The Currency of Cultural Patrimony: The Spanish Golden Age - (Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures) by Robert Bayliss (Hardcover)
About this item
Highlights
- The Spanish Golden Age, a cultural narrative that has developed and over four centuries, remains a key element of how Spaniards articulate cultural identities, both within Spain and to the outside world.
- About the Author: Robert Bayliss is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas.
- 176 Pages
- Literary Collections, European
- Series Name: Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures
Description
About the Book
This study of how early modern Spanish literature constitutes a cultural 'Golden Age' addresses the evolving uses of a literary canon that is now regarded as national cultural patrimony. It approaches these uses of the Spanish Golden Age as a diachronic problem whose analysis can address some of the most persistent questions in the field of Hispanism.Book Synopsis
The Spanish Golden Age, a cultural narrative that has developed and over four centuries, remains a key element of how Spaniards articulate cultural identities, both within Spain and to the outside world. The Currency of Cultural Patrimony examines the development of this narrative by artists, intellectuals, historians, academics, and institutions. By defining the Spanish Golden Age as a diachronic problem, it examines several of Spain's most canonical golden-age literary narratives (including Don Quixote, Fuenteovejuna, and Las mocedades del Cid) as texts whose institutionalization, mediation, and commercialization over the course of four hundred years inform their meaning both for contemporary Spaniards and for the field of Hispanic Studies around the world. Spain's persistent deployment of this cultural patrimony as the canonical epicentre of a national literary tradition has stimulated diverse and often contradictory interpretations, the cumulative effect of which informs their reception by each new generation of Spaniards. This book's analysis of how this patrimony is interpreted according to both tradition and current circumstances illuminates new angles from which scholars can approach some of Hispanism's most persistent and vexing questions, including the growing divide between popular and academic understandings of the Spanish nation's "classics."
Review Quotes
'the study contains interesting reflections on the Disneyfication of Golden Age culture in audio-visual products targeting children and young adults; the weight of classical patrimony in popular culture; or the academic reluctance to engage with this mass cultural dimension of the national classical past.' Miguel Martinez
'This book is a refreshing look at how the early modern cultural heritage has been marketed and used.'
Javier Irigoyen-García
About the Author
Robert Bayliss is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas.
