Linda M. Willem – författare

This book explores the change that occurred in the writings of Spanish novelist Benito Perez Galdos when he entered his segunda manera in 1881 with the publication of La desheredada, his first contemporary novel. Critical work on this important phase of Galdos's career has tended to concentrate on the content of his novels, with little attention given to the way in which Galdos conveys that content to the reader. By studying these works in light of how their stories are told, Linda Willem shows that La desheredada marks the beginning of a more sophisticated and varied mode of narrative in Galdos's novels. Through close readings of his first seven contemporary works, Willem shows how the affective response associated with various narrative devices plays a role in the rhetorical strategies of each text.

Thrust into the international spotlight in 1966 when The Hunt, his critique of the Franco regime, won the Silver Bear at Berlin, Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura (b. 1932) has remained an abiding presence and frequent victor at worldwide cinema competitions ever since. Best known in the United States for his Flamenco trilogy--Blood Wedding, Carmen, and A Love Bewitched--he also received Oscar nominations for Mama Turns a Hundred, Carmen, and Tango. Saura's movies are frequently ambiguous, sometimes controversial, and always narratively complex. In many of his films, such as Cría and Goya in Bordeaux, he creates sophisticated expressions of time and space by fusing reality with fantasy, past with present, and memory with hallucination. Carlos Saura: Interviews collects interviews the filmmaker has given in Spain, France, Germany, and Canada. All of the conversations appear here in English for the first time, and, as such, they represent a treasure trove of comments by Saura on his own work. Covering the entire spectrum of his career, including his latest film Buñuel and King Solomon's Table, the interviews discuss his early contributions to the New Spanish Cinema, his documentaries and documentary-like urban films, his cinematic essays on historical figures, his dance films, his adaptations of literary and theatrical works, and the films rooted in his personal reminiscences of the Spanish Civil War. In addition, the collection touches upon Saura's efforts as a photographer, opera director, and novelist and explores his friendship with filmmaker Luis Buñuel. These interviews disclose Saura's amazingly consistent approach to his cinema, his role as an auteur, and the principles on which his creativity and intuition continue to build in innovative ways. Linda M. Willem is professor of Spanish at Butler University. She is the author of Galdós's Segunda Manera: Rhetorical Strategies and Affective Response and editor of A Sesquicentennial Tribute to Galdós. Her work has been published in Literature/Film Quarterly, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Latin American Literary Review, Letras Peninsulares, and Crítica Hispánica.

The twenty-first-century's turn away from fidelity-based adaptations toward more innovative approaches has allowed adapters from Spain, Argentina, and the United States to draw upon Spain's rich body of nineteenth-century classics to address contemporary concerns about gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, celebrity, immigration, identity, social justice, and domestic violence. This book provides a snapshot of visual adaptations in the first two decades of the new millennium, examining how novelistic material from the past has been remediated for today's viewers through film, television, theater, opera, and the graphic novel. Its theoretical approach refines the binary view of adapters as either honoring or opposing their source texts by positing three types of adaptation strategies: salvaging (which preserves old stories by giving them renewed life for modern audiences), utilizing (which draws upon a pre-existing text for an alternative purpose, building upon the story and creating a shift in emphasis without devaluing the source material), and appropriation (which involves a critique of the source text, often with an attempt to dismantle its authority). Special attention is given to how adapters address audiences that are familiar with the source novels, and those that are not. This examination of the vibrant afterlife of classic literature will be of interest to scholars and educators in the fields of adaptation, media, Spanish literature, cultural studies, performance, and the graphic arts.