See our Seven Academic Books of the Month!

Women from the Golden Legend

Author: Emma Gatland                    ISBN:  9781855662292

Format: HB                                     Extent: 304 pp.

Price: £60                                        Publication: October 2011

Publisher: Tamesis Books (Boydell & Brewer)

Hagiography was one of the most prolific narrative genres in the Middle Ages. Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (c. 1260), the most popular compendium, was translated into every language in Western Europe. In the medieval Iberian peninsula, the number of conserved hagiographic documents dwarfs those belonging to other narrative genres. This book examines one collection of saints' lives, or sanctorals, and the twenty-five female saints witnessed therein. Their lives furnished exemplary models for women inside and outside the Church, tell stories of maidens tortured by pagan sovereigns, prostitutes, mothers who see their sons martyred, and women who dress as men in order to avoid being married off to the nearest suitor. This study challenges an understanding of these women as passive recipients of social and spiritual influence by re-situating female authority within the context of vision, language, and performativity. Included in the study are transcriptions of twenty-two previously unedited lives.

The Spanish Welfare State in the European Context

Authors: Ana Marta Guillén & Margarita León          

ISBN: 978-1-4094-0293-0

Format: HB                                       Extent: 270 pp.

Price: £60                                         Publication: November 2011

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing

Following the death of Franco, Spain underwent a transition to democracy in the mid-1970s. Although a rapid process of modernization occurred, the Spanish welfare state was seen, until fairly recently, as relatively underdeveloped. However, given the progressive Europeanization and expansion of Spanish social policy, questions arise as to whether the Spanish welfare system should still be considered as peripheral to West European welfare states.

This volume is divided into three sections. The first section deals with broad trends in the evolution of the Spanish welfare state. In the second section, attention is turned to governance issues, such as collective bargaining, the interplay among levels of government, the welfare mix and public support for social policies. The third and final part of the book addresses five main challenges facing the Spanish welfare state in the 21st century.

Literature as a Response to Cultural and Political Repression in Franco´s Catalonia

Author:  Jordi Cornell Detrell                    ISBN: 9781855662018

Format: HB                                              Extent: 208 pp.

Price: £60                                                 Publication: October 2011

Publisher: Tamesis Books (Boydell & Brewer)

This book is a thoroughly researched and documented study of Catalan literature under the Franco regime. The author focuses on four important post-Civil War novels: Incerta glória by Joan Sales, El Testament by Xavier Benguerel , Laia by Salvador Espriu , and Tino Costa by Sebastià Juan Arbó. It draws on an impressive range of literary criticism and contemporary critical theory to examine internal differences and struggles within Catalan culture during the period, offering a more nuanced interpretation of the various means of preserving Catalan literature and identity in the face of the Castilian-centric policies of Franco's Spain.

Gender, Nation & Formation of the 20th Century Mexican Literary Canon

Author: Sarah E Bowskill                    ISBN: 9781907975059
Format: HB                                        Extent: 144 pp.
Price: £45                                           Publication: July 2011
Publisher: Legenda (Oxbow Books)

The post-revolutionary Mexican literary canon was formed by cultural and political elites who sought to identify and reward those novels which would best represent the new nation. Reviewers found what they were looking for in Gregorio López y Fuentes's El indio (1935) for example, but not in Consuelo Delgados's Yo también, Adelita (1936). This groundbreaking study provides a fresh perspective on canon formation by uncovering the circumstances and readings which produced a male-dominated Mexican literary canon.  

Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la Muerte de su Padre

Author: Nancy F Merino                    ISBN: 9781855662315

Format: HB                                       Extent: 208 pp.

Price: £55                                          Publication: November 2011

Publisher: Tamesis Books (Boydell & Brewer)

An elegy composed on the death of his father, Jorge Manrique's Coplas has occupied a prominent position in the literature of Spain from its original composition in the fifteenth century to the present day. The author of this book carefully examines its sources, structure, transmission, critical reception and fame

throughout the centuries, including praise from writers as widely separated by time and outlook as Lope de Vega, Longfellow, who translated the work, Luis Cernuda, and Julian Marías. She also looks at the many musical adaptations of the poem up to the present, where it is performed by popular singers such as Paco Ibáñez while continuing to stimulate considerable academic interest.

Democracy, Trade Unions & Political Violence in Spain

Author: Richard Purkiss                                    ISBN: 9781845194611
Format: HB                                                      Extent: 304 pp.
Price: £55                                                         Publication: June 2011
Publisher: Sussex Academic Press

This new study shows that Valencia in the 1920s and 1930s was anything but tranquil. Dr Purkiss fills a significant gap in the historiography of the Spanish left. Drawing on a wide range of previously underused primary sources, he shows that not only was Valencia a hugely important source of anarchist support, but that the local movement was far more radical than has previously been thought. He thus provides a vital insight into the origins of the revolutionary and anti-clerical violence which swept the province in the early months of Civil War, introducing us to the 'expropriators' and 'men of action' whose activities terrified bourgeois Valencia in the 1930s.