Review of: Valis, Noël, ed. Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007. 601 pp

Summerhill, Stephen J.

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ESPANA CONTEMPORANEA nal y las excepciones que confirman las reglas) y el agudo apunte sabre ciertas demandas judiciales cursadas por personas que se cre-yeron o se sintieron injuriadas por narradores de autobioficciones fantasticas (en las que, sin embargo, los correlatos eran a todas luces reconocibles). La interpretaci6n Bega a su cenit en el capftulo final, que se abre con un breve apunte sabre el ensimismamiento del narcisista que, al contrario del escritor de autoficciones, logra vislumbrar su imagen definitiva (Iste ego sum), re(me paginas reveladoras dedicadas al no-velista, gramatico y cineasta colombiano Fernando Vallejo y cierra con seis apartados a media camino entre la reflexion te6rica, la ilustra-ci6n practica y la puntualizaci6n erudita y aclaradora del especialis-ta. Pacas veces se beneficia una monograffa de tantos saberes y lec-turas y se alcanzan resultados tan novedosos sabre un subgenera literario tan reciente. Un libro necesario, de lectura adictiva casi, que abre vistas y perspectivas insospechadas, que se adentra en los ter-minos inexplorados de novelas transgenericas e incluso «transgenicas», puesto que en ellas fluyen, se funden y fusionan genes de distintos generos narrativos, incluidos el libro de viaje, la crftica narrativa, el ensayo, la ficci6n hist6rica, la erudici6n interdisciplinaria y el discur-so autorreflexivo. Un estudio preciso, puntual, detallista, puntilloso y puntillista incluso, que permite, como el puntillismo, desde la distan-cia debida, percibir las figuras conformadas por una multitud de puntos que la cercanfa oculta. Universidad de Berna JosE MANUEL L6PEZ DE ABIADA Valis, Noel, ed. Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007. 601 pp. Anyone who thinks that the Spanish Civil War has been so thor-oughly studied that there can be nothing left to say about it needs to read the present volume. Not only are the Civil War and related events such as the Second Republic and the Franco postwar still objects of intense debate, but more recent areas of interest (the role of women on both sides, the «pact of silence» during the transition, the revisionism of the nineties, the recent Law of Historical Memory) have opened up whole new fields for research and teaching. The truth is that, as many of the articles in this volume insist, the war never really ended in 1939, and its perpetuation as a national obses-sion was guaranteed by the collective refusal to deal with it during the transition to democracy. Where some nations attempt to overcome crimes of state through acts of reconciliation, Spain has behaved as if hoping against hope that the wounds of the past will heal if we just I ~t enough time go by. This is but a recipe for unending problems. - 100-RES EN AS All of that and more is the topic of this excellent book, that stands as a major resource for any who might think about developing a course on the war or revising one already being taught. Thirty-six articles, written expressly for this volume by noted specialists in a wide variety of fields, make up the collection. They are loosely divided into five basic categories: History (5 articles), Ideology and Rhetoric (6), Literature (10), Visual Arts (6), and the important recent area of Memory (9). Two superb additional sections cover «Resources», such as primary sources (films, music, photography, posters, poetry, prose) and secondary sources, plus a section of Sample Syllabi from seven colleagues who have taught the subject. These are followed by a glos-sary, which is perhaps the least satisfactory section of the book be-cause it is short and quite incomplete, and a wonderful list of works cited that reaches almost fifty pages. Overall, the articles and syllabi are targeted to undergraduate classes, whether of the more advanced kind for Spanish majors, or in translation to less advanced students, always at American universi-ties. But specialists and research scholars, including those in Spain and other countries, should not presume that little here would inter-est them. The amount of information is vast, wide-ranging and strongly informed by current interests. I have taught courses on the war, and I like to think that I am familiar with most of the major areas of concern. Still, this book has provided me much additional information while offering interesting perspectives on topics I thought I already knew. I believe others who have taught courses on the war will say the same, and colleagues who have not yet taught such a course might be inspired to do so by reading this book. Indeed, all our future efforts will improve as a result of the splendid contribu-tions in this volume. Although inevitably in a collection this large some articles are stronger than others, all are of uniformly high quality. Generally speak-ing, I believe the articles on literature and the visual arts may tend to appear less innovative because they often cover writers and films that have been thoroughly studied in other places. Still, all of the articles remain well-informed and reliable, while several stand out for their interesting contribution to important issues. One thinks of Kevin Foster's interesting piece on British writers in the war, or Carol Maier's subtle study of teaching works in translation. Marvin D'Lugo's article on recent cinema and Kathleen Vernon's study of Nationalist iconography are also impressive, among several others. The earlier sections on History and Ideology also cover well trod territory but again, they often offer interesting perspectives. One idea that appears in several articles is that the Civil War was actually sev-eral wars. On the one hand, it was a series of complex internal struggles that cannot be understood without looking back into nine-teenth century Spanish history. There we see how the absence of the kind of liberal revolution that transformed England, France and other - 101 -ESPANA CONTEMPOAANEA nations left Spain still controlled by a traditional oligarchy that was contemptuous of its people. This left peasants and workers little op-tion but to organize into radical groups that eventually overwhelmed the bourgeoisie and drove much of it over to Franco. But also, the Civil War quickly became an international conflict that tended to usurp the internal ones by reducing them to a battle between fascism and com-munism, which of course is why it attracted so much international attention. Such historical and ideological issues are all well treated in the volume and produce a superbly informative set of readings. Overall, the final section on Memory carries some of the most interesting and current material because of course, memory of the war is a problem that has never been satisfactorily addressed in the Spanish national consciousness. The issues are well discussed in ar-ticles by Joan Ramon Resina and Jo Labanyi, each in different ways, but similar questions are also addressed by Sebastiana Faber, Randolph Pope and others. Following the death of Franco, the great-est sign that the war remained vivid in the national consciousness was the «pact of silence» by which politicians avoided discussing the con-flict and the wounds of the past. This in turn guaranteed an eventual «return of the repressed» in the situation of today, when many feel a need to recall the atrocities and suffering that could not be men-tioned during the Franco regime and the more than thirty years since. Here is one of the most acute issues of present day Spain, to recover «la voz dormida», as Dulce Chacon calls it, the voice of those who were silenced under the Franco regime. Some contest this as unnec-essary and divisive; others think it crucial if the nation is ever to move beyond the war. My own sense agrees with this latter perspec-tive, but either way, memory of the war remains a major concern that is hotly contested in Spain. The volume raises many other kinds of issues, from the role of propaganda to documents left by prisoners in concentration camps, to writing in exile, and many more. In her introduction, Valis distin-guishes between fact and representation while insisting that teaching about the war deals with only the latter. This dovetails nicely with a position defended by several authors to the effect that courses on the war should include something on the rebel or Nationalist viewpoint. The elections of 1936 revealed a nation that was almost evenly divided; yet for ideological reasons, the Republican side has received most of the attention in intellectual and historical circles. This is insufficient, the volume tells us, not simply because many of us think we should be even-handed liberals giving out praise and blame to everyone, but because the Nationalist side spoke to real issues and concerns among large segments of the population. That it later conducted vicious re-prisals in the name of God and Church was of course a serious prob-lem, but that does not free us from the obligation to try to under-stand the motives, actions and tensions in representations of the war within the Franco group. 102 -RESENAS Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War is a superb con-tribution to the ever-expanding bibliography on the most important event in modern Spanish history. Noel Valis is to be commended for undertaking such a complex enterprise, and also for ensuring that the final product is of such high quality. For students of twentieth cen-tury Spain, this volume is required reading from cover to cover. The Ohio State University STEPHEN J. SUMMERHILL Sahuquillo, Angel. Federico Garcia Lorca and the Culture of Male Ho-mosexuality, Translated by Erica Frouman-Smith, Foreword by Al-berto Mira, Jefferson NC I London: Mc Farland & Company, 2007. 272 pp. El libro que resefiamos de Angel Sahuquillo es la traducci6n pues-ta al dia de su tesis doctoral, editada en 1986 por la universidad de Estocolmo, donde habia sido defendida. La tirada constaba de esca-sos ejemplares, por lo que apenas tuvo recepci6n. Cinco afios despues apareci6 en la Fundaci6n Gil-Albert (Alicante) una edici6n aumenta-da y actualizada, pero tampoco tuvo aceptaci6n entre los lorquistas y la critica especializada. Las razones hay que buscarlas en la tematica estudiada, el homoerotismo en Lorca y otros poetas del 27, asunto, al parecer, «delicado» al que todavia hoy se acercan los lorquistas con excesiva cautela. Sahuquillo ilustraba, en el «Prefacio» de su mencio-nada tesis doctoral, algunas de las razones de la reticencia de la cri-tica a estudiar el homoerotismo. Y cabe tenerlas en cuenta por tra-tarse de una monografia sumamente documentada, precisa en los analisis, acertada en los juicios de valor y pionera en cuanto a la elec-ci6n de la tematica de estudio. Un asunto -el homoerotismo- al que ni siquiera en las celebraciones oficiales del centenario del nacimien-to del poeta granadino se consider6 oportuno dedicar un minimo es-pacio. Es mas: en el programa oficial de actividades del centenario y en las peliculas y documentales rodados con ocasi6n de los cien afios del nacimiento del poeta se pasa sobre la tematica del homoerotismo como sobre ascuas. La monografia esta integrada por una extensa introducci6n, seis nutridos capitulos, una sopesada bibliografia puesta al dia y un indi-ce onomastico, de conceptos y de poemas analizados o que han sido objeto de referencias puntuales. La introducci6n es de caracter pre-ponderantemente te6rico, metodol6gico, biografico (no solo referido a Garcia Lorca, sino tambien a otros poetas del 27 -Cernuda, Prados y Gil-Albert, sobre todo- y a Salvador Dali) e historiografico, y en ella se abordan aspectos sobre el homoerotismo, la critica literaria y la cul-tura homosexual sensu Lato. El capitulo primero ( «Culture, Homose-xuality and Lorquian Criticism») resulta, todavia hoy (pese a conser-- 103 -

Valis, Noël, ed.: Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War

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Valis, Noël, ed.: Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War

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