City Steeple, City Streets - by Candace Slater

Book Synopsis

Candace Slater's new book focuses on narratives concerning Fray Leopoldo de Alpandeire (1864-1956), a Capuchin friar from Granada and probably the most popular nonconsecrated saint today in all of Spain. In tracing the emergence of a group of contemporary legends about Fray Leopoldo, Slater discusses both the stories she tape-recorded in the streets of Granada and the friar's official biography. She underscores the essential pluralism of the tales, their undercurrent of resistance to institutional authority, and their deep concern for the relationship between past and present. Bearing witness to the subtlety and resilience of even the most apparently conservative folk-literary forms, these stories are not only about the role of saints and miracles in an increasingly secular and industrial society but, first and foremost, also about the legacy of the Franco years. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

From the Back Cover

"Extremely exciting for the field of Spanish and European cultural studies, which . . . has tended to overlook issues of the religious imagination, narrative, and folklore."--Ruth Behar, author of Santa Maria del Monte: The Presence of the Past in a Spanish Village

About the Author

Candace Slater is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Stories on a String: The Brazilian Literatura de Cordel and Trail of Miracles: Stories from a Pilgrimage in Northeastern Brazil, and This Earth, That Sky.