The Body Hispanic: Gender and Sexuality in Spanish and Spanish American Literature / Edition 1

by Paul Julian Smith

Overview

This is the first book to analyze Spanish and Spanish-American literature in light of several theories of sexuality advanced since Freud. Bringing into discussion such writers as Fuentes, Neruda, Garcia Lorca, Galdos, and St. Teresa of Avila, Smith draws on critical approaches derived from Marx, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, and French theoretical feminism (Kristeva and Irigaray). He argues that in spite of the variety of texts and theories treated, there are three broad areas of coherence or coincidence: the status of women in a male culture; the possibility of resistance to authority; and the role of the body as protagonist in that resistance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198158745
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/07/1992
Series:	Clarendon Paperbacks
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

University of Cambridge

Table of Contents

	Covarrubias's bearded lady
	Abbreviations	ix
	Introduction: Reading The Body	1
1.	Writing Women In The Golden Age	11
1.	Women's Studies and Feminist Theory	11
2.	Teresa and the Mystic Body	22
3.	Zayas and Women's Language	31
4.	A Chance of Life	41
2.	Gongora And Barthes	44
1.	'Beyond' Transgression	44
2.	The Soledades: Gender and Genre	51
3.	The Polifemo: Narrative and Catachresis	60
4.	Figures of Sexuality	67
3.	Galdos, Valera, Lacan	69
1.	Psychologism and Psychoanalysis	69
2.	La de Bringas: The Factor of Truth	75
3.	Juanita la Larga: The Insistence of Meaning	87
4.	A Letter of Love	101
4.	Lorca And Foucault	105
1.	Against Humanism	105
2.	Bernarda Alba: Power and Knowledge	115
3.	El publico: Power and Pleasure	125
4.	A Sense of Self	135
5.	Neruda, Vallejo, Marx	138
1.	Marxian Sexuality	138
2.	Nature in the Odas elementales	143
3.	Man in the Poemas humanos	156
4.	A Politics of the Body	172
6.	Fuentes, Puig, Lyotard	175
1.	Postmodern Conditions	175
2.	Artemio Cruz and the Decline of Metanarrative	183
3.	La mujer arana and the Return of the Body	193
4.	The End of History?	202
	Conclusion: Reading The Same	205
	Bibliography	208
	Index	216

Editorial Reviews

"Without doubt the most radical, ground-breaking work on Hispanic literature published in the last decade (at least), and has changed irrevocably the horizon of expectations of that discipline as a result. It not only diverged from the prevailing ideology of Hispanism in Britain...but actively attacked it....These readings are unsurpassed in their clarity and intelligence and, at times, sheer virtuosity."—Romance Quarterly

From the Publisher