César Vallejo, original innovator and creator, is one of the most important Spanish American poets of the 20th century, whose popularity and... universality in Spanish and Latin American Literatures are widely recognized. In addition to his poetic work, Vallejo also wrote theater, journalistic essays and fiction. However, compared with the critical studies of his poetry, there is very little analysis of his other work available. Vallejo's prose fiction, complement and projection of his poetic work, has rarely been studied but it merits close examination. When Vallejo's prose is contextualized chronologically, aesthetically and ideologically, a significantly richer reading of both his prose and poetry is enabled, which contributes to a deeper understanding of the author's literary intentions. In El Tungsteno and in Paco Yunque, in addition to the author's concerns about social and ideological themes, the reader can see the aesthetic conception of a politically committed art and the ways in which the author, who was never neutral, either in the political or in the social sphere, utilized fiction as a medium to engage the reader and awaken his conscience. At the same time, Vallejo was preoccupied with showing the dynamics within the narrative structure through which the different narrative levels are permeated by one primary thematic relationship: corruption. For this reason, from the moment these two texts were first published, Peruvian, as well as foreign, critics recognized their importance in expressing the artistic vision through which Vallejo denounced the corruption and destruction that pervaded all levels of society, a corruption and destruction provoked by the politics of environmental and human destruction and manipulation that industrialized nations imposed upon countries with deficient social and political infrastructures. In Paco Yunque, Vallejo also underlines the sociocultural problem that is created when a deviant masculinity develops in members of the upper classes, revealing endemic evils of a society which have their origin in homes and schools, and which have consequences for the entire country. This edition, by Prof. Flor María Rodrígues-Arenas, includes a detailed introductory analysis and footnotes that allow the reader to better comprehend the text and understand its importance within Hispanic American literature.

The commentaries of Martin Heidegger on the lyric poems of German Romantic poet, Friedrich Holderlin are an extraordinary encounter between poetry and... the penetrating thought of a powerful philosophical mind. The writings included here reveal much about Heidegger's innermost thoughts on poetry, language, and how we think. This is the first English translation of this important work.

Set in the dark days of the Spanish Civil War, The Carpenter's Pencil charts the linked destinies of Dr. Daniel Da Barca, Herbal, and of the unnamed... painter with the carpenter's pencil. The Carpenter's Pencil was a bestseller in Spain and has been published in various languages. Blurb in Spanish: En la cárcel de Santiago de Compostela, en plena Guerra Civil, un pintor dibuja el Pórtico de la Gloria con un lápiz de carpintero, reflejando los rostros... y aún más, la desesperación de sus compañeros de presidio. Un guardián, su futuro asesino, lo observa todo. A partir de esa escena, el «lápiz» de Manuel Rivas hilvana una historia donde el amor logra vencer la desesperanza.

Elusive Culture is a fascinating ethnographic study of youth engaged in a passionate quest for identity in global times. It explores questions of... identity and culture at a Toronto high school, a space wherein teachers and students alike shift and slide in relation to the policies and practices of anti-racism, multiculturalism, and the competing discourses of identity. Drawing on personal observations, conversations with students and teachers, experimental work in drama, use of video, and student writings, Yon develops a complex view of identity and culture, one attuned to the ambivalent and contradictory processes of everyday life.

This book examines and compares the efforts of France, Britain, and the United States to extend imperial dominion over the Ohio Valley, focusing on the... relations between Europeans and Indians to tell the story. In a compelling narrative, it considers the ways in which France and Great Britain each attempted to create viable empires in the region, the conflicts that resulted, and the origins and outcome of the American Revolution in the West. The result is a fascinating story that offers a strikingly new interpretation of the origins, progress, and effects of the American Revolution.

No work of Spanish philosopher and essayist José Ortega y Gasset has been more frequently cited, admired, or criticized than his defense of modernism,... "The Dehumanization of Art." In the essay, originally published in Spanish in 1925, Ortega grappled philosophically with the newness of nonrepresentational art and sought to make it more understandable to a public confused by it. Many embraced the essay as a manifesto extolling the virtues of vanguard artists and promoting their efforts to abandon the realism and the romanticism of the nineteenth century.The "dehumanization" of the title, which was meant descriptively rather than pejoratively, referred most literally to the absence of human forms in nonrepresentational art, but also to its insistent unpopularity, its indifference to the past, and its iconoclasm. Ortega championed what he saw as a new cultural politics with the goal of a total transformation of society. Ortega was an immensely gifted writer in the best belletristic tradition. His work has been compared to an iceberg because it hides the critical mass of its erudition beneath the surface, and because it is deceptive, appearing to be more spontaneous and informal than it really is. Princeton published the first English translation of the essay paired with another entitled "Notes on the Novel." Three essays were later added to make an expanded edition, published in 1968, under the title The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature .

Elusive Equity chronicles South Africas efforts to fashion a racially equitable state education system from the ashes of apartheid. The policymakers who... came to power with Nelson Mandela in 1994 inherited and education system designed to further the racist goals of apartheid. Their massive challenge was to transform that system, which lavished human and financial resources on schools serving white students while systematically starving those serving African, coloured, and Indian learners, into one that would offer quality education to all persons, regardless of their race. Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd describe and evaluate the strategies that South Africa pursued in its quest for racial equity. They draw on previously unpublished data, interviews with key officials, and visits to dozens of schools to describe the changes made in school finance, teacher assignment policies, governance, curriculum, higher education, and other areas. They conclude that the country has made remarkable progress toward equity in the sense of equal treatment of persons of all races. For several reasons, however, the country has been far less successful in promoting equal educational opportunity or educational adequacy. Thus equity has remained elusive. The book is unique in combining the perceptive observations of a skilled education journalist with the analytical skills of an academic policy expert. Richly textured descriptions of how South Africas education reforms have affected schools at the grass-roots level are combined with careful analysis of enrollment, governance, and budget data at the school, provincial, and national levels. The result is a compelling and comprehensive study of South Africas firstdecade of education reform in the post-apartheid period.

La hipotetica presencia de una grabadora, de un interlocutor sirve de pauta para un largo monologo, a traves del cual desfilan momentos de una vida en... los bajos fondos y submundos de la Ciudad de Mexico. La adolescencia prematura, la presion social, la homosexualidad, la prostitucion, la enfermedad, el hastio, son las etapas, vistas retrospectivamente, de la vida de este vampiro urbano. El vampiro de la colonia Roma ocupa, sin duda, una posicion privilegiada dentro del acervo literario del Mexico contemporaneo. Con esta novela, publicada por primera vez en 1979, Luis Zapata no solo creo entre nosotros una nueva forma de contar una historia, sino que volvio visible y le dio voz publica al mundo gay, para lograr crear una corriente con un espacio por derecho propio. A 25 anos de haber sido publicada, sigue siendo una obra literaria viva y vigente.

A comienzos de 2001, en un pequeno restaurante de Paris, un hombre mayor manosea a las dos jovencitas que lo acompanan. Lo que mas extrana a la... voyeureuse de la mesa de al lado, es escuchar a este hombre jactarse de poseer algo tan extraordinario como el velazquez que fue dado por perdido durante el incendio del Real Alcazar de Madrid en la nochebuena de 1734. Se trata de La expulsion de los moriscos, cuya realizacion consagro al joven pintor como el mas grande de todos los tiempos. Esta novela es la historia de ese gran cuadro, de su largo periplo, y traza para nosotros un vertiginoso camino que nos llevara de los territorios de la intimidad a los de la Historia, de la alucinacion a la introspeccion realista, de la fantasia a la intensa relacion que el arte mantiene con la vida.

Tirso de Molina (Madrid, 1583-Almazán, Soria, 1648). España. Se dice que era hijo bastardo del duque de Osuna, pero otros lo niegan. Se sabe poco de... su vida hasta su ingreso como novicio en la Orden mercedaria, en 1600, y su profesión al año siguiente en Guadalajara. Parece que había escrito comedias y por entonces viajó por Galicia y Portugal. En 1614 sufrió su primer destierro de la corte por sus sátiras contra la nobleza. Dos años más tarde fue enviado a la Hispaniola (actual República Dominicana) y regresó en 1618. Su vocación artística y su actitud contraria a los cenáculos culteranos no facilitó sus relaciones con las autoridades. En 1625, el Concejo de Castilla lo amonestó por escribir comedias y le prohibió volver a hacerlo bajo amenaza de excomunión. Desde entonces sólo escribió tres nuevas piezas y consagró el resto de su vida a las tareas de la orden. 

Como trozos de sus diarios de viaje, Pitol narra aquí su viaje de Praga al Cáucaso, Tiflis, Moscú y la ex Leningrado. Describe con lenguaje clásico... y preciso sus peripecias de viajero, pero también vuelca en el libro el sacro bosque de la literatura rusa, desde Dostoievski hasta Gogol y Chéjov. Este es uno de los ejemplos m^s radicales del desvanecimiento de una realidad en la literatura y también el más perfecto, elegante y divertido modelo de una magistral construcción narrativa.

El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos gathers nine stories and a testimonial essay by Ena Lucía Portela, who began to publish in the 1990's and has... been recognized as one of the outstanding stars of recent Cuban fiction. Portela was born Dec. 19, 1972 in Havana, where she still lives. She is the author of the novels "El pájaro: pincel y tinta china" (1999), "La sombra del caminante" (2001), "Cien botellas en una pared" (2002; winner that year of the Jaen Novel Prize awarded by the Caja de Ahorros of Granada, Spain, and 2003 winner of the Prix Littéraire Deux Océans Grinzane Cavour awarded by French critics), y "Djuna y Daniel" (2008; recipient of the Cuban Critics' Award), and the short story collections "Una extraña entre las piedras" (1999) and "Alguna enfermedad muy grave (2006). She writes occasionally for the newspaper El País of Spain,and for magazines such as Index on Censorship, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, SoHo, Crítica and La Siempreviva, among others. Portela's texts have appeared in many anthologies of short stories and essays, both in Cuba and in many other countries. Her work has appeared in nine languages and in over twenty countries. She was selected in May, 2007 as one of the 39 most important writers in Latin America under 39 year sold. The texts included in the present volume were published between 1993 and 2008 in two collections and various magazines. This volume closes with a testimonial essay, "Alas rotas," first published in 2008. A short film based on Portela's story "El viejo, el asesino y yo," 1999 winner of the Juan Rulfo Prize awarded by French International Radio, and used as the title of the present collection, will be shown at the Festival de Cine Pobre, in Gibara, Cuba. Besides being marvelous stories in themselves, this anthology provides an introduction to Portela's works of fiction and non-fiction. Literature is a key element in Portela's work, and references to books and authors of all eras are interwoven throughout her writings, as well as references to the plastic arts, film and music. The density of cultural reference is accessible, and is both serious and playful. Today's Cuba appears as a backdrop of the stories, but not in a crude or touristic way. Even criticism is made to serve literary purposes. Iraida H. Lopez' prologue offers an overview of the short story in Cuba since 1959, focusing particularly on the 1990's generation. She discusses not only there current themes in Portela's stories, but also many of the strategies utilized by the author to accomplish her goals. More than a hundred footnotes, in the production of which Lopez and Portela collaborated, elucidate both personal and academic aspects of the stories.