MENÉNDEZ PELAYO LIBRARY BULLETIN

Fiat iustitia ne pereat mundus. Homenaje a Luis Beltrán Almería

2025-11-04T23:18:13+01:00

Presentación del volumen

Presentación

2025-11-04T23:23:25+01:00

Presentación del volumen por el coordinador

Luis Beltrán Almería: the intellectual that looked at the East and became an outstanding literature theorist

2025-09-30T22:11:10+02:00

This contribution presents the academic life of Luis Beltrán Almería (Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Zaragoza), on the occasion of his 70th birthday. After a brief reference to his secondary and university education, special attention is paid to his doctoral thesis, which dealt with the so-called free indirect discourse, with reference to the character's speech in the modern Spanish novel. The theory of discourse genres and the novel by Mikhail Bakhtin, of whom Beltrán Almería is an excellent specialist in Spain, was essential for the development of this thesis. The teaching and research dedication of Beltrán Almería is reviewed, specifying the disciplines he has worked on, the doctoral theses and research projects he has directed, and, finally, the topics that have occupied him in his brilliant and extensive scientific production.

La saga/gran fábula de L. B.

2025-07-14T20:08:48+02:00

Written with humor, a crucial theme in the intellectual career of Luis Beltrán Almería, the purpose of the following pages is twofold: on the one hand, to portray the person honored here, emphasizing his role as an educator, mainly in his early years as a professor of literary theory at the University of Zaragoza; and, on the other hand, to present in a light and pedagogical manner some of the teachings critically elaborated in his writings, in particular La imaginación literaria (2002), a seminal work of Beltrán's theories on the great history of literature.

A Conversation with Luis Beltrán

2025-05-26T17:49:10+02:00

This paper aims to be an informal approach to the work of Luis Beltrán Almería. We point out the two ruptures from which it starts, aesthetic and historical and trace the itinerary of its thought from The Literary Imagination to the last book, Aesthetics of Modernity. We make explicit the theoretical foundation of his work, with particular attention to the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin and relate his work with the first two books by Luis, on the enunciation in the novel, and with all the rest, about literary aesthetics. Finally, some critical warnings.

El grotesco en los álbumes ilustrados infantiles

2025-06-11T19:33:58+02:00

The study of the grotesque, as an aesthetic category, is one of the great contributions of modern thought in its approach to the artistic object. The first attempts (Rosenkratz, Flögel), centred on the analysis of ugliness as a response to the hegemony of the beautiful, were followed by the proposals of Bakhtin and Kayser, centred on specific historical periods. Various works by Beltrán Almería take up the concept and situate it in a broader horizon, as the foundational aesthetics of the human creative imagination in its unfolding through history. This work takes up this path again and attempts to explore its expression in children's picture books. The imagination of the child, prone to the grotesque, offers artists aware of its power, backed by the great tradition (Busch, Steig, Sendak, Saéz Castán...), a fertile space for creation, which is explored in the following pages through figures and symbols such as the devilish child, the apocalypse, the monster or the states of alienation and transit.

Antibelicismo y risa en la literatura rusa

2025-06-09T16:45:14+02:00

En la historia de Rusia la guerra es una constante. Por esa razón, la guerra aparece reiteradamente en su literatura. Pero además de textos que describen, ensalzan o critican la guerra hay también textos abiertamente antibélicos. Y el tonto es una figura ideal para denigrar la guerra.

Laughter and the satirical press in romantic Madrid

2025-11-27T01:27:36+01:00

The development of satirical journalism during Spanish Romanticism acquired great importance after the death of Ferdinand VII (1833). Its timid beginnings were consolidated from 1836 onwards, and they represented a radical change from the satirical press of the first half of the 19th century, fundamentally during the Liberal Triennium. This article analyzes the most significant satirical publications corresponding to the second third of the 19th century, whose magazines were directed and edited by celebrated writers. This satirical journalism scrutinized Spanish society from multiple ideological and thematic perspectives, from the political and literary to those relating to customs and social behavior. This aggressive, biting, irreverent journalistic corpus used satire with a clear purpose: to insult and ridicule.

El humorismo y la risa según Juan Valera

2025-10-11T21:20:54+02:00

When the Anglicism humor became increasingly prevalent in linguistic usage, Juan Valera reacted by embracing the concept of the laughable, setting aside romantic subjectivism and its moods. When the Anglicism humor became increasingly prevalent in linguistic usage, Juan Valera reacted by embracing the concept of the laughable, setting aside romantic subjectivism and its moods. He defended the tradition of laughter in Spain and its human nature: as a critic from his idealistic readings of Don Quixote, as a writer pursuing amusement and entertainment, as an ethnologist or folklorist, concerned with safeguarding the oral heritage of laughter.

San Isidro y San Isidoro regresan de Xibalbá: Microhistoria del origen de la agricultura en Mesoamérica

2025-06-11T18:55:41+02:00

The Lenca people is the majority indigenous culture in Honduras and its oral tradition involves elements of an original Mesoamerican worldview that is at risk of extincition. This tradition encompasses traces of mythical signs that are associated with the magical-religious ritual of the Composturas, an ceremony originally agricultural that is drawn on symbolic corpuses from rival traditions in the history of the imagination. The utterance of these stories through specific forms such as diphrasism is also significant since it may well facilitate access to the formulation of cognitive procedures that seem unusual to Western culture.

Diálogo entre generaciones a través del cuento: Luis Mateo Díez, José María Merino, Pilar Adón y Sara Mesa

2025-10-14T18:50:01+02:00

Currently, different generations of authors are dedicated to writing short stories, and, through his works, a technical and thematic dialogue around the genre is verified. Nature is prominent in the analyzed texts by José María Merino and Pilar Adón, either to raise awareness about the impact of Homo sapiens on the global ecosystem or to present natural spaces as refuges or places of escape. Furthermore, narrative structures and the humanization or animalization of characters unite stories by Luis Mateo Díez and Sara Mesa.

Pedagogía y novela: Galdós y Unamuno dialogan con Anatole France y Paul Bourget

2025-06-11T18:48:51+02:00

Se pone en relación, por un lado, la novela de Anatole France El crimen de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) con El amigo Manso (1882) de Galdós; y por otro, El discípulo (1889) de Paul Bourget con Amor y pedagogía (1902) de Unamuno. Todas ellas son novelas en las que se subvierten las marcas del viejo género frances de la novela pedagógica.

El influjo de las redes sociales y los dispositivos de internet en la gestación de nuevos géneros narrativos

2025-11-27T01:28:58+01:00

This paper deals with the function of the new internet devices in the generation of the new literary genres. In this sense, the writers of nowadays are following an old way: the fisrst step of this appropiation were the autobiography and the travel narration, second the letter, diary or memoirs and more recently genres that come from the cyberespace like the email, sms, whatsapp or the blog, that were populariced through the cellular. The result is de birth of new narative genres based precisely in these devices: email roman, sms roman, etc. One can wait that in the next future will appear new types of novel following th same way.

Teatro y didactismo. Notas sobre tres momentos clave

2025-11-27T01:28:35+01:00

En este ensayo parto de la hipótesis de que existen diversas expresiones teatrales que guardan algún vínculo con la estética del didactismo. Reviso, en términos muy generales, cómo se ha dado dicha relación en tres momentos relevantes de la historia; centrando la atención en la función social que se le ha atribuido al teatro, al mismo tiempo que intento no perder de vista la aspiración utópica que lo acompaña.

Impresiones de viaje: At the Crossroads of the Novel

2025-06-09T16:37:41+02:00

In 1862, Mexican writer Guillermo Prieto published the short novel Impresiones de viaje. Traducción libre de un zuavo, encontrado en su mochila, en la acción de Barranca Seca, which has received little critical attention, despite constituting an important link in the complex process of shaping the novel genre in Mexico. In this essay, I examine how he, using the parody method, fashioned a renewed and humorous vision of the ways in which many foreigners have narrowed their gaze toward the new world, oscillating between contempt and exalted admiration. In doing so, he opens the door to the creation of a marginal but highly significant narrative for understanding the formation of literary tradition in Latin America.

CARMEN MARTÍN GAITE: MUJER ANDRÓGINO Y MUJER ENSIMISMADA

2025-07-29T19:53:21+02:00

Carmen Martín Gaite's narrative is structured around the figures of the androgynous woman and self-absorption, aesthetic categories developed by Luis Beltrán Almería. The former embodies a modern subject who takes on traditionally masculine attributes in response to the crisis of the hombre inútil. The second refers to a self-referential practice sustained in autobiography, where subjectivity is elaborated through forms such as the diary and the epistolary. In Irse de casa, the journey - conceived by Beltrán as a metaphor for the conflict and transformation.

APPROACH TO HISTORY IN THE WORK OF IGNACIO MARTÍNEZ DE PISÓN

2025-11-27T01:27:12+01:00

Ignacio Martínez de Pisón (1960) began his literary career as an author with a tendency toward the fantastic. His literature questioned the boundaries of reality through often sordid and unpredictable characters. Gradually, the writer has evolved toward realism and the consideration of History as relevant elements in his work. His essay Enterrar a los muertos (To Bury the Dead, 2005) was likely the decisive moment in this process. Since then, Martínez de Pisón has unquestionably matured as a realist writer. Based on critical perspectives inspired by the work of Professor Luis Beltrán Almería, this article analyzes some of the key aspects of Ignacio Martínez de Pisón's literary evolution.

El imaginario kafkiano a la luz del pensamiento de Luis Beltrán

2025-06-09T17:28:08+02:00

There is no doubt that Franz Kafka is a contemporary classic and a paradigm of Modernity. However, accounting for his continued relevance is a complex task that cannot be reduced to a mere appeal to his individual genius. The broad perspective on the evolution of human imagination articulated in the work of Luis Beltrán helps illuminate the reasons why Kafka continues to resonate with humanity a century after his death.

La última Carmen Laforet: creciendo hacia la juventud

2025-06-10T11:53:05+02:00

Since the publication of La insolación (1963), Carmen Laforet had been engaged in the writing of a novel, Al volver la esquina, which was to be the second installment of a trilogy with which she aspired to radically change her work. The composition process lasted more than fifteen years, until 1979. Throughout this period the horizon of the novel in Spanish and the Laforet's expectations and circumstances changed. The version of the novel published in 2004 responded to an advanced but not definitive stage of this process.

The sympolism of the underground in the hispanic recent cinema

2025-11-27T01:30:22+01:00

El espacio simbólico del subsuelo surge en el Neolítico, época en la que nuestra especie funda su supervivencia en valores como la tierra natal y el trabajo agrícola. En el cuento oral maravilloso, el subsuelo es el espacio mágico para representar el misterio del crecimiento y la regeneración de la vida, fusionándose con el viaje y la metamorfosis. El simbolismo moderno, una respuesta artístico-cultural a la búsqueda de nuevos valores para una nueva supervivencia, renueva este espacio y le dispensa tratamientos divergentes. En el cine de consumo, lo subterráneo adquiere un carácter traumatizado y desequilibrado que persigue provocar terror y explorar los bajos fondos. En el cine para la reflexión, se asocia a otros símbolos modernos como educación, crisis, ciudad infernal, andrógino y hombre del subsuelo, adquiriendo sentidos complejos como la imposibilidad moral de la vida urbana, la necesidad de educación, la resurrección y la verdad revelada. Proponemos explicar el sentido del viaje del simbolismo subterráneo, desde lo verbal-ancestral a lo moderno-audiovisual, mediante ejemplos de películas del cine hispánico reciente

The General in His Labyrinth, an inner escape

2025-11-23T23:02:49+01:00

General Simón Bolívar is confronted with the challenge of unraveling a labyrinth in the course of a singular journey, the last of his life. The defense of the historical legacy he fears abandoning to its own fate (the Bolivarian ideal and so himself) competes with a growing urgency: to attend to his tuberculosis and to his people. García Márquez's grotesque symbolism manages to open communicating vessels between both dimensions, public and private. These conduits reflect a labyrinthine and salvific space-time, constructed with the richness of a fertile symbolism: that of doubt and paradox.

La epistolaridad como máscara del yo

2025-09-17T11:44:49+02:00

Reseña del libro "La novela epistolar española actual" de Patricia Urraca