García Moreno, Aitor; Fernández Martín, Elisabeth; Álvarez López, Cristóbal José (2021) El Nuevo chico diccionario j̀udeo-español–francés de Šelomó Yisrael Šereślí (Jerusalén, 1898-1899). Edición anotada, estudio preliminar e índices

García Moreno, Aitor; Fernández Martín, Elisabeth; Álvarez López, Cristóbal José (2021) El Nuevo chico diccionario j̀udeo-español–francés de Šelomó Yisrael Šereślí (Jerusalén, 1898-1899). Edición anotada, estudio preliminar e índices. «Romance Literatures & Cultures». Series «Sprache-Gesellschaft-Geschichte», vol. 10. Berlin: Peter Lang, 296 pp. ISBN 978-3-631-84973-6

The Identity of Hispanic Literatures: One Breath, a Million Words

Nothing can stop the tides of innovation in art: it is this idea that a captive, dirty, weak, and hungry Don Quixote embraced to affirm himself as the heroic referent for the emerging Romance literatures. Indeed, this adaptability has been the secret of his longevity in the Western canon. Like Don Quixote, Hispanic literatures cannot build their identity on a pristine, metropolitan, and uniform Spanish language elevated by its exclusivity. If literary Hispanism is to be alive, it needs to evolve into a complex cultural construction that binds together the oral and literat­e languages of America and Spain and takes into account transatlantic flows and contradictions. Breathing, a common feature of both literary patterns and a rhythm of nature, will serve as the much-needed metaphor to bridge Latin American oral cultures, which have found permanence and expression in written texts, with literate cultures, including even the most urban, digital, and technologically advanced from Mexico, Chile or Spain. ­

«El corpus medieval de la lírica popular catalana con voz femenina»

Resumen: El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la presencia de la voz femenina en el corpus de la lírica popular catalana de la Edad Media. Con tal propósito, y tras presentar los resultados de las líneas de investigación principales en el área románica, se estudiará el Corpus d’antiga poesia popular de Josep Romeu i Figueras y serán comentadas las características temáticas y formales de este conjunto formado por veinticuatro poemas. Por último, se propone la inclusión de tres piezas adicionales, de origen diverso, que nos permitirán reflexionar sobre cuestiones relacionadas con sus tipologías textuales, culturales y lingüísticas.Palabras clave: Lírica catalana de la Edad Media, Poesía tradicional europea, La mujer en la literatura catalana medieval, Estudios de género, Josep Romeu i Figueras.Abstract: The goal of this essay is the analysis of female voices in Catalan traditional poetry from the Middle Ages. After introducing the main achievements of previous research in Romance literatures, we will study Josep Romeu i Figueras’ Corpus d’antiga poesia popular as well as the formal and thematic traits of the extant group of 24 poems. Last, the article suggests to include 3 more texts, whose presence will offer the opportunity to think about some issues related to textual, cultural and linguistic typologies.Keywords: Medieval Catalan Poetry, European Traditional Poetry, Women in Medieval Catalan Literature, Genre Studies, Josep Romeu i Figueras.

Dante and the Construction of a Mediterranean Literary Space

This article examines the ideological implications of the literary debate about the Arab-Islamic influences on Dante’sDivina Commediaand the emergence of the idea of Mediterranean literature. It traces the question of “influences” back to 16th century Italy, casts the modern controversy about Dante and the Arabs in the broader context of borders, and questions the definition of European and Romance literatures in relation to Arabic literature. It then focuses on the 20th century debate about the Arabic roots of theCommediain Italy, Spain and the Arab world in order to account for the reception and translation of theCommediainto Arabic.

"In the Pleats of Great Languages": Minor Romance Literatures in Europe

"In the Pleats of Great Languages": Minor Romance Literatures in EuropeThis text is a review of the book: „Literatury mniejsze” Europy romańskiej, Mirosław Loba, Barbara Łuczak, Alfons Gregori (eds), Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznań 2012, 236 pp.

Literature as Knowledge for Living, Literary Studies as Science for Living

In 2001, the official year of the “life sciences” in germany, ottmar ette began pulling together ideas for what was to become the programmatic essay excerpted and translated here. Ette is known for different things in different places: in Spain and Hispanic America, he is renowned for his work on José Martí, Jorge Semprún, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, and a host of other authors. In the francophone world, he is best known for his writings on Roland Barthes and, more recently, on Amin Maalouf, while his reputation in his native Germany rests on his voluminous work on Alexander von Humboldt and on the new literatures in German. That this polyglot professor of Romance literatures is, at heart and in practice, a comparatist goes almost without saying. He is also, perhaps as inevitably, a literary theorist and a cultural critic, whose work has attracted attention throughout Europe. In his 2004 book ÜberLebenswissen—a title that might be rendered in English both as “Knowledge for Survival” and as “About Life Knowledge”—Ette first began to reclaim for literary studies the dual concepts of Lebenswissen and Lebenswissenschaft, which I have translated provisionally as “knowledge for living” and “science for living” to set them off from the biotechnological discourses of the life sciences. While ÜberLebenswissen focuses on the disciplinary history and practices of the field of Romance literatures, its companion volume from 2005, ZwischenWeltenSchreiben: Literaturen ohne festen Wohnsitz (“Writing between Worlds: Literatures without a Fixed Abode”), extends Ette's inquiry to the global contexts of Shoah, Cuban, and Arab American literatures. Both volumes urge that literary studies “be opened up, made accessible and relevant, to the larger society. Doing so is, simply and plainly, a matter of survival” (ZwischenWeltenSchreiben 270).