Tilmann Altenberg | Cardiff University (original) (raw)
Journal Articles by Tilmann Altenberg
Over the last 25 years, a growing number of long-form comics (graphic novels) in different langua... more Over the last 25 years, a growing number of long-form comics (graphic novels) in different languages have adapted texts from early modern Iberian literature, or engaged with other aspects of that historical period. Recent examples from Spain include Las meninas
European Comic Art, 2023
Comics adaptations of literary classics often struggle to step out of the shadow of their model. ... more Comics adaptations of literary classics often struggle to step out of the shadow of their model. This article explores how the recent adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s 'Don Quixote' by German comics artist Flix transposes the Golden Age classic to a contemporary German setting, updating the story to speak to some of postmodern society’s concerns. Flix’s approach is marked by an ironic distance from his textual and pictorial sources, which he repurposes without losing sight of the Spanish novel’s story arc, character constellation, and narrative devices. The adaptation restores the original comicality to a classic that has mostly been read as a tragic story. While the adaptation inscribes itself into Germany’s cultural fabric, it proposes a 'Don Quixote' that transcends traditional notions of clearly delimited, monolithic national cultures.
New Readings, 2022
The articles in this themed issue explore the processes, devices, and strategies that characteriz... more The articles in this themed issue explore the processes, devices, and strategies that characterize comics’ mobility across time, space, and media. Mobility is understood here to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their journey across history (time), cultural and linguistic boundaries (space), and different forms of artistic production (media). These three axes of comics’ mobility are often interconnected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single discipline or language.
In his seminal study The Textual Condition, Jerome J. McGann affirmed: “What is textually possible cannot be theoretically established. What can be done is to sketch, through close and highly particular case studies, the general framework within which textuality is constrained to exhibit its transformations” (30). The articles in this issue of New Readings set out to examine some of comics’ specific transformations from the vantage point of the medium’s multidimensional mobility with the aim of advancing our understanding of the textual possibilities of this art form, looking beyond the universe of anglophone mainstream superhero comics.
Les invitamos a enviar propuestas para ponencias de 20 minutos, en español o inglés, que investig... more Les invitamos a enviar propuestas para ponencias de 20 minutos, en español o inglés, que investiguen cualquier aspecto de la representación de la guerra de Malvinas, en el medio o género que sea, y en cualquier lado del conflicto. Si bien estamos particularmente interesados en la investigación que abarca más de una sola obra y adopta una perspectiva comparativa o longitudinal, también son bienvenidas las lecturas detalladas de textosindividuales —texto entendido en sentido amplio—, especialmente cuando estas se relacionan con materiales más recientes, poco conocidos o menos estudiados.
We invite 20-minute research papers in English or Spanish that investigate any aspect of the repr... more We invite 20-minute research papers in English or Spanish that investigate any aspect of the representation of the Falklands War, in any medium or genre, and on either side of the conflict. While we are particularly interested in research that cuts across larger bodies of work and takes a comparative or longitudinal perspective, close readings of individual texts (widely understood) are welcome as well, especially where they engage with more recent, little-known, or less-studied materials.
New Readings, 2020
As Andrew Pepper has observed, crime fiction is one of the most significant popular means of expl... more As Andrew Pepper has observed, crime fiction is one of the most significant popular means of exploring the contradictions that emerge from the modern, capitalist nation state. Pepper argues that traditional crime fiction is a genre which developed as a result of the fact that the State assumed control of the justice system. The genre produces, however, "a contradictory account of the state, as both necessary for the creation and maintenance of collective life and central to the reproduction of entrenched socioeconomic equalities" (2). Pepper draws on traditional crime fiction, centred, as he puts it, on "a figure appointed by the state or an auxiliary" (1), in other words, a detective. Such fiction is largely concerned with the detection and bringing to justice of aberrant, criminal individuals, with the State (and/or its auxiliaries) acting as the guarantor of that justice, albeit in often contradictory and flawed ways. When it comes to fictions of organized crime, however, a different paradigm and a different framing of the relationship between crime and the State emerges. Charles Tilly argues that the form of the nation state itself, specifically the monopoly on violence and its war-making tendency, is rooted in a kind of "protec-tion racket" where the state "creates a threat and charges for its reduction" (171). He goes on to explore how producing and controlling violence "favoured monopoly" (175)-to this we might add the protection and control of trade and the protection of rents. The idea of the nation state, not as the guarantor of justice, but as a structure larger than any single individual, which extorts, coerces and charges rents-a structure that replicates many features of organized crime groups-explains the central focus of this collection: the responsibility or otherwise of the State for organized crime and the ways in which cultural representations engage with this unpalatable reality. The articles in this collection analyse a range of fictional and semi-fictional cultural forms-novels, TV series, films, and popular music-which deal with organized crime, widely understood. All are concerned, in one way or another, with untangling the complex interconnection between criminal organisations and the State. While often posited as aberrations external to the State, a major theme of the articles is that these organisations often work in concert with it. In fact, in many of the settings explored here, the State itself appears as a criminal actor. The contradiction, or dilemma, lies in the fact that even in this constellation of entanglement or collusion, the State remains the only entity with the potential to control organized crime.
New Readings, 2020
Nacido en Cuzco en 1955, el escritor, ensayista e investigador peruano Luis Nieto Degregori ha pa... more Nacido en Cuzco en 1955, el escritor, ensayista e investigador peruano Luis Nieto Degregori ha pasado la mayor parte de su vida en la ciudad andina. Estudió Literatura y Lingüística en la Universidad Patricio Lumumba de Moscú (actual Universidad Rusa de la Amistad de los Pueblos). Pasando por Ayacucho vivió desde cerca la violencia de la época del terrorismo en el Perú. En Cuzco, se ha desempeñado como investigador del Centro de Educación y Comunicación Guamán Poma de Ayala. Actualmente es Director de Cultura de esa ciudad.
Es considerado el narrador cuzqueño más importante de la actualidad. Aparte de sus libros de cuentos "Harta cerveza y harta bala" (1987), "La joven que subió al cielo" (1988), "Como cuando estábamos vivos" (1989), "Con los ojos para siempre abiertos" (1990), "Señores destos reynos" (1994) y "El guachimán y otras historias" (2008), ha publicado las novelas "Cuzco después del amor" (2003) y "Asesinato en la Gran Ciudad del Cuzco" (2007), así como varios libros para niños y adolescentes. Su novela histórica más reciente, "Muchas veces dudé", sobre el cronista indígena Guamán Poma de Ayala, se publicará próximamente.
ImageTexT, 2019
This article argues that non-fictional graphic war narratives are a powerful tool for influencing... more This article argues that non-fictional graphic war narratives are a powerful tool for influencing people’s interest in and attitudes towards the issue of war because they offer an effective combination of affective engagement and cognitive mechanisms that speak to how people interpret fact and fiction.
The article first reviews the recent theoretical and empirical research on factors of visual narratives for narrative impact and for changing people’s attitude, including message authenticity and affective immersion. Through analyzing a selection of Argentine comics about the 1982 Falklands War, produced across three decades, the article explicates how the prominent stylistic and narrative features achieve message trustworthiness and affective engagement drawing on different persuasive strategies. These strategies include the use of widely circulated news photographs to authenticate the narrative, the inclusion of a broadly known fictional war correspondent (with mixed results), as well as the first-person point of view to emotionally engage readers in the war stories.
In synthesis, this article unravels how these narrative mechanisms are combined in graphic war narratives with different persuasive intents in a particularly effective way, namely through the subtle blending of a perceived reality linked to the authentic war materials and typical fictional storytelling devices. At the same time, the article sheds light on the limits of these devices, highlighting as an area for further inquiry a situation where the identified narrative devices effectively undermine the graphic war narrative’s documentary ambition.
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2018
English abstract: This article examines the first part of Roberto Bolaño’s novel '2666' with r... more English abstract:
This article examines the first part of Roberto Bolaño’s novel '2666' with regard to the strategy of telling a multilingual story in a monolingual narrative. Discussing the motives behind, and implications of, this flattening of the text’s linguistic surface, it argues that to dismiss the tension between story and discourse as a defect, is to overlook one of the novel’s principal proposals and to deny a key aspect of Bolaño’s narrative poetics. The article shows that in ‘The Part about the Critics’, effortless communication is confined to a utopian communicative space, which provides a level playing field for characters from different cultural-linguistic backgrounds. The novel’s approach to multilingualism and translation, for which Bolaño may have found support in his readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, suggests that, to him, languages matter not for what separates them but for what they have in common as a generic means of communication. The article contends that the novel’s linguistic flatness is programmatic, exposing to ridicule narratives that claim to represent reality faithfully. In place of the myriad real-world problems of Babel, Bolaño sets an ideal of linguistic transparency and perfect translatability made possible by way of literature.
— Spanish abstract:
Este artículo examina la primera parte de la novela 2666, de Roberto Bolaño, con respecto a la estrategia de contar una historia plurilingüe en un relato monolingüe. Analizando los motivos detrás de esta nivelación de la superficie lingüística, así como las implicaciones de ella, argumenta que descartar la tensión entre historia y discurso como una deficiencia es pasar por alto una de las principales propuestas de 2666 y negar un aspecto clave de la poética narrativa de Bolaño. El artículo demuestra que, en ‘La parte de los críticos’, la comunicación fluida existe únicamente dentro de un espacio comunicativo utópico, que ofrece igualdad de condiciones para personajes de trasfondos lingüístico-culturales distintos. El particular enfoque de la novela sobre el plurilingualismo y la traducción, para el que Bolaño puede haberse inspirado en Ludwig Wittgenstein, sugiere que a aquel escritor las lenguas le importan no por lo que las separa sino por lo que tienen en común en cuanto medio de comunicación genérico (lenguaje). El artículo sostiene que el monolingüismo de la novela es programático, poniendo en ridículo narraciones que afirman representar la realidad fielmente. En lugar de los múltiples problemas reales de Babel, Bolaño propone el ideal de una transparencia lingüística y traducibilidad perfecta hechas posibles a través de la literatura.
En su relato “Viaje a la semilla” (1944), el autor cubano Alejo Carpentier presenta la biografía ... more En su relato “Viaje a la semilla” (1944), el autor cubano Alejo Carpentier presenta la biografía de un tal Marqués de Capellanías, cuya particularidad reside en que, dentro de un marco realista, ella se desarrolla en sentido contrario a nuestra experiencia del tiempo. Esta inversión del transcurso ‘normal’ de una vida en el plano de la historia, que desafía nuestras suposiciones tácitas respecto del mundo, se instala en el discurso por medio de dos procedimientos complementarios: la inversión del orden secuencial de los cuadros biográficos a nivel macroestructural, y la inversión semántica de sucesos aislados a nivel microestructural. Si bien es cierto que el efecto desconcertante del relato presupone la familiaridad, por parte del lector, con el modelo de una biografía convencional, así como el cotejo de lo narrado con una imaginaria serie progresiva de sucesos, cuyo reflejo inverso se relata en “Viaje a la semilla”, lejos de invertir mecánicamente esa serie progresiva en todos sus detalles, en algunos momentos Carpentier mantiene su organización convencional, evitando con ello que la vida del Marqués se vuelva incomunicable por demasiado alejada de nuestra experiencia. Para el proyecto de narrar una biografía que transcurre al revés, la memoria del protagonista constituye un elemento particularmente problemático porque ésta implica per definitionem una orientación mental hacia el pasado, punto de referencia que en “Viaje a la semilla” se vuelve ambiguo. También en este respecto Carpentier muestra una gran flexibilidad, ajustando la orientación de la memoria del Marqués de Capellanías a las necesidades del contexto concreto. Así, en algunos cuadros biográficos la memoria opera conforme a la lógica de la serie progresiva, mientras que en otro momento el contenido de la memoria sufre un desplazamiento en la serie regresiva. Aunque en algunas ocasiones el narrador adopte el punto de vista de los personajes de la serie regresiva, en última instancia comparte con el lector occidental la perspectiva temporal de la serie progresiva, acercando así la ficción contra-intuitiva al horizonte de público lector. Es más, tanto la historia narrada en “Viaje a la semilla” como la actitud distanciada del narrador ante la noción extraordinaria del tiempo pueden leerse como un ejemplo avant la lettre de la articulación literaria de lo real maravilloso americano, que se revela tan sólo desde una perspectiva de extrañamiento.
The study examines the literary programme of Émile Zola, drawing primarily on the French author's... more The study examines the literary programme of Émile Zola, drawing primarily on the French author's critical, theoretical and programmatic essays published under the title Le Roman expérimental in 1880. In doing so, the article explores in detail the reasoning behind Zola's proposal to bring literature into line with science, discussing the author's main sources of inspiration and primary targets. The article argues that although within the mimetic theory of artistic representation Zola's concept of the roman expérimental advocates a hypermimeticism (S. Halliway), literary naturalism, as conceived by its founding father, does not propose to indiscriminately reproduce reality in its full complexity, but aspires to a synthetic and coherent vision of a specific sector of society with the aim of identifying the factors that determine the social phenomenon under investigation. Here, the success of a writer depends largely on his perceptiveness at the point of setting up the experiment alias novel. A close look at Zola’s essays further reveals that, contrary to the accusations raised by many of his contemporaries, Zola did not subscribe to a fatalistic worldview; rather, the naturalist doctrine displays a profound optimism with regard to the possibility of bringing about social change.
Edited Books & Special Issues by Tilmann Altenberg
“Mexico’s 1910 Revolution engendered a vast range of responses: from novels and autobiographies t... more “Mexico’s 1910 Revolution engendered a vast range of responses: from novels and autobiographies to political cartoons, feature films and placards. In the light of the centennial commemorations, contributors to this original collection evaluate the cultural legacy of this landmark event in a series of engaging essays. Imagining the Mexican Revolution is a rich resource for those interested in ways in which literary and visual culture mediate our understandings of this complex historical phenomenon.”
– Professor Andrea Noble, Durham University
“This collection of essays by leading and emerging Mexicanists is a distinct and welcome contribution that enhances public and academic understanding of Mexico’s rich revolutionary heritage. It makes available some of the most cutting-edge thinking from the field of Mexican cultural studies on the literary and visual representations produced over a period of one hundred years in Mexico and in other countries.”
– Dr Chris Harris, University of Liverpool
“In fascinating detail, the essays of this landmark book examine the complexity of the post-revolutionary years in Mexico. But the findings also have applications for other cultures of the world where ideologies of fascism and socialism have competed and media manipulation has existed. Among the volume’s many excellent features are its illustrations.”
– Professor Emeritus Nancy Vogeley, University of San Francisco
Monographs by Tilmann Altenberg
This study challenges the critical commonplace that ascribes Heredia’s œuvre to Romanticism. It d... more This study challenges the critical commonplace that ascribes Heredia’s œuvre to Romanticism. It demonstates that Heredia’s poetic work and critical thinking are deeply rooted in late Enlightenment ideology and the aesthetics of Sensibility.
Book Chapters by Tilmann Altenberg
Imagining the Mexican Revolution: Versions and Visions in Literature and Visual Culture. Ed. Tilmann Altenberg, 2013
This study examines firing-squad executions in 28 fiction films of the Mexican Revolution. His di... more This study examines firing-squad executions in 28 fiction films of the Mexican Revolution. His discussion brings into focus the effects and functions of execution sequences, as a device for setting the scene, driving the plot forward, giving shape to a character or making a political indictment. The commonalities across the varied representational practice lead Altenberg to propose an execution script that individual films evoke metonymically. He shows that thwarted executions and mock executions, for example, can be mapped onto the script as calculated deviations from its normal routines and expected outcome. Altenberg argues that the orderliness and structuredness of firing-squad executions in fiction film, the perpetuation of their graphic routines, alongside their wide dissemination in Mexican Revolution filmmaking reveal the haunting of a culture.
Over the last 25 years, a growing number of long-form comics (graphic novels) in different langua... more Over the last 25 years, a growing number of long-form comics (graphic novels) in different languages have adapted texts from early modern Iberian literature, or engaged with other aspects of that historical period. Recent examples from Spain include Las meninas
European Comic Art, 2023
Comics adaptations of literary classics often struggle to step out of the shadow of their model. ... more Comics adaptations of literary classics often struggle to step out of the shadow of their model. This article explores how the recent adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s 'Don Quixote' by German comics artist Flix transposes the Golden Age classic to a contemporary German setting, updating the story to speak to some of postmodern society’s concerns. Flix’s approach is marked by an ironic distance from his textual and pictorial sources, which he repurposes without losing sight of the Spanish novel’s story arc, character constellation, and narrative devices. The adaptation restores the original comicality to a classic that has mostly been read as a tragic story. While the adaptation inscribes itself into Germany’s cultural fabric, it proposes a 'Don Quixote' that transcends traditional notions of clearly delimited, monolithic national cultures.
New Readings, 2022
The articles in this themed issue explore the processes, devices, and strategies that characteriz... more The articles in this themed issue explore the processes, devices, and strategies that characterize comics’ mobility across time, space, and media. Mobility is understood here to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their journey across history (time), cultural and linguistic boundaries (space), and different forms of artistic production (media). These three axes of comics’ mobility are often interconnected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single discipline or language.
In his seminal study The Textual Condition, Jerome J. McGann affirmed: “What is textually possible cannot be theoretically established. What can be done is to sketch, through close and highly particular case studies, the general framework within which textuality is constrained to exhibit its transformations” (30). The articles in this issue of New Readings set out to examine some of comics’ specific transformations from the vantage point of the medium’s multidimensional mobility with the aim of advancing our understanding of the textual possibilities of this art form, looking beyond the universe of anglophone mainstream superhero comics.
Les invitamos a enviar propuestas para ponencias de 20 minutos, en español o inglés, que investig... more Les invitamos a enviar propuestas para ponencias de 20 minutos, en español o inglés, que investiguen cualquier aspecto de la representación de la guerra de Malvinas, en el medio o género que sea, y en cualquier lado del conflicto. Si bien estamos particularmente interesados en la investigación que abarca más de una sola obra y adopta una perspectiva comparativa o longitudinal, también son bienvenidas las lecturas detalladas de textosindividuales —texto entendido en sentido amplio—, especialmente cuando estas se relacionan con materiales más recientes, poco conocidos o menos estudiados.
We invite 20-minute research papers in English or Spanish that investigate any aspect of the repr... more We invite 20-minute research papers in English or Spanish that investigate any aspect of the representation of the Falklands War, in any medium or genre, and on either side of the conflict. While we are particularly interested in research that cuts across larger bodies of work and takes a comparative or longitudinal perspective, close readings of individual texts (widely understood) are welcome as well, especially where they engage with more recent, little-known, or less-studied materials.
New Readings, 2020
As Andrew Pepper has observed, crime fiction is one of the most significant popular means of expl... more As Andrew Pepper has observed, crime fiction is one of the most significant popular means of exploring the contradictions that emerge from the modern, capitalist nation state. Pepper argues that traditional crime fiction is a genre which developed as a result of the fact that the State assumed control of the justice system. The genre produces, however, "a contradictory account of the state, as both necessary for the creation and maintenance of collective life and central to the reproduction of entrenched socioeconomic equalities" (2). Pepper draws on traditional crime fiction, centred, as he puts it, on "a figure appointed by the state or an auxiliary" (1), in other words, a detective. Such fiction is largely concerned with the detection and bringing to justice of aberrant, criminal individuals, with the State (and/or its auxiliaries) acting as the guarantor of that justice, albeit in often contradictory and flawed ways. When it comes to fictions of organized crime, however, a different paradigm and a different framing of the relationship between crime and the State emerges. Charles Tilly argues that the form of the nation state itself, specifically the monopoly on violence and its war-making tendency, is rooted in a kind of "protec-tion racket" where the state "creates a threat and charges for its reduction" (171). He goes on to explore how producing and controlling violence "favoured monopoly" (175)-to this we might add the protection and control of trade and the protection of rents. The idea of the nation state, not as the guarantor of justice, but as a structure larger than any single individual, which extorts, coerces and charges rents-a structure that replicates many features of organized crime groups-explains the central focus of this collection: the responsibility or otherwise of the State for organized crime and the ways in which cultural representations engage with this unpalatable reality. The articles in this collection analyse a range of fictional and semi-fictional cultural forms-novels, TV series, films, and popular music-which deal with organized crime, widely understood. All are concerned, in one way or another, with untangling the complex interconnection between criminal organisations and the State. While often posited as aberrations external to the State, a major theme of the articles is that these organisations often work in concert with it. In fact, in many of the settings explored here, the State itself appears as a criminal actor. The contradiction, or dilemma, lies in the fact that even in this constellation of entanglement or collusion, the State remains the only entity with the potential to control organized crime.
New Readings, 2020
Nacido en Cuzco en 1955, el escritor, ensayista e investigador peruano Luis Nieto Degregori ha pa... more Nacido en Cuzco en 1955, el escritor, ensayista e investigador peruano Luis Nieto Degregori ha pasado la mayor parte de su vida en la ciudad andina. Estudió Literatura y Lingüística en la Universidad Patricio Lumumba de Moscú (actual Universidad Rusa de la Amistad de los Pueblos). Pasando por Ayacucho vivió desde cerca la violencia de la época del terrorismo en el Perú. En Cuzco, se ha desempeñado como investigador del Centro de Educación y Comunicación Guamán Poma de Ayala. Actualmente es Director de Cultura de esa ciudad.
Es considerado el narrador cuzqueño más importante de la actualidad. Aparte de sus libros de cuentos "Harta cerveza y harta bala" (1987), "La joven que subió al cielo" (1988), "Como cuando estábamos vivos" (1989), "Con los ojos para siempre abiertos" (1990), "Señores destos reynos" (1994) y "El guachimán y otras historias" (2008), ha publicado las novelas "Cuzco después del amor" (2003) y "Asesinato en la Gran Ciudad del Cuzco" (2007), así como varios libros para niños y adolescentes. Su novela histórica más reciente, "Muchas veces dudé", sobre el cronista indígena Guamán Poma de Ayala, se publicará próximamente.
ImageTexT, 2019
This article argues that non-fictional graphic war narratives are a powerful tool for influencing... more This article argues that non-fictional graphic war narratives are a powerful tool for influencing people’s interest in and attitudes towards the issue of war because they offer an effective combination of affective engagement and cognitive mechanisms that speak to how people interpret fact and fiction.
The article first reviews the recent theoretical and empirical research on factors of visual narratives for narrative impact and for changing people’s attitude, including message authenticity and affective immersion. Through analyzing a selection of Argentine comics about the 1982 Falklands War, produced across three decades, the article explicates how the prominent stylistic and narrative features achieve message trustworthiness and affective engagement drawing on different persuasive strategies. These strategies include the use of widely circulated news photographs to authenticate the narrative, the inclusion of a broadly known fictional war correspondent (with mixed results), as well as the first-person point of view to emotionally engage readers in the war stories.
In synthesis, this article unravels how these narrative mechanisms are combined in graphic war narratives with different persuasive intents in a particularly effective way, namely through the subtle blending of a perceived reality linked to the authentic war materials and typical fictional storytelling devices. At the same time, the article sheds light on the limits of these devices, highlighting as an area for further inquiry a situation where the identified narrative devices effectively undermine the graphic war narrative’s documentary ambition.
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2018
English abstract: This article examines the first part of Roberto Bolaño’s novel '2666' with r... more English abstract:
This article examines the first part of Roberto Bolaño’s novel '2666' with regard to the strategy of telling a multilingual story in a monolingual narrative. Discussing the motives behind, and implications of, this flattening of the text’s linguistic surface, it argues that to dismiss the tension between story and discourse as a defect, is to overlook one of the novel’s principal proposals and to deny a key aspect of Bolaño’s narrative poetics. The article shows that in ‘The Part about the Critics’, effortless communication is confined to a utopian communicative space, which provides a level playing field for characters from different cultural-linguistic backgrounds. The novel’s approach to multilingualism and translation, for which Bolaño may have found support in his readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, suggests that, to him, languages matter not for what separates them but for what they have in common as a generic means of communication. The article contends that the novel’s linguistic flatness is programmatic, exposing to ridicule narratives that claim to represent reality faithfully. In place of the myriad real-world problems of Babel, Bolaño sets an ideal of linguistic transparency and perfect translatability made possible by way of literature.
— Spanish abstract:
Este artículo examina la primera parte de la novela 2666, de Roberto Bolaño, con respecto a la estrategia de contar una historia plurilingüe en un relato monolingüe. Analizando los motivos detrás de esta nivelación de la superficie lingüística, así como las implicaciones de ella, argumenta que descartar la tensión entre historia y discurso como una deficiencia es pasar por alto una de las principales propuestas de 2666 y negar un aspecto clave de la poética narrativa de Bolaño. El artículo demuestra que, en ‘La parte de los críticos’, la comunicación fluida existe únicamente dentro de un espacio comunicativo utópico, que ofrece igualdad de condiciones para personajes de trasfondos lingüístico-culturales distintos. El particular enfoque de la novela sobre el plurilingualismo y la traducción, para el que Bolaño puede haberse inspirado en Ludwig Wittgenstein, sugiere que a aquel escritor las lenguas le importan no por lo que las separa sino por lo que tienen en común en cuanto medio de comunicación genérico (lenguaje). El artículo sostiene que el monolingüismo de la novela es programático, poniendo en ridículo narraciones que afirman representar la realidad fielmente. En lugar de los múltiples problemas reales de Babel, Bolaño propone el ideal de una transparencia lingüística y traducibilidad perfecta hechas posibles a través de la literatura.
En su relato “Viaje a la semilla” (1944), el autor cubano Alejo Carpentier presenta la biografía ... more En su relato “Viaje a la semilla” (1944), el autor cubano Alejo Carpentier presenta la biografía de un tal Marqués de Capellanías, cuya particularidad reside en que, dentro de un marco realista, ella se desarrolla en sentido contrario a nuestra experiencia del tiempo. Esta inversión del transcurso ‘normal’ de una vida en el plano de la historia, que desafía nuestras suposiciones tácitas respecto del mundo, se instala en el discurso por medio de dos procedimientos complementarios: la inversión del orden secuencial de los cuadros biográficos a nivel macroestructural, y la inversión semántica de sucesos aislados a nivel microestructural. Si bien es cierto que el efecto desconcertante del relato presupone la familiaridad, por parte del lector, con el modelo de una biografía convencional, así como el cotejo de lo narrado con una imaginaria serie progresiva de sucesos, cuyo reflejo inverso se relata en “Viaje a la semilla”, lejos de invertir mecánicamente esa serie progresiva en todos sus detalles, en algunos momentos Carpentier mantiene su organización convencional, evitando con ello que la vida del Marqués se vuelva incomunicable por demasiado alejada de nuestra experiencia. Para el proyecto de narrar una biografía que transcurre al revés, la memoria del protagonista constituye un elemento particularmente problemático porque ésta implica per definitionem una orientación mental hacia el pasado, punto de referencia que en “Viaje a la semilla” se vuelve ambiguo. También en este respecto Carpentier muestra una gran flexibilidad, ajustando la orientación de la memoria del Marqués de Capellanías a las necesidades del contexto concreto. Así, en algunos cuadros biográficos la memoria opera conforme a la lógica de la serie progresiva, mientras que en otro momento el contenido de la memoria sufre un desplazamiento en la serie regresiva. Aunque en algunas ocasiones el narrador adopte el punto de vista de los personajes de la serie regresiva, en última instancia comparte con el lector occidental la perspectiva temporal de la serie progresiva, acercando así la ficción contra-intuitiva al horizonte de público lector. Es más, tanto la historia narrada en “Viaje a la semilla” como la actitud distanciada del narrador ante la noción extraordinaria del tiempo pueden leerse como un ejemplo avant la lettre de la articulación literaria de lo real maravilloso americano, que se revela tan sólo desde una perspectiva de extrañamiento.
The study examines the literary programme of Émile Zola, drawing primarily on the French author's... more The study examines the literary programme of Émile Zola, drawing primarily on the French author's critical, theoretical and programmatic essays published under the title Le Roman expérimental in 1880. In doing so, the article explores in detail the reasoning behind Zola's proposal to bring literature into line with science, discussing the author's main sources of inspiration and primary targets. The article argues that although within the mimetic theory of artistic representation Zola's concept of the roman expérimental advocates a hypermimeticism (S. Halliway), literary naturalism, as conceived by its founding father, does not propose to indiscriminately reproduce reality in its full complexity, but aspires to a synthetic and coherent vision of a specific sector of society with the aim of identifying the factors that determine the social phenomenon under investigation. Here, the success of a writer depends largely on his perceptiveness at the point of setting up the experiment alias novel. A close look at Zola’s essays further reveals that, contrary to the accusations raised by many of his contemporaries, Zola did not subscribe to a fatalistic worldview; rather, the naturalist doctrine displays a profound optimism with regard to the possibility of bringing about social change.
“Mexico’s 1910 Revolution engendered a vast range of responses: from novels and autobiographies t... more “Mexico’s 1910 Revolution engendered a vast range of responses: from novels and autobiographies to political cartoons, feature films and placards. In the light of the centennial commemorations, contributors to this original collection evaluate the cultural legacy of this landmark event in a series of engaging essays. Imagining the Mexican Revolution is a rich resource for those interested in ways in which literary and visual culture mediate our understandings of this complex historical phenomenon.”
– Professor Andrea Noble, Durham University
“This collection of essays by leading and emerging Mexicanists is a distinct and welcome contribution that enhances public and academic understanding of Mexico’s rich revolutionary heritage. It makes available some of the most cutting-edge thinking from the field of Mexican cultural studies on the literary and visual representations produced over a period of one hundred years in Mexico and in other countries.”
– Dr Chris Harris, University of Liverpool
“In fascinating detail, the essays of this landmark book examine the complexity of the post-revolutionary years in Mexico. But the findings also have applications for other cultures of the world where ideologies of fascism and socialism have competed and media manipulation has existed. Among the volume’s many excellent features are its illustrations.”
– Professor Emeritus Nancy Vogeley, University of San Francisco
This study challenges the critical commonplace that ascribes Heredia’s œuvre to Romanticism. It d... more This study challenges the critical commonplace that ascribes Heredia’s œuvre to Romanticism. It demonstates that Heredia’s poetic work and critical thinking are deeply rooted in late Enlightenment ideology and the aesthetics of Sensibility.
Imagining the Mexican Revolution: Versions and Visions in Literature and Visual Culture. Ed. Tilmann Altenberg, 2013
This study examines firing-squad executions in 28 fiction films of the Mexican Revolution. His di... more This study examines firing-squad executions in 28 fiction films of the Mexican Revolution. His discussion brings into focus the effects and functions of execution sequences, as a device for setting the scene, driving the plot forward, giving shape to a character or making a political indictment. The commonalities across the varied representational practice lead Altenberg to propose an execution script that individual films evoke metonymically. He shows that thwarted executions and mock executions, for example, can be mapped onto the script as calculated deviations from its normal routines and expected outcome. Altenberg argues that the orderliness and structuredness of firing-squad executions in fiction film, the perpetuation of their graphic routines, alongside their wide dissemination in Mexican Revolution filmmaking reveal the haunting of a culture.
The narrators in Valera generally appear as representations of their author's voice. Valera uses ... more The narrators in Valera generally appear as representations of their author's voice. Valera uses textual doubles to frame the story by reflecting on it and identifying its (ficticious) source, usually either a manuscript or an informant's account. While in either case the identification of the source leads the reader to expect the narrative presentation of the story proper to be delegated from the extradiegetic level to the diegetic level, in most of his texts Valera does not follow this obvious path. Rather, his homo-extradiegetic narrators tend to appropriate the narrative voice of the original source, taking over the narration on their own behalf. From a narratological perspective, on erasing the textual marks that allow readers to distinguish between different levels of narration, Valera infringes the narrative hierarchy, thereby producing instances of what has been termed pseudodiegesis.
Altenberg shows that the narrative frames in Valera's œuvre, with their numerous reflections and refractions, not only raise a number of poetological issues but, more importantly, function as metafictional mises en abyme, whose performative dimension consists in illustrating the attitude that, according to the author, underlies the poetic-narrative appropriation of reality. It becomes clear that verisimilitude and coherence are the key concepts that, in Valera's view, set fiction apart from history. While the explicit confrontation of the 'historical method' and the 'novelistic method', with a clear preference for the latter, appears at a relatively late stage of Valera's writing, the dissociation of the narrator from the source of information as well as the poetological attitude behind it are characteristic of his narrative from the beginning. In conclusion, far from being an end in itself, the pseudodiegetic trangression is a textual representation of a particular way of appropriating reality that is essential to Valera's narrative poetics.
This is a significantly enhanced version of the book chapter published in 2001 under the title: "... more This is a significantly enhanced version of the book chapter published in 2001 under the title: "Aegidius Albertinus: «Der Landtstörtzer Gusman von Alfarche» — Historia ejemplar de la perdición y salvación de un necio".
Europäische Dimensionen des Don Quijote in Literatur, Kunst, Film und Musik, 2007
Actas del V Congreso de la Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro (Münster 1999), 2001
This is an early, much shorter version of the book chapter published in 2008 under the title: "Ae... more This is an early, much shorter version of the book chapter published in 2008 under the title: "Aegidius Albertinus (1615): «Der Landtstörtzer Gusman von Alfarche oder Picaro genannt»".
En esta ponencia, en un primer paso, considero brevemente la dimensión iconográfica del Quijote c... more En esta ponencia, en un primer paso, considero brevemente la dimensión iconográfica del Quijote cervantino, para luego exponer algunas reflexiones acerca del particular desafío que plantea la adaptación cinematográfica de esta novela así como de las posibilidades sistemáticas que veo para su realización. Después ofrezco un breve panorama estadístico de la presencia de don Quijote en la pantalla. Mi interés principal, sin embargo, se dirige hacia una serie de aspectos escogidos de nueve versiones fílmicas del Quijote, que se consideran en orden cronológico.
Full programme of the international online conference "(Re)pensar Malvinas / (re)thinking Falklan... more Full programme of the international online conference "(Re)pensar Malvinas / (re)thinking Falklands — Visiones y versiones en las culturas argentina y británica / Visions and Versions in Argentinian and British Cultures" (1982–2022).
The event is hosted jointly by the School of Modern Languages (Cardiff University) and the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Free Registration (deadline: 5 April 2022, 13:00 BST): https://bit.ly/3LmVaYE
Twitter: @malvinas2022
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MalvinasFalklands2022
Programme of the international conference "Fluid Images – Fluid Text: Comics' Mobility Across Tim... more Programme of the international conference "Fluid Images – Fluid Text: Comics' Mobility Across Time, Space and Artistic Media", hosted by Cardiff University on 23 and 24 January 2020.
This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the mobility of comics and graphic novels ... more This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the mobility of comics and graphic novels along three axes: time, space, and media. Mobility is understood to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their journey across history (time), cultural and linguistic boundaries (space), and different forms of artistic expression (media). These three axes of comics' mobility are often interconnected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single discipline or language. The opportunities and challenges of comics' translation into different languages, and their adaptation especially from/into narrative prose and film, have received increasing attention in recent years. Comics' travel through time has not been explored with the same frequency and analytical depth. Here, aspects such as the different textual and paratextual environments in anthologies and re-editions, changes to the artwork, and practices of re-drawing deserve closer attention. We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers that explore any of the dimensions of comics' mobility outlined above. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words long (excluding references).
Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 1996
Wie kein zweiter Roman zieht der &amp... more Wie kein zweiter Roman zieht der "Don Quijote" von Miguel de Cervantes seit nunmehr vier Jahrhunderten Generationen von Lesern immer wieder neu in seinen Bann. Abgefasst im Spanien des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, das zu jener Zeit die Geschicke Europas wesentlich mitbestimmte, wurde der Roman bald zum Inbegriff der spanischen Literatur und Kultur. Von Madrid aus hat er auf den Rest Europas ausgestrahlt und Denker, Dichter, Künstler, Komponisten und später auch Filmemacher zur Auseinandersetzung mit ihm angeregt. Die acht Beiträge des Bandes erkunden zentrale Aspekte des cervantinischen Romans und gehen seiner Rezeption und Verarbeitung in Literatur, Kunst, Film und Musik im europäischen Kontext nach.
European Comic Art
Comics adaptations of literary classics often struggle to step out of the shadow of their model. ... more Comics adaptations of literary classics often struggle to step out of the shadow of their model. This article explores how the recent adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote by German comics artist Flix transposes the Golden Age classic to a contemporary German setting, updating the story to speak to some of postmodern society's concerns. Flix's approach is marked by an ironic distance from his textual and pictorial sources, which he repurposes without losing sight of the Spanish novel's story arc, character constellation, and narrative devices. The adaptation restores the original comicality to a classic that has mostly been read as a tragic story. While the adaptation inscribes itself into Germany's cultural fabric, it proposes a Don Quixote that transcends traditional notions of clearly delimited, monolithic national cultures.
Poesías completas de José María Heredia, 2020
Cardiff University School of Modern Languages, 2015
Routledge eBooks, Aug 5, 2016
As an international art form, comics are translated and distributed beyond their original languag... more As an international art form, comics are translated and distributed beyond their original language. This chapter begins by focusing on theoretical approaches to comics translation, such as localisation and constrained translation. The second section analyses the translation of comics across historically European languages, with a focus on proper names, onomatopoeia and social aspects of comics translation. The final section focuses on the translation of manga, discussing the changes since the 1980s in professional translation and the growth of fan translation or scanlation. Throughout, the chapter gives examples from a range of comics and highlights new areas for research.
![Research paper thumbnail of Cifuentes-Goodbody, Nicholas: The man who wrote Pancho Villa: Martín Luis Guzmán and the politics of life writing. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP. 2016. xiv + 208 pp. [Book Review]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/99279781/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This is t h e a u t h o r's v e r sio n of a w o r k t h a t w a s s u b mi t t e d t o / a c c e... more This is t h e a u t h o r's v e r sio n of a w o r k t h a t w a s s u b mi t t e d t o / a c c e p t e d fo r p u blic a tio n.
New readings, Mar 24, 2022
The articles in this themed issue explore the processes, devices, and strategies that characteriz... more The articles in this themed issue explore the processes, devices, and strategies that characterize comics’ mobility across time, space, and media. Mobility is understood here to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their journey across history (time), cultural and linguistic boundaries (space), and different forms of artistic production (media). These three axes of comics’ mobility are often interconnected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single discipline or language. In his seminal study The Textual Condition, Jerome J. McGann affirmed: “What is textually possible cannot be theoretically established. What can be done is to sketch, through close and highly particular case studies, the general framework within which textuality is constrained to exhibit its transformations” (30). The articles in this issue of New Readings set out to examine some of comics’ specific transformations from the vantage point of the medium’s multidimensional mobility with the aim of advancing our understanding of the textual possibilities of this art form, looking beyond the universe of anglophone mainstream superhero comics.
A casi dos siglos de la muerte de Jose Maria Heredia (1803-1839), esta edicion critica reune por ... more A casi dos siglos de la muerte de Jose Maria Heredia (1803-1839), esta edicion critica reune por primera vez la totalidad de las poesias del Cantor del Niagara, manteniendo la integridad de las colecciones dispuestas por el propio poeta cubano-mexicano. Los textos se han sometido a una cautelosa normalizacion ortografica, ofreciendo versiones fiables a la vez que accesibles. El amplio aparato critico, ademas de registrar las variantes textuales, presenta informacion acerca de los testimonios aprovechados, asi como una discusion de diferentes aspectos relacionados con el poema en cuestion. Estos datos se complementan con notas explicativas que aclaran referencias y alusiones de indole erudita, historica y autobiografica, asi como vinculos con otros textos. Los indices ofrecen rutas alternativas para acceder a este rico acervo de informacion. El resultado es una edicion que satisface tanto las exigencias rigurosas del investigador como las del estudiante universitario o lector curioso no familiarizado con la obra de Heredia y su contexto. [Almost two centuries after the death of Jose Maria Heredia (1803-1839), this critical edition brings together for the first time all of the poetry of the Niagara Singer, maintaining the integrity of the collections arranged by the Cuban-Mexican poet himself. The texts have undergone cautious spelling normalization, offering reliable as well as accessible versions. The broad critical apparatus, in addition to recording the textual variants, presents information about the testimonies used, as well as a discussion of different aspects related to the poem in question. These data are complemented by explanatory notes that clarify references and allusions of an erudite, historical and autobiographical nature, as well as links with other texts. The indices offer alternative routes to access this rich collection of information.The result is an edition that meets both the rigorous demands of the researcher and those of the curious university student or reader unfamiliar with Heredia's work and its context.]
![Research paper thumbnail of Cifuentes-Goodbody, Nicholas: The man who wrote Pancho Villa: Martín Luis Guzmán and the politics of life writing. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP. 2016. xiv + 208 pp. [Book Review]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/85439182/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2020
Nacido en Cuzco en 1955, el escritor, ensayista e investigador peruano Luis Nieto Degregori ha pa... more Nacido en Cuzco en 1955, el escritor, ensayista e investigador peruano Luis Nieto Degregori ha pasado la mayor parte de su vida en la ciudad andina. Estudio Literatura y Linguistica en la Universidad Patricio Lumumba de Moscu (actual Universidad Rusa de la Amistad de los Pueblos). Pasando por Ayacucho vivio desde cerca la violencia de la epoca del terrorismo en el Peru. En Cuzco, se ha desempenado como investigador del Centro de Educacion y Comunicacion Guaman Poma de Ayala. Actualmente es Director de Cultura de esa ciudad. Es considerado el narrador cuzqueno mas importante de la actualidad. Aparte de sus libros de cuentos Harta cerveza y harta bala (1987), La joven que subio al cielo (1988), Como cuando estabamos vivos (1989), Con los ojos para siempre abiertos (1990), Senores destos reynos (1994) y El guachiman y otras historias (2008), ha publicado las novelas Cuzco despues del amor (2003) y Asesinato en la Gran Ciudad del Cuzco (2007), asi como varios libros para ninos y adolesc...
The Formation of Reason, 2011
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2018
This article examines the first part of Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 with regard to the strategy o... more This article examines the first part of Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 with regard to the strategy of telling a multilingual story in a monolingual narrative. Discussing the motives behind, and implications of, this flattening of the text's linguistic surface, it argues that to dismiss the tension between story and discourse as a defect is to overlook one of the novel's principal proposals and to deny a key aspect of Bolaño's narrative poetics. The article shows that in 'La parte de los criticos', effortless communication is confined to a utopian communicative space, which provides a level playing field for characters from different cultural-linguistic backgrounds. The novel's approach to multilingualism and translation, for which Bolaño may have found support in his readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, suggests that to him, languages matter not for what separates them but for what they have in common as a generic means of communication. The article contends that the novel's linguistic flatness is programmatic, exposing to ridicule narratives that claim to represent reality faithfully. In place of the myriad real-world problems of Babel, Bolaño sets an ideal of linguistic transparency and perfect translatability made possible by way of literature. Resumen Este artículo examina la primera parte de la novela 2666, de Roberto Bolaño, con respecto a la estrategia de contar una historia plurilingüe en un relato monolingüe. Analizando los motivos detrás de esta nivelación de la superficie lingüística, así como las implicaciones de ella, argumenta que descartar la tensión entre historia y discurso como un defecto es pasar por alto una de las principales propuestas de 2666 y negar un aspecto clave de la poética narrativa de Bolaño. El artículo demuestra que, en 'La parte de los críticos', la comunicación fluida existe únicamente dentro de un espacio comunicativo utópico, que ofrece igualdad de condiciones para personajes de trasfondos lingüístico-culturales distintos. El particular enfoque de la novela sobre el plurilingualismo y la traducción, para el que Bolaño puede haberse inspirado en Ludwig Wittgenstein, sugiere que a aquel escritor las lenguas le importan no por lo que las separa sino por lo que tienen en común bhs, 95 (2018) 1 This view echoes opinions expressed by, for example, Javier Cercas, who calls Bolaño 'un narrador compulsivamente legible, inmediatamente cordial, arrebatadoramente atractivo', linking the legibility and narrativity of Bolaño's prose to 'una cierta corriente dominante en la narrativa seria escrita en castellano en los últimos años' (2007: n. p.). Carlos Cuevas Guerrero, on the other hand, remarks upon Bolaño's 'exceso de legibilidad' as a danger (2006: n. p.). Colombian writer Darío Jaramillo goes even further, openly declaring his dislike of Bolaño's prose and denouncing it as stylistically limited and excessively repetitive: '[Bolaño] [t]iene pocos recursos y los repite sin variar' (2007: n. p.).
Seeing in Spanish brings together 22 chapters which share a focus on aspects of visual cultures f... more Seeing in Spanish brings together 22 chapters which share a focus on aspects of visual cultures from the Spanish speaking world. Together these chapters address film, photography, cover art, body art, posters, television, architecture, ekphrasis, biography, murals, graffiti, and digital photo-montage. Between Don Quixote and Daddy Yankee, the essays move from the seventeenth century to the present and traverse Europe, the Americas, and cyberspace.
A casi dos siglos de la muerte de José María Heredia (1803-1839), esta edición crítica reúne por ... more A casi dos siglos de la muerte de José María Heredia (1803-1839), esta edición crítica reúne por primera vez la totalidad de las poesías del Cantor del Niágara, manteniendo la integridad de las colecciones dispuestas por el propio poeta cubano-mexicano. Los textos se han sometido a una cautelosa normalización ortográfica, ofreciendo versiones fiables a la vez que accesibles. El amplio aparato crítico, además de registrar las variantes textuales, presenta información acerca de los testimonios aprovechados, así como una discusión de diferentes aspectos relacionados con el poema en cuestión. Estos datos se complementan con notas explicativas que aclaran referencias y alusiones de índole erudita, histórica y autobiográfica, así como vínculos con otros textos. Los índices ofrecen rutas alternativas para acceder a este rico acervo de información. El resultado es una edición que satisface tanto las exigencias rigurosas del investigador como las del estudiante universitario o lector curioso no familiarizado con la obra de Heredia y su contexto.