilingual regions, its juxtaposed and changing lands that constitute a plurality of perspectives and definitions. He makes his case for multiplicity with his discussion ofthe six types of readers mentioned by the "amigo" in the prologue ofthe first part of Don Quijote and the multiple superimposed perspectives of leading the Quijote. He then relates this position to the numerous perspectives and definitions of Europe and its inherent and developing multiple pluralities . Guillen, who knows literature and culture a k krgoy k ancho, offers a book that successfully treats stratified multiplicity as it applies to literature , society, and the human being, homo multiplex . The oscillation between two poles of opposite tendencies that endures in time can be seen in Europe, its history, its configuration, its mobile and oscillating complexity. This excellent book presents a genuine quest for knowledge on multiplicity in literature, society , and the homo multiplex. Guillen's skill in cairying out this mammoth, complex study in a scholarly , persuasive, and interesting manner, earns him the tide maestro. Robert L. Fiore The University of Arizona Gender and Society in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema University of Texas Press, 1999 By David William Foster 304 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Probably the single most important sentence I heard in a class when I was an undergraduate student at Arizona State University was uttered by a professor of Women's Studies when explaining hei own response to...