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A Lifetime's Reading: Hispanic Essays for Patrick Gallagher by Don W. Cruickshank (review)

2001; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 96; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mlr.2001.a825643

2222-4319

Anne L. Walsh,

Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism

MLR, 96.I, 200I MLR, 96.I, 200I picture is meticulously and clearly documented through referencesto the collected works and other published and manuscriptmaterial by Calvino, but relies also on an extremely wide range of critical studies on this author. The overall result is a powerful tool for readers of Calvino at all levels (it has certainly enhanced the quality of discussion at undergraduatelevel in the two years since its publication) but it is indispensable to those who are interested in literature as an intellectual catalystwithin a culture.Both as a studyof the mechanismsof an author'screativity (see, for example, the enticing web of associations generated by the Prefazione to II sentiero deinididi ragno,itself a reflection on the representation of personal and collective experience) and as a studyof contemporaryaesthetics,thisvolume shows McLaughlin to be not just well-versed in facts but a stimulatinginterlocutorwith Calvino. My one objection is to the editorial choice of presenting most quotations from Calvino only in English, while those left in Italian are solely to provide evidence of linguistic variants. Despite the obvious advantages of a critical study being in English, the quality of Calvino's prose is such that, like poetry, it suffersa distinctloss of aura in translation.It is to be hoped that one day McLaughlin'stext will be translatedinto Italian,so that the quotationswill be in the original. UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH CLAUDIA NOCENTINI A Lifetime'sReading.HispanicEssaysforPatrickGallagher.Ed. by DONW. CRUICKSHANK. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. I999. x + 229 pp. [28.95. Readers of this book are faced with a wide variety of texts, rangingfrom essayson subjectsof literarycriticism,linguisticanalysisand language learning strategies,to originalverseand prose translation.A briefeditorialprefaceexplainsthat the essays which follow are varied both in the disciplinesthey representand their authorship. All sixteen contributorsto thiscollection have had some associationwith University College Dublin and, consequently, with ProfessorPatrickGallagher.Eleven of the contributions are written in English, the remaining five in Spanish. The link between all sixteen is, simply, that they are examples of the variety of work encouraged by ProfessorGallagherduring his thirtyyears at UCD. As such, they are a fittingand eloquent tributeto a retiredProfessorof Spanish. The collection opens in verse with a contribution from Antonio GonzalezGuerrero : 'Yo amaba aquellos ojos tan azules' (pp. I-3). The poet draws a congenial and somewhat nostalgicpicture of the meeting of Hispanistson Irishsoil. The next contribution completely changes the mood: M. Angeles Conde-Parrilla offersher translationinto Spanishof Chapter I ofJames Joyce's APortrait ofthe Artist asa Young Man(pp. 4-25). Extensive annotations/notes follow the Spanishtext and provide background information on Joyce's time at 'Clongowes Wood College'. Don W. Cruickshank'sessay, 'On the Stage, on the Page: Some Developments in Spanish Drama, 168I-I833', is again a change of mood (pp. 26-43). As its title suggests, the subject of interest is the relationship between staged plays and their printed form. Cruickshanksetsabout analysingwho, particularlyin the second half of the eighteenth century,were the trendsettersandwho were the followersof trends in four activities linked with the stage: writing and performing;printing of plays; advertizingofprintedversion;newspaperadvertizingandcriticism(p. 28).Through his painstakinganalysis,an overview of the intricaciesinvolved in the promotion of dramain the eighteenth centuryemerges. Martin G. Cunningham's essay, "'Discantando la pasi6n": Garci Sanchez de Badajoz and the Art of Renaissance Song' (pp. 44-59), brings the reader back in time to consider 'GarciSanchez'srole in the historyof song' (p. 46). Whetheror not picture is meticulously and clearly documented through referencesto the collected works and other published and manuscriptmaterial by Calvino, but relies also on an extremely wide range of critical studies on this author. The overall result is a powerful tool for readers of Calvino at all levels (it has certainly enhanced the quality of discussion at undergraduatelevel in the two years since its publication) but it is indispensable to those who are interested in literature as an intellectual catalystwithin a culture.Both as a studyof the mechanismsof an author'screativity (see, for example, the enticing web of associations generated by the Prefazione to II sentiero deinididi ragno,itself a reflection on the representation of personal and collective experience) and as a studyof contemporaryaesthetics,thisvolume shows McLaughlin to be not just well-versed in facts but a stimulatinginterlocutorwith...