Introduction

INTRODUCTION Crystal Chemris University of Oregon T he field of transatlantic studies has by now gained increasing acceptance since its beginnings about seventeen years ago, in the informal exchanges which led to the formation of the Transatlantic Project at Brown University under the guiding light of Julio Ortega (“Los estudios transatlánticos). Since that time, various special collections have been published, new journals devoted to the topic have been founded, regular transatlantic conferences meet and a small but growing number of academic departments in the U.S. and internationally have developed courses and programs which foster Hispanic transatlantic ––indeed transoceanic–– studies.1 The transatlantic nature of the Hispanic Baroque has long drawn critical attention, particularly in light of its projection into the Latin American Neobaroque, yet the paradigm of “national literature” remains an obstacle to the study of Hispanic peninsular and colonial early modern literature in their dynamic interaction. Such is the argument of John Beverley, whose dialogue with Fernando Gómez Herrero, “Are Golden Age Studies Obsolete?” is a theoretical point of departure for this collection (Essays 149-85). In light of this interest in developing new models of interdisciplinary scholarship, the transatlantic Hispanic Baroque has inspired a growing number of academic and cultural endeavors. Since John Beverley’s Una modernidad obsoleta and Roberto González Echevarría’s Celestina’s Brood ––essential essay collections of the 1990s––, the North American academies have seen an impressive number of critical interventions on the Baroque and the Neobaroque, both Hispanic and global. While most of this has been produced from within Hispanism, some of this has emerged from Hispanic Studies within departments of English and Comparative Literature and from the new field of hemispheric studies. In their aggregate these contributions include special issues of the CALÍOPE 2013, Vol. 18, No. 2: pages 9-15 Crystal Chemris 10 10 PMLA (124.1; 2009) and RCEH (41.3; 2007), a number of published collections and monographs such as Nicholas Spadaccini’s and Luis Martin-Estudillo’s Hispanic Baroques, Gregg Lambert’s The Return of the Baroque, Lois Parkinson Zamora’s The Inordinate Eye and her anthology with Monika Kaup of translated documents, Baroque New Worlds, Beverley’s Essays on the Literary Baroque in Spain and Spanish America and the establishment of an ongoing Canadian Research Project on the Hispanic Baroque. In Spain, Francisco Jarauta and Christine Buci-Glucksmann edited an important European theoretical collection on the Baroque, El barroco y su doble, and Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor has written a number of books on Baroque theory since Maravall’s classic volume. Transatlantic scholarship, as in the Hispanic world in general, given the historical and cultural ties, asserts itself despite disciplinary boundaries. A pioneer in Spanish transatlantic studies is the poet Andrés Sánchez Robayna, of the Universidad de La Laguna in the Canary Islands. Associated with the Cuban writer of the Neobaroque, Severo Sarduy, he drew attention early on to the importance of the Brazilian Haroldo de Campos’s work, signaling the Luso-Brazilian dimension of the topic which will also be addressed in this collection. Joaquín Roses Lozano, of the Universidad de Córdoba and a veteran of the Brown department, has overseen a number of transatlantic volumes in his career as an editor, including the re-issuing of Altoaguirre’s original edition of Pablo Neruda’s España en el corazón. Also noteworthy is a new transatlantic anthology of poetry inspired by Luis de Góngora on the recent occasion of the 450th anniversary of his birth, Cisne andaluz, edited by the poet Carlos Clementson of the Universidad de Córdoba. This special number of Calíope includes a poignant essay by Aurora Hermida Ruiz on the mistreatment of Alfonso Reyes by the Generation of 27. Yet these publications from Córdoba also remind us of the rich counter-tradition of solidarity between Spanish and Latin American poets, most notable perhaps in the relationship which emerged between Lorca, Neruda and revolutionary politics. The bibliography on the Hispanic Baroque and its “returns” is extensive and my intention here is to simply sketch a context for the recent interest in its transatlantic dimension. However, this special number...