El copernicanismo en las Españas del XVI y el XVII. Ciencia, filosofía y literatura.

In 1543 Nicolas Copernicus published his Revolutionibus Orbium's Coelelestium. This is the scientific work that gave birth to modern science, something thoroughly European, since scientists of different countries contributed to it: Poland, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Holland, etc. A work that appeared in a crucial moment obviously represented the need of that time to correct the Julian calendar. A new procedure to calculate the positions of the stars was necessary for astrology and for the making of predictions that were important at that time. Our intention is to outline the history of how it was introduced in Spain at the beginning of the scientific revolution. We will not conceal that Spain has been a country that has only contributed to scientific literature in a deficient way, maybe we can offer some arguments that help to understand why this has happened.

Religión y sociedad en la Granada cristiana: la Cruz de Mayo

The celebration of the Cruz of May – based on a fact for which tradition and the Legendi di Sancti Vulgari Storiado (Jacopo da Varazze, circa 1264) were possibly more relevant than history itself and extended by the ecclesiastical authority as a means of increasing faith – was accepted by people and was transformed into a social feast and an expression for local or social identity, which lead to peculiar rivalries amongst neighborhoods or streets. They had the aim to hold the best Cruz, leaving aside the feasts initial religious character. If the cross was, until the death of Christ, an instrument of martyrdom holding negative connotations (death, infamy, barbarism, etc.), it eventually transformed into a symbol of Christianity, a sign of triumph and everything related to Christ, and subsequently into a source of celebration and social festivity.

Los convulsos años treinta en el espejo del tiempo: La rehabilitación de la responsabilidad social del escritor

In the 21st century field of culture, the economic crisis (and its consequences) has fomented a debate on the social responsibility of the writer. In particular quite a few works of Spanish literature account for a marked responsible, interventionist and dissident discourse. Thus, from the present day and aware of historicity, this article pauses at a key episode in the trajectory of the said debate: the rehumanization of art during the 1930s, the passing from autonomy to commitment in art. A crucial aspect in the Edad de Plata is addressed with the aim of precisely showing how a milestone in the attitude of the creator before society and its disruptions arose, how an exemplary case developed for exploring aspects specific to this positioning of the author, which is itself being reconsidered today.

Entre ética e ironía: aspectos retóricos en los “pies de foto” de Juan José Millás.

The aim of this short essay is to analyze the techniques of argumentation developed by the writer and journalist Juan José Millás in his articles named Pie de Foto. Millás is known for his peculiar way of writing, in which language is highly unstable and is thereby apt to the creation of new perspectives and points of view. In the Pie de Foto, this ambivalence of language is enriched by the presence of a picture, of which his textual article is a comment. Using the definition given by Genette, Millás rhetoric is not a ‘restricted’ one but it is a complex system, in which also the apparently superficial figures can provide semantic effects and enrich information. Within this frame, irony plays a fundamental role because it helps questioning the standard discourse of politics. By means of techniques such as the mechanical reproduction and the ridiculing of the fallacies hidden in common sense, Millas raises ethical problems and develops a critique to the postmodern way of life in western countries.

Breve aproximación a la crítica de la sociedad polaca en la novelística de posguerra en la novelística de Stanisław Lem

There is no doubt that the figure of Stanislaw Lem is a solid reference in the context of science fiction literature of Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. Lem developed a literary game in which the criticism of the political system was implied in each paragraph along with an acid humor that transferred into masterpieces of contemporary science fiction.

Conflictos entre el pueblo y las autoridades. Bubenreuth: un ejemplo actual en Baviera

The sovereign of a democratic state is „the people“. However, they transfer their voices to a few political party representatives in order to make them exercise legislative and executive powers in the name of “the people”. In different European countries, this model of representative democracy is marked by elements of direct democracy. In Switzerland, for example, there are frequent plebiscites on a number of issues and in France, the President of the Republic is elected directly. In Germany, the constitution calls for a “Volksabstimmung”, or a referendum at the federal level, a “Volksentscheid” or plebiscite at the federal state level and a “Bürgerentscheid” at the city level. But in small municipalities where everyone knows each other and people talk, a different form of direct democracy continues on. In the case of Bubenreuth, where I have lived for more than 30 years, the community dared to raise its voice against the mayor and against town councillors to have them revoke the application of a legal but unjust regulation, or for them to at least mitigate the effects.

Nombre, imagen, cuerpo, voz. Apariciones del pueblo como grupo social diferenciado en textos del siglo XIX español: proclamas de la guerra contra Napoleón, Mariano José de Larra, Rosalía de Castro

This paper analyzes the emergence of the term 'pueble', or 'people', in Spanish literature of the nineteenth century with the meaning of differentiated social subject in a corpus composed of texts of the War of Independence by Mariano José de Larra and Rosalia de Castro. The texts and authors selected are representative of their cultural and historical contexts and together they form a part of the Spanish Romanticism.

Historia en voz baja: la oralidad y el rumor para la narración de la Guerra Civil española en la ‘Primera derrota’ de Alberto Méndez

The first of the four paths that structure the book "Los girasoles ciegos", by Alberto Méndez – with its theory about the delayed end of the Spanish Civil War as a longing for destruction outside of any kind of strategy based on military logic – presents the construction of a memory based on certain oral marks, facts provided quietly by apparently non-central characters, the distrust of written documents, and the use of speech patterns mostly associated with spontaneity in order to set up a level of verisimilitude which makes the memory emerge in parallel pathways considered relatively reliable (for example, the case of a report), forged speech on the basis of indirect references, testimonials and letters. The aim of the paper is to consider an example of contemporary Spanish narrative in which a journey, perhaps weak in terms of the material, support to the channels through which the narrator comes in the story through the voice of the people – but functional as an approach to a search of the recent past – contributes to a certain conception of memory.

Los amantes bajo los olivos. El simbolismo erótico del olivo en el cancionero popular hispánico

Traditional popular poetry follows a certain culture and has a literary canon that is very different from written poetry by educated authors. Among the elements that distinguish this poetry and that emphasize the continual presence of symbolism, which is manifested in the connotative reading of the texts, is a symbolism that refers to eroticism and to the romantic relationships of men. In these folk songs nature acquires a distinct meaning of love, for example by means of the presence of the olive as a frequent motif in Andalusian, Hispanic and European songs.