Studies In Spanish Literature In Honor Of Daniel Eisenberg

This book is the first scholarly attempt to examine Don Quixote from the angle of dialogism and polyphony. To begin with, although Mikhail Bakhtin considered Dostoevsky the “creator of a polyphonic novel,” we believe that the first elements of polyphony can be observed in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. A preliminary objective will therefore be to articulate, without reducing the role of Dostoevsky in the creation of the polyphonic novel and relying on Bakhtin’s interpretation of polyphony, heteroglossia, and multivoicedness, that the polyphonic structure appeared and evolved to a state of relative maturity centuries before Dostoevsky. The book will subsequently explore how and why the polyphonic structure was born within the classic monophonic structure of Don Quixote, the ways in which this new structure positioned itself in relation to the classic monophonic one, and what relations it may be said to have established with it resulting in a unique amalgam—the hybrid semi-polyphonic novel. An overarching concern throughout the project will be to trace Cervantes’ search for new and more sophisticated expressive possibilities that the old, monophonic narration could not offer, while also shedding light on how Cervantes systematically and deliberately employed polyphonic structure in Don Quixote.

This volume contains seven sections, exploring in depth Cervantes's life and how the trials, tribulations, and hardships endured influenced his writing. Cervantistas from numerous countries, offer their expertise with the most up-to-date research and interpretations to complete this wide-ranging, but detailed, compendium.

Cognition, Literature, and History models the ways in which cognitive and literary studies may collaborate and thereby mutually advance. It shows how understanding of underlying structures of mind can productively inform literary analysis and historical inquiry, and how formal and historical analysis of distinctive literary works can reciprocally enrich our understanding of those underlying structures. Applying the cognitive neuroscience of categorization, emotion, figurative thinking, narrativity, self-awareness, theory of mind, and wayfinding to the study of literary works and genres from diverse historical periods and cultures, the authors argue that literary experience proceeds from, qualitatively heightens, and selectively informs and even reforms our evolved and embodied capacities for thought and feeling. This volume investigates and locates the complex intersections of cognition, literature, and history in order to advance interdisciplinary discussion and research in poetics, literary history, and cognitive science.

Art and Answerability, the work that would become Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary manifesto, was first published in Den Iskusstva (The Day of the Art) on September 13, 1919. Mikhail Bakhtin’s Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Psychology: Art and Answerability celebrates one hundred years of Bakhtin’s heritage. This unique book examines the heritage of Mikhail Bakhtinin a variety of disciplines.To articulate the enduring relevance and heritage of the varied works of Bakhtin, sixteen scholars from eight countries have come together, and each has brought his/her unique perspective to the subject. Bakhtin’s work in aesthetics, moral philosophy, linguistics, psychology, carnival, cognition, contextualism, and the history and theory of the novel are present here, as understood by a wide variety of distinguished scholars.

Inventing the Novel uses the work of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) to explore the ancient origins of the modern novel. The analysis focuses on one of the most elusive works of classical antiquity, the Satyrica, written by Nero's courtier, Petronius Arbiter (whose singular suicide, described by Tacitus, is as famous as his novel). Petronius was the most lauded ancient novelist of the twentieth century and the Satyrica served as the original model for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), as well as providing the epigraph for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922), and the basis for Fellini Satyricon (1969). Bakhtin's work on the novel was deeply informed by his philosophical views: if, as a phenomenologist, he is a philosopher of consciousness, as a student of the novel, he is a philosopher of the history of consciousness, and it is the role of the novel in this history that held his attention. This volume seeks to lay out an argument in four parts that supports Bakhtin's sweeping assertion that the Satyrica plays an "immense" role in the history of the novel, beginning in Chapter 1 with his equally striking claim that the novel originates as a new way of representing time and proceeding to the question of polyphony in Petronius and the ancient novel.

In Spanish Books in the Europe of the Enlightenment (Paris and London) Nicolás Bas examines the image of Spain in eighteenth-century Europe, and in Paris and London in particular. His material has been scoured from an exhaustive interrogation of the records of the book trade. He refers to booksellers’ catalogues, private collections, auctions, and other sources of information in order to reconstruct the country’s cultural image. Rarely have these sources been searched for Spanish books, and never have they been as exhaustively exploited as they are in Bas’ book. Both England and France were conversant with some very negative ideas about Spain. The Black Legend, dating back to the sixteenth century, condemned Spain as repressive and priest-ridden. Bas shows however, that an alternative, more sympathetic, vision ran parallel with these negative views. His bibliographical approach brings to light the Spanish books that were bought, sold and ultimately read. The impression thus obtained is likely to help us understand not only Spain’s past, but also something of its present.

Particularly in the humanities and social sciences, festschrifts are a popular forum for discussion. The IJBF provides quick and easy general access to these important resources for scholars and students. The festschrifts are located in state and regional libraries and their bibliographic details are recorded. Since 1983, more than 639,000 articles from more than 29,500 festschrifts, published between 1977 and 2010, have been catalogued.

It's a critical cliché that Cervantes' Don Quixote is the first modern novel, but this distinction raises two fundamental questions. First, how does one define a novel? And second, what is the relationship between this genre and understandings of modernity? In Forms of Modernity, Rachel Schmidt examines how seminal theorists and philosophers have wrestled with the status of Cervantes' masterpiece as an 'exemplary novel', in turn contributing to the emergence of key concepts within genre theory. Schmidt's discussion covers the views of well-known thinkers such as Friedrich Schlegel, José Ortega y Gasset, and Mikhail Bakhtin, but also the pivotal contributions of philosophers such as Hermann Cohen and Miguel de Unamuno. These theorists' examinations of Cervantes's fictional knight errant character point to an ever-shifting boundary between the real and the virtual. Drawing from both intellectual and literary history, Forms of Modernity richly explores the development of the categories and theories that we use today to analyze and understand novels.

It's a critical cliché that Cervantes' Don Quixote is the first modern novel, but this distinction raises two fundamental questions. First, how does one define a novel? And second, what is the relationship between this genre and understandings of modernity? In Forms of Modernity, Rachel Schmidt examines how seminal theorists and philosophers have wrestled with the status of Cervantes' masterpiece as an 'exemplary novel', in turn contributing to the emergence of key concepts within genre theory. Schmidt's discussion covers the views of well-known thinkers such as Friedrich Schlegel, José Ortega y Gasset, and Mikhail Bakhtin, but also the pivotal contributions of philosophers such as Hermann Cohen and Miguel de Unamuno. These theorists' examinations of Cervantes's fictional knight errant character point to an ever-shifting boundary between the real and the virtual. Drawing from both intellectual and literary history, Forms of Modernity richly explores the development of the categories and theories that we use today to analyze and understand novels.