As in other countries, the effects of commercialization in Spain are changing the direction of publishing. Arguing that women face a particularly complex situation because the inclusion of their work is still considered a novelty in a male-dominated field, Christine Henseler examines the strategies of Spanish women authors in the face of market forces. In a consumer economy that places books in supermarkets and mega-bookstores and in which novels are promoted and read more for entertainment than for their literary merit, women's books tend to be more highly regarded when they cater to feminist, erotic, or commercial niche markets. Henseler examines the visual creation of the seductive female body inside and outside the texts and the verbal application of this female figure on a narrative level in the works of authors including Paloma Díaz-Mas, Lourdes Ortiz, Cristina Peri Rossi, Esther Tusquets, Almudena Grandes, and Lucía Etxebarría. She looks at novels of seduction, award-winning novels, and novels sold on the basis of an author's prior reputation, as well as advertisements, literary prizes, and reviews. She also draws on interviews with authors to provide insider views of contemporary Spanish publishing. Contemporary Spanish Women's Narrative and the Publishing Industry reveals the ways women writers are reacting -- both textually and promotionally--to the changing demands of the publishing industry and the construction of a literary canon.

The question of "women's writing": a 'double-edged' double-bind? -- The reception and marketing of women writers in Spain -- Writers, the literary market and the construction of the public personae of Matute, Montero, and Etxebarria -- Matute, Montero, and Etxebarria on "women's writing" -- The 'spectral mother'

"This book is the first to explore the interaction of three media in contemporary Spain. Focusing on some of the best known and most important books, feature films, and television series in the country (including novelist Antonio Munoz Molina, director Pedro Almodovar, and the Spanish version of telenovela Ugly Betty), it addresses three pairs of linked issues central to Hispanic studies and beyond: history and memory, authority and society, and genre and transitivity. Much of the material is very recent and thus as yet unstudied. The book also focuses on the representation of gender, sexuality, and transnationalism in these texts. Drawing on approaches from both the humanities and social sciences it combines close readings of key texts with the analysis of production processes, media institutions, audiences, and reception."

The Politics of Literary Prestige provides the first comprehensive study of prizes for Spanish American literature. Covering state-sponsored and publisher-run prizes including the Biblioteca Breve Prize – credited with launching the 'Boom' in Spanish American literature – the Premio Cervantes and the Nobel Prize for Literature, this book examines how prizes have underpinned different political agenda. As new political positions have emerged so have new awards and the role of the author in society has evolved. Prizes variously position the winners as public intellectual, spokesperson on the world stage or celebrity in the context of an increasingly globalized literature in Spanish. Drawing on a range of sources, Sarah E.L Bowskill analyses prizes from the perspective of different stakeholders including states, publishers, authors, judges and critics. In so doing, she untangles the inner workings of literary prizes in Spanish-speaking contexts, proposes the existence of a prizes network and demonstrates that attitudes to cultural prizes are not universal but are culturally determined.

By highlighting features common to the Gothic classics and the works of Adelaida García Morales, this monograph aims to put the Gothic on the map in Hispanic Studies. The Gothic as a literary mode extending well beyond its first proponents in eighteenth-century England is well established in English studies but has been strangely under-used by Hispanists. Now Abigail Lee Six uses it as the paradigm through which to analyse the novels of Adelaida García Morales; while not suggesting that every novel by this author is a classic Gothic text, she reveals certain constants in the work that can be related to the Gothic, evenin novels which one might not classify as such. Each of the novels studied is paired with an English-language Gothic text, such as Dracula, Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and then read in the lightof it. The focus of each chapter ranges from psychological aspects, such as fear of decay or otherness, or the pressures linked to managing secrets, to more concrete elements such as mountains and frightening buildings, and to keyfigures such as vampires, ghosts, or monsters. This approach sheds new light on how García Morales achieves probably the most distinguishing feature of her novels: their harrowing atmosphere. ABIGAIL LEE SIX is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.

This bibliography, listed alphabetically by authors of books and articles on Mercè Rodoreda, offers a detailed description of the content of more than two hundred studies on her work. In addition to Rodoreda’s narrative, the last decade has seen many more studies of her theater, poetry, painting, and early journalism. Also included is a comprehensive listing of editions and translations, as well as an index. The intention is to analyze and diffuse the great body of academic production on this worldwide representative of Catalan culture, with the hope that future studies can profit by a reading of pertinent existing scholarship on the subject. There are various kinds of publications, from congress proceedings and chapters in related studies to standard cultural periodicals and books from university or academic presses. Some are more specialized than others, and approaches are as varied as the authors, with focuses on comparative literature and influences, historical or biographical aspects, symbolic or thematic analyses, linguistic or pedagogical studies, psychological or formalistic viewpoints, narrative tendencies and techniques. Readers of Rodoredan scholarship will recognize the names of many of these contributors, but there are newer Rodoreda specialists represented as well.

This book is an edited volume of eleven specially-commissioned essays by a range of established and emerging UK-based Hispanists, which assess recent developments in the disciplines falling under the umbrella of 'Iberian Studies'. These essays, which cover a wide range of time periods and geographical areas, but are united by the common question of what it means to 'Read Iberia', offer an invigorating critique of many of the critical assumptions shaping the study of Iberian languages and literatures. This volume offers a timely intervention into the debate about the current repositioning of language/literature disciplines within the UK university. Its intellectual starting point is the need for a committed and incisive re-evaluation of the role of literature and the way we teach and research it. The contributors address this issue from a diverse range of linguistic, cultural and theoretical backgrounds, drawing on both familiar and not-so-familiar texts and authors to question common reference points and critical assumptions. The volume offers not only a new and invigorating space for reimagining Iberian Studies from within, but also - through its commitment to interdisciplinary debate - an opportunity to raise the profile of Iberian Studies outside the community of academic Hispanists.