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‘The Media Intertextuality of “Que Tiro Foi Esse”: Tracking the Circulation of (Stray) Bullets in and through a Brazilian Internet Meme’ by Dr Tori Holmes, examines the meme that captured the political mood of Brazil’s 2018 election. Read for free #OpenAccess http://bit.ly/3tlIkEy

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New article out by Dr Sarah Bowskill on 'Como agua para chocolate' in Modern Languages Open

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New article out by Dr Sarah Bowskill on 'Como agua para chocolate' in Modern Languages Open

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Como agua para chocolate and ‘Intimas suculencias’: Laura Esquivel’s nueva literatura and the creation of a canon of women writing about food, knowledge and pleasure

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Thirty years after the publication of Laura Esquivel's polemical bestselling novel Como agua para chocolate (1989), she and other Spanish American women authors still struggle to be heard and to be taken seriously. There is a particular reluctance to pay due attention to non-fiction interventions by women authors. This article, therefore, draws attention to the overlooked work of Spanish American women authors and argues for the significance of a speech Esquivel gave at one of the most important events in the Spanish American literary calendar, the Feria del Libro held in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1990. This speech aimed to define a nueva literatura in relation to a tradition of women authors. It became the title piece of the volume Intimas suculencias: Tratado filosófico de cocina a published collection of essays, speeches, short stories and recipes. Yet it has been overlooked. 'Intimas' has never been the subject of an article-length study and the predominantly non-fiction writings in the collection are rarely mentioned in studies of Esquivel's fiction.

This article seeks to show that our understanding of both Como agua and the essay 'Intimas suculencias' is enhanced if they are read as companion texts in an overarching project to conceptualise and put into practice a nueva literatura. The key features of this new literature are the breaking down of barriers that separate food and domestic knowledge, and written knowledge and food and sexual pleasure. The removal of these barriers, Esquivel suggested, would lead to a revalorisation of the kitchen space, a celebration of female sexuality and an end to gendered binary thinking. This article is structured around these features. It analyses the representation of food and knowledge, the representation of the kitchen space as a non-gendered space, the relationship between food and sexual pleasure and the representation of female sexuality. Cutting across all of this is an analysis of the ways in which gendered binary thinking is or is not challenged.

In 'Intimas', Esquivel also uncovered a canon of Hispanic women writing about food, knowledge and pleasure. I take Esquivel's - admittedly brief - statements about the representation of food, knowledge and pleasure as a starting point to revisit these texts and to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the canon she proposed and her relationship to it. The tradition Esquivel articulated included Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's 'Respuesta a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz' (1691), María Luisa Mendoza's 'Fruta madura de ida' (1976), Rosario Castellanos' 'Lección de cocina' (1971), Dorelia Barahona's De qué manera te olvido (1990) and Inés Arredondo's 'Estío' (1965). As will be seen, Esquivel positioned these texts as flawed but necessary precursors to the creation of a nueva literatura.

Sor Juana's 'Respuesta' is a letter by the seventeenth-century nun defending women's education, in which she highlights what she was able to learn from time spent preparing food in the kitchen. Mexican journalist, novelist and politician Mara Luisa Mendoza, commonly known as La China Mendoza, writes in 'Fruta madura de ida' about a woman who receives a basket of fruit from her lover, who becomes her husband only later to abandon her. Rosario Castellanos' 'Lección' tells the story of a newly married woman as she attempts to cook her first meal for her husband. De qué manera, by Dorelia Barahona, who was born in Madrid but lived in Costa Rica where the novel is set, tells the story of the friendship between three girls from teenagers to adulthood. Inés Arredonodo's 'Estío' centres on the relationship between a mother who narrates the story, her son and his friend, focusing on a day at the seaside. Finally, Laura Esquivel's own novel, set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and narrated by the protagonist Tita's great-niece tells the story of Tita's relationships with Pedro and John as well as with the other women in her family: Mamá Elena and her sisters Rosaura and Gertrudis. Not all of these texts feature food as prominently as Como agua. Yet they were all identified by Esquivel as illustrative of important trends in the ways in which food, knowledge and pleasure have been represented in the Hispanic world and how these representations reflected the changing status of women. While Esquivel selected these texts, they and Como agua of course belong to an even broader tradition, identified by Tamer Heller and Patricia Moran, of women writing about food, knowledge, pleasure and the kitchen space as a way of expressing 'deeply conflicted feelings about appetite and desire, authority and assertion' (Heller and Moran 3). Nevertheless, the texts identified by Esquivel are studied here because it was in relation to these that she sought to locate her own writing and trace the development of a 'new literature'.

We can understand Esquivel's desire to locate herself in relation to her female predecessors with reference to the ideas of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, who have noted the problems women authors face when confronted by a male-dominated canon. The male authors made famous during the so-called 'Boom' which introduced Latin American literature onto the world stage circa 1958-1970 seem to conform more to Harold Bloom's ideas about the 'anxiety of influence' in the way that they did all they could to distance themselves from their predecessors. In 'Intimas', however, Esquivel, a member of the later 'boom femenino', took a different path. Her anxiety, based on Gilbert and Gubar's conceptualisation, was one of authorship, 'a radical fear that she cannot create, that because she can never become a "precursor" the act of writing will isolate or destroy her' (49). Faced with this anxiety, the female author must undertake a 'revisionary process' which is a 'battle [...] not against her (male) precursor's reading of the world but against his reading of her' (Gilbert and Gubar 49). Given the polarised reception of Como agua in the previous year, the idea that Esquivel used her speech at the Guadalajara Feria del Libro to try to correct some of the readings of her work is particularly compelling. The starting point for this revisionary process, Gilbert and Gubar suggest, is to identify 'a female precursor who, far from representing a threatening force to be denied or killed, proves by example that a revolt against patriarchal literary authority is possible' (49). In so doing, the woman author legitimises 'her own rebellious endeavours' (Gilbert and Gubar 50). Nevertheless, as can be seen in the way Esquivel distanced herself from the women she cited, the woman author's relationship with her female precursors remains ambivalent: 'even the maker of a text, when she is a woman, may feel imprisoned within texts' (Gilbert and Gubar 52). By analysing the claims Esquivel made about each of her antecedents in more detail, then, this article identifies Esquivel's ambivalent relationship to them as well as shedding light on several texts that have been largely forgotten.

Esquivel's 'Intimas' is particularly significant as the product of the moment that a canon of Mexican women's writing was emerging. As Nicola Stead notes, 'Gilbert and Gubar's study emerged at a particular moment in time when women in the Second Wave of feminism were struggling for social equality and recognition' (20). Similarly, when Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields took up the challenge of identifying a history of Canadian women's writing it 'coincided with the rise of the women's movement in Canada and internationally' (Stead 28). Claire Taylor has noted that it took some time for Latin American feminist criticism to follow the trend, which had earlier emerged in Anglo-American feminist criticism, of uncovering a lost tradition of women's writing. Taylor writes: 'until the late 1980s, when La Scherezada criolla and other early forays into Latin American feminist criticism were published, there was little sustained focus of feminist criticism on specific writers, with an attempt to sketch an alternative female canon' (93). One of the important contributions of these texts was, as Pérez Sastre and Giraldo G noted in their review of La Scherezada criolla, to show '"toda una 'genealogía' de esa escritura hecha, desde los inicios del siglo XX en Latinoamérica, por las mujeres, ese 'continente negro' desconocido e ignorado la mayoría de las veces"' (quoted in Taylor 94). In Mexico specifically, the 1980s saw the publication of foundational texts such as Martha Robles' La sombra fugitiva. Escritoras en la cultura nacional and Fabienne Bradu's Señas particulares: Escritora. Ensayos sobre escritoras mexicanas del siglo XX. These publications took the first steps towards tracing a genealogy of Mexican women writers. In this context, Esquivel's statements in 'Intimas' take on added significance as a contribution to the early stages of this endeavour to write a history of women's writing.

Despite the vast amount of academic criticism dedicated to Como agua para chocolate, no-one has yet connected Como agua and 'Intimas'. The fact that Esquivel's non-fiction writings have been overlooked is in keeping with Claire Taylor's statement about 'the levels of suspicion that still remain when women's cultural production comes under scrutiny', particularly when it involves a woman talking or writing about other women (94). In returning to the feminist politics of Como agua, the article also goes against the grain of recent criticism about the novel, which, as Victoria Martínez has noted, has moved away from feminist readings in favour of connecting 'the message of the text with neo-liberal policies' (28). Equally unexpected is that critics, with few exceptions, have had little to say about the connection between Esquivel's work and that of Sor Juana and Castellanos. The exceptions are Diane Long Hoeveler, Cristina Ortiz and Herminia Alemañy-Valdez, who foreground similarities between Como agua, 'Lección' and/or the 'Respuesta', while Janice Jaffe and Tony Spanos position Esquivel's text in terms of a breakaway from one or both of Sor Juana and Castellanos. These discussions are dominated by a focus on the representation of the kitchen space. By focusing on each of the specific aspects Esquivel identified, this article reveals that there are both points of convergence and divergence between Esquivel and her predecessors. The relationship between Como agua and the texts by the other women authors Esquivel cited has, until now, been completely overlooked.

Leaving aside Esquivel's text, connections between Sor Juana and Rosario Castellanos, including but not limited to 'Lección de cocina' and the 'Respuesta', have been made by Julia Cuervo-Hewitt, who points out that in 'Lección de cocina' Castellanos referenced Sor Juana in a way that 'no es gratuito ya que Sor Juana dejó profundas huellas en la obra de Rosario Castellanos' (135). Nevertheless, Cuervo-Hewitt does not address the representation of food and its relationship to knowledge, pleasure and the kitchen space in the two texts. Since feminist critics championed Castellanos' work in the 1970s and 1980s, successfully arguing for her inclusion in the Mexican literary canon, she has attracted growing interest - but only a few articles focus in any detail on 'Lección de cocina': Helena López writes about contradictory emotions in the text while Zoe Brigley Thompson and Sophie Gunne consider the representation of sexual domination. This article revisits 'Lección' alongside Como agua as well as the 'Respuesta', 'Fruta madura', 'Estío' and De qué manera, focusing on the representation of food, knowledge, the kitchen and pleasure.

Compared to the body of criticism about Como agua, little has been written about Arredondo, Barahona and Mendoza. 'Estío' is briefly discussed in Beatriz Espejo's prologue to the Fondo de Cultura Económica collection of Arredondo's short stories in which she emphasises the transgressive thrust of the author's choice of incest as a subject. Armando Segura Morales also focuses on the representation of incest in the novel as well as on the way in which nature and climate in the text reflect the character's emotional state. He makes no reference to food in the text. Barahona perhaps came to Esquivel's attention after De qué manera won the Premio Juan Rulfo for a first novel awarded by the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1989. The novel was subsequently published by the Mexican publishing house Ediciones Era. Barahona's work has been anthologised and she is sometimes mentioned in lists of Costa Rican authors, but only one article on De qué manera has been published. In that piece, Arnoldo Mora Rodríguez considers the way in which the novel relates to the historico-political context in Costa Rica and Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. There is similarly little criticism about María Luisa Mendoza and nothing on 'Fruta de ida madura'. Mendoza was included in Rosario Castellanos' collection of essays Mujer que sabe latín, but despite Seymour Menton describing her as 'bien conocida como periodista, locutora de televisión, novelista y diputada', astoundingly criticism of her work is largely limited to book reviews (368). As Magdalena Maiz and Luis H. Peña remark, 'the lack of monographic studies attempting to comprehend [Castellanos'] work in a general and thorough manner points out that there is still much criticism to be written about her work' (324). This article is a first step towards a better understanding of the work of Mendoza and the other women who formed part of Esquivel's canon of women writing on food, knowledge and pleasure.

Food and Knowledge

This section analyses the extent to which Como agua can be interpreted as living up to Esquivel's aspirations for a nueva literatura and scrutinises Esquivel's understanding of her predecessors in order to see how portrayals of food, knowledge and the kitchen have evolved in Spanish American women's writing. In Esquivel's nueva literatura, food and knowledge would be reconciled and the kitchen would become a valued space for both men and women.

In 'Intimas', Esquivel points to the experience of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz as evidence that the food-knowledge dichotomy was false because the nun had found knowledge in the kitchen when she was deprived of her books (73). She also argues that Rosario Castellanos' 'Lección de cocina' illustrates the frustration experienced by educated women when there is a lack of opportunities for them in the public sphere. Finally, she interprets Dorelia Barahona's De qué manera te olvido as evidence of how women had internalised society's devaluation of the private sphere (Esquivel, Intimas, 75-6). While we may take issue with Esquivel's narrow definition of 'knowledge' as being associated with the written word, we should nevertheless remember the long association between writing and authority in Latin America. As Edmundo Paz-Soldán and Debra A. Castillo observe with reference to Angel Rama's classic The Lettered City, '[t]he nineteenth-century scholar possessed control over the social and political order because he also controlled, among other powers, the authority of scriptographic technology in a mostly illiterate society. He, thus, had few competitors - certainly no female ones - in his ambitious effort to organize the new republics according to the power of the word' (3). Shirin Shenassa, drawing on the work of Walter Mignolo, similarly and emphatically states: 'One cannot deny the impact of writing on oral cultures in the conquest and subsequent colonization of Latin America, and the relationship between the technology of alphabetic writing and administration, control, and power' (253). Moreover, Shenassa comments that 'print separates knowledge from experience' (255). It was no longer necessary to experience something to know it; knowledge 'acquired by reading now had the status of firsthand experience [...] provided that the transmission of the information in question adhered to the new typography-induced discursive practices' (Shenassa 256). This written knowledge excluded large segments of the population, including the majority of women, and was in contrast to 'earlier information types such as "wisdom" or "craftsmanship"' (Shenassa 256). It is this entrenched tradition of separating two spheres of knowledge that Esquivel seeks to overcome in her nueva literatura.

In Como agua, Esquivel tries to bridge the food-knowledge divide and create a nueva literatura by showing how knowledge about food can be turned into written form. Thus, Tita's culinary creations gain longevity as a written text in the form of a recipe book. As Jaffe observes, by the simple fact of bringing the kitchen and writing together, the novel unites 'two supposedly incompatible companions for women today' (202). Tita begins writing her recipes down on the same night she witnesses Gertrudis run away and so writing is presented as Tita's parallel attempt to find her own freedom and means of self-expression. Furthermore, it is through Tita's recipe book that her great-niece learns to cook and so food is reconnected to prestigious, book-based learning and the academic tradition - as opposed to the devalued oral and domestic traditions from which Tita learned to cook.

Tita's cookery skills, which Ibsen notes are deliberately represented as learned rather than biologically determined, are placed on an equal footing with John's scientific knowledge (142). Kari S. Salkjelsvik goes so far as to suggest that the effectiveness of Tita's home remedies and her creativity in cooking may lead us to see her knowledge as superior to John's (176-7). Thus, the novel brings into question gendered assumptions which value the supposedly 'masculine' form of scientific knowledge. The commensurability of the two forms of knowledge is underscored by the similarities between Tita's recipes and the methods for John's experiments. The description of the latter reads: 'En una libra de agua se disuelve una de nitro y se le agrega un poco de azafrán para darle color, y en esta solución se baña el cartón' (Esquivel Como agua 101). Similarly, Tita's recipe for chorizo norteño instructs: 'En cuanto suelta el hervor, se retira del fuego y se le pone a la olla una tapadera encima, para que los chiles se ablanden' (79). By suggesting that each task requires the same level of skill and knowledge, the novel can be seen to invite a revalorisation of Tita's domestic abilities. However, its portrayal of her does not bring into question the traditional gendered association between women and domestic knowledge and so the novel only partly challenges the gendered binary as was Esquivel's stated aim in 'Intimas'.

The false separation between food and knowledge, as Esquivel noted, had already been overcome by her predecessor, Sor Juana, who in her 'Respuesta' saw food and knowledge as complimentary forms of sustenance. Sor Juana's will to discover forbidden knowledge invites comparison with Eve, who was unable to resist the lure of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. This similarity could have undermined her defence of women's education in the eyes of the Church. Indeed, as Nina M. Scott observes, 'the issue of permissible inquiry versus excessive and thus sinful striving for knowledge' is dealt with in Sor Juana's 'Primero Sueño', so she was well aware of the restrictions imposed by the Church doctrine on her quest for knowledge (513). Nevertheless, such is Sor Juana's thirst for knowledge, including forbidden, secular knowledge, as evidenced in the 'Respuesta' that she describes it as 'el mejor alimento y vida del alma' (emphasis added). In describing knowledge in terms of nourishment, she creates a direct parallel between food for the body and the knowledge that feeds the soul (988). Here again, however, the insistence that knowledge, rather than the Holy Spirit/God, nourishes the soul puts her at risk of being considered heretical.

Sor Juana also disrupted the association between knowledge and the written text by describing how she found opportunities for learning in the kitchen. Indeed, it is possible to read Sor Juana's claim to be able to find an education even in the kitchen as a thinly disguised boast about the creativity and flexibility of her intellect. Or, perhaps even more daringly, it may been seen as a rejection of religious texts in favour of secular knowledge that could be acquired by observing the world around her. The value she places on the lessons learned in the kitchen is underscored firstly by the description of her lessons from the kitchen, which calls to mind the procedure of a scientific experiment as she relates how she has identified the different outcomes of her actions: 'Veo que un huevo se une y fríe en la manteca o aceite y, por contrario, se despedaza en el almíbar, ver que para que el azúcar se conserve fluida basta echarle una muy minima parte de agua en que haya estado membrillo u otra fruta agria' (de la Cruz 986). Significantly, here practical, hands-on experience is seen as the essential precondition of written knowledge. Sor Juana also brings gendered assumptions that connect women to knowledge about cooking into question when she writes, with a hint of irony, 'qué podemos saber las mujeres sino filosofías de cocina?' and mockingly reassures her imagined interlocutor/reader that learning is not incompatible with performing domestic duties as she cites Lupercio Leonardo's assertion that 'bien se puede filosofar y aderezar la cena' (986). In 'Intimas', Esquivel suggested that in Como agua she was continuing the work begun by Sor Juana in pointing out that the division between food and knowledge was false. This claim is borne out by closer analysis.

In contrast to Sor Juana and Tita, the woman portrayed in Castellanos' 'Lección de cocina' is unable to reconcile food and domestic skills with her pursuit of written forms of knowledge. In the strictest sense, 'Lección' may not be considered an example of nueva literatura, yet we should also note that the woman's situation is presented as being far from ideal. The story may not represent a perfect world, but it does not endorse the imperfect one it portrays. Moreover, all three texts defend the commensurability of knowledge about cooking and other, traditionally 'masculine', forms of written and academic knowledge. Trying to adapt to her new circumstances as stay-at-home wife, the narrator of 'Lección' unsuccessfully attempts to relate her cooking to a more familiar academic context, thus establishing a parallel between the two types of knowledge. She requests a preface and a dictionary of technical terms 'para hacer acesible al profane el difícil arte culinario' and starts the conclusion of the story of her failed attempt to cook a first meal for her husband with 'Recapitulemos' - as if she were concluding an academic essay (Castellanos, 'Lección', 838 and 845). She also describes both the knowledge she had previously gained and that she will need to acquire in the kitchen as 'destrezas', placing them on an equal footing while still separating, as Alemañy-Valdez notes, 'el saber como actividad práctica y el saber como actividad intelectual' (Castellanos, 'Lección', 837 and Alemañy-Valdez 7). Furthermore, the fact that the 'educated' narrator struggles to understand the specialist vocabulary in the recipe book suggests that the language of the latter is as obscure to the uninitiated as an academic essay and that expert knowledge is required to interpret each text. The assumption that knowledge about cooking is innate and, in fact, not even knowledge as much as instinct is also undermined in Castellanos' text, as the narrator states that the recipe book '[m]e supone una intuición que, según mi sexo, debo poseer pero que no poseo, un sentido sin el que nací que me permitiera advertir el momento preciso en que la carne está a punto' ('Lección de cocina' 841, emphasis added). In this way, Castellanos, more than either Sor Juana or Esquivel, undoes the association between women and domestic knowledge while also affirming the latter as a branch of knowledge. Nevertheless, Esquivel saw Castellanos' story as reaffirming the division between food and knowledge, as the protagonist is forced to choose between either the domestic or the academic world. For Esquivel, therefore, 'Lección' reflected the struggles women experienced in the mid- to late twentieth century as they tried to negotiate lives where they had increased educational opportunities but were still faced with expectations of fulfilling their traditional roles as wives and mothers. The narrator-protagonist does not exhibit the desired understanding of food and knowledge Esquivel wishes to see in her nueva literatura. Yet, closer examination reveals some interesting points of convergence between Como agua and 'Lección' and their attitudes to domestic knowledge. Equally, the association between women and domestic knowledge in Como agua and 'Respuesta' indicates that they too may fall short of the standards of the nueva literatura if it is required to represent rather than (implicitly) endorse the ideal relationship between food and knowledge.

The Revalorisation of the Kitchen as a Non-Gendered Space

In a context today where Mexican women can put their lives at risk just by entering public spaces and where they are also not safe from domestic abuse at home, the need to challenge the gendered division of space is particularly pressing. As Lucía Guerra Cunningham notes in her analysis of gender and space in representations of the house/home in Spanish American women's writing:

Puesto que desde una perspectiva geográfica y antropológica, el espacio se produce bajo factores socio-culturales insertos en un sistema genérico, el paradigma que divide la ciudad entre 'lo público' y 'lo privado' debe comprenderse como parte de un fundamento ideológico que refuerza las diferencias atribuidas a 'lo femenino' y 'lo masculino'. (819)

The nueva literatura that Esquivel described, and towards which she suggested generations of women authors had been striving, is one way in which women authors have tried to transform the public imaginary and undermine the existing binary division in society which continues to demarcate and devalue 'feminine space' and put women's lives in danger when they step outside its boundaries.

In 'Intimas', Esquivel suggests that a nueva literatura was required because 'el pensamiento, la razón, el estudio, el saber' had been categorised as masculine and separated from 'el placer gastronómico y el sexual' which had been labelled as feminine (71-2). One of the main aims of the nueva literatura was to end this gendered binary thinking. Previously, literature 'ha estado inclinado a uno u otro lado según el desarrollo de la sociedad' ('Intimas' 72). But a nueva literatura would present a balanced view which would enable women and men to 'regresar a la casa que abandonamos, pero ahora conscientemente, a otro nivel' (Esquivel, 'Intimas suculencias', 83).

No critics have connected, as this article does, Esquivel's representation of the kitchen in Como agua with her desire to create a nueva literatura - one of the central characteristics of which was an end to conceptualising the kitchen as a gendered space. Nonetheless, critics have debated extensively the question of whether Como agua is a feminist text in which the kitchen, as Jaffe suggests, is a 'space of creative power rather than merely confinement' (201) or whether, as in Maite Zubiaurre's view, this 'kitchen tale' keeps 'women within the magic-domestic realm and at the margins of any real public influence' (n.p.). An alternative reading, which locates the text between these two extremes, is proposed by Taylor, who concludes that the text remains ambiguous because of an unresolved tension between Esquivel's revalorisations of women's domestic role and the kitchen space and traditional associations that cannot be completely discarded (Bodies and Text 137). The reservations of Taylor and others are based on the suggestion that by keeping Tita in the kitchen Esquivel reinforces the traditional association between women and the domestic sphere. Salkjelsvik, for example, writes:

Uno de los problemas inherentes en estas interpretaciones es que mantienen vigente una división binaria del espacio - tanto físico como simbólico - derivada de una noción antropológica que diferencia entre los aspectos masculinos y femeninos de la cultura. Como consecuencia, las estructuras de poder que esta crítica ve supuestamente subvertidas en la novela resultan paradójicamente reforzadas: el hecho de definir un espacio femenino que aparece en oposición a otro masculino o de poder equivale en última instancia a permanecer dentro de la metafísica patriarcal. Mantener que un espacio es productivo para la mujer, o que rescata un discurso exclusivo de la mujer, no supone ningún tipo de redefinición de la estructura opresiva en sí, sino que meramente confirma la oposición entre marginador y marginado. (171-2)

She nevertheless concedes: 'El único elemento innovador dentro de esta dinámica sería que la mujer adquiere mayor poder' (171-2). By reading Como agua alongside 'Intimas', however, we can see how Esquivel tried to address this association, on the one hand by showing the need for men to also have a connection to the kitchen and, on the other hand, showing the need for women to have the choice to have a life outside the kitchen.

Although Tita finds strength in the kitchen, the kitchen is not, as Martínez suggests, a 'woman's space' (29). Rather, it is 'un lugar de comunión' between the sexes (Esquivel. 'Intimas', 83). This space is beneficial not only to Tita and Gertrudis but also, as Jaffe (209), Susan Lucas Dobrian (61) and Vincent Spina (215) have noted, to Pedro, John and Sergeant Treviño. Indeed, it is these men's openness to this space that signifies them as the most sympathetic male characters in the novel. By making the kitchen the contested space in the power struggles between Mamá Elena, Tita and Rosaura, the novel also challenges traditional understandings of the kitchen as a place of women's subjugation. Initially, Mamá Elena exercises complete control over her daughters, the kitchen and food production, but as Tita develops her skills, the kitchen becomes her domain and she escapes from her mother's control: 'Tita era entre todas las mujeres de la casa la más capacitada para ocupar el puesto vacante de la cocina, y ahí escapaban de su [Mamá Elena] riguroso control los sabores, los olores, las texturas y lo que éstas pudieron provocar' (Esquivel, Como agua, 45). Freed from her mother's 'formulas tan rígidas', Tita adopts the kitchen as her own creative space and the location of her illicit encounters with Pedro (Esquivel, Como agua, 171). Thus, through the character of Tita, Esquivel tries to recover the kitchen as a space where self-expression and fulfilment are possible in order to produce her 'nueva literatura que hable, sin resentimiento ni vergüenza, del hogar, del amor, de la cocina, de la vida' (Esquivel, 'Intimas suculencias', 84). Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that the kitchen only becomes a place of empowerment for Tita out of necessity.

The connection between Como agua and 'Intimas' in terms of the way both advocate a reimagining of the kitchen space can be seen in the way that these texts trace the development in attitudes over time. Before identifying what Esquivel sees as the ideal, non-gendered kitchen space in which men and women can freely enter and leave, 'Intimas' follows the shifting attitudes towards this space across generations. A similar development is observed in Como agua. For Mamá Elena's generation, the kitchen was a space of confinement where one carried out one's domestic duties and obligations, which included managing the servants. Her daughter, Tita, is able to exercise a certain amount of control from within the kitchen and gains some pleasure from her work there but is not free to leave. Gertrudis escapes the confines of the family home but for her the kitchen 'becomes a space of spiritual renewal [...] to which she must return from time to time' but because she cannot cook she has to rely on Tita to do so (Spina 215). Gertrudis is keenly aware of her own lack of knowledge about cooking and how her sense of identity could be lost all too easily if Tita were to die: 'Gertrudis lanzó una plegaria en silencio y con los ojos, pidiendo que Tita viviera muchos años más cocinando las recetas de la familia. Ni ella ni Rosaura tenían los conocimientos para hacerlo, por lo tanto el día en que Tita muriera moriría junto con ella el pasado de su familia' (Esquivel, Como agua, 155). For Tita and Gertrudis' generation, it is not possible to have both a life outside and inside the kitchen. Tita's great-niece, on the other hand, is completely free to choose to spend time in the kitchen or not. In keeping with Esquivel's comments in 'Intimas' and her conceptualisation of a nueva literatura, hers is presented as the ideal situation and part of Tita's legacy.

Tita has won for herself and future generations the right to choose to spend time in the kitchen and enjoy its pleasures or pursue other interests. An alternative interpretation is put forward by Martínez, who asserts that Tita has made 'no special progress' because she returns to the kitchen in the final chapter to prepare food for the wedding (35). However, whereas for much of the novel the kitchen is the only place in which Tita can express herself and her feelings and where she has some control, by the end it is her decision to go back to that space. The way in which she takes a stand against the family tradition of not allowing the youngest daughter to marry frees future generations from a similar fate. Esperanza is liberated from her mother, Rosaura, who had threatened to continue the family tradition against which Tita had struggled. Having opened up a choice for her niece, Tita not only teaches Esperanza how to cook but also provides 'otro tipo de conocimientos de los que su madre le daba' (Esquivel, Como agua, 202). This progression from one generation to the next, from being obliged to make do with the kitchen as a refuge to choosing to enjoy its benefits, is significant - just as the groundwork laid by the women authors Esquivel cited in 'Intimas' was important in paving the way for future generations of women authors. Tita's type of passive resistance, which we may understand with reference to Josefina Ludmer's concept of tretas del débil, is represented here as an important step taken by a generation of women whose courage opened up the opportunities now enjoyed by Tita's great-niece and the protagonist of another short story in Intimas suculencias, 'Mole negro de Oaxaca'. Both of these women can enjoy spending time in the kitchen and have independent lives outside the home. These women, unlike Tita, Gertrudis and, as will be seen, the women in De qué manera te olvido, can 'have it all' because gendered binary thinking that separated food, knowledge and pleasure and saw women's place as being in the devalued private sphere of the home has been overcome. Moreover, they need to 'have it all' because to ignore the kitchen space completely is detrimental as it is to lose part of one's identity, as Gertrudis is at risk of doing, or it is likely to result in the kind of unhealthy relationship that Rosaura has with food.

Writing about the protagonist of 'Lección' in 'Intimas', Esquivel observed that, for the generation she represents, being made to spend time in the devalued kitchen space was a source of frustration: 'El hecho de que las actividades dentro de la casa no fueron productivas, hizo que fueron devaluadas por las mismas mujeres' (75). 'Lección' opens with a description of the kitchen as an unwelcoming, alien space, almost hostile in its cleanliness: 'Es una lástima tener que mancillarla con el uso' (Castellanos, 'Lección', 837). The kitchen reminds her of a sanatorium, although she admits that at least 'carece del exceso deslumbrado' (837). The reference to a sanatorium is particularly interesting: 'sanatorio' is used particularly to refer to a hospital where tuberculosis is treated and so suggests that being married is akin to this illness in the way it debilitates and keeps women indoors. 'Sanatorio' may also refer to a psychiatric hospital, indicating in the context of the story that marriage, and especially being confined to the kitchen, has a negative effect on a woman's mental health. This implication is certainly borne out by the narrator-protagonist's experience, as she does not want to tell her husband the truth about what happened to the now burned meat for fear of arousing concern: 'mi marido va a mirarme con suspicacia, va a sentirse incómodo en mi compañía y va a vivir en la continua expectativa de que se me declare la locura' (847). Initially, the narrator resigns herself to the place she has been assigned as a result of her new role as a wife: 'Mi lugar está aquí' (837). In the end, however, she refuses to follow the established recipe for being a 'good wife'. Rather than being the site of her final submission, therefore, her experience of being in the kitchen provides her with the stimulus to realise the limits of the sacrifices she is willing to make:

Pero yo contaba con que el sacrificio, el renunciamiento completo a lo que soy, no se me demandaría más que en la Ocasión Sublime, en la Hora de las Grandes Resoluciones, en el Momento de la Decisión Definitiva. No con lo que me he topado hoy que es algo muy insignificante, muy ridículo. Y sin embargo. (847)

It is the place that 'la oblige y le ayuda a la autoreflexión necesaria para la preparación y el afianzamiento de la interioridad de su ser' (Alemañy-Valdez 4). Thus, in the words of Brigley Thompson and Gunne, '"Cooking Lesson" ends when the narrator becomes aware of her passive status as a Guadalupe, and begins to actively fantasize instead about becoming a sexually transgressive woman: a version of Tonantzin (the Aztec goddess that was Guadalupe's forebear), or a kind of La Malinche who revels in her own desires' (282). As Esquivel stated, the kitchen is a source of frustration for the narrator-protagonist of 'Lección' and it is a heavily gendered space. But what she overlooked is that it is also the space where resistance begins, where the narrator is able to think, reflect, express her suppressed feelings and realise the limits of her own self-abnegation.

It is only because of this time spent in the kitchen that the narrator is able to articulate her dissatisfaction and formulate her rebellion. By the end of the story, the narrator-protagonist takes control: 'Yo seré, de hoy en adelante, lo que elija en este momento [...] Yo impondré, desde el principio, y con un poco de impertinencia las reglas del juego' (Castellanos, 'Lección', 846). She decides not to follow the old 'receta' for being a wife, whereby she seems to conform to get what she wants, because this does not represent an authentic self (846). She rejects this path because 'me repugna actuar así' (846, emphasis added). She likens her role as a wife to being an actress in a film; it is a performance that she has to put on, and of which cooking is a part, so that the couple will conform to the stereotypical image of 'la pareja de amantes perfectos y entonces, en la mitad de un abrazo, nos desvaneceremos y aparecerá en la pantalla la palabra "fin"' (843). Failure to adapt to her new role, however inauthentic, and even if it means putting on a lifelong performance, will mean the end of her marriage; but complying will lead to the end of her sense of individual identity. The story thus connects food and the kitchen with self-knowledge and, in an unexpected way, with women's self-realisation and liberation. Seen in this light, although 'Lección' does not represent the kitchen space in the way Esquivel hoped a nueva literatura would do, it is a more interesting antecedent to Como agua than Esquivel realised.

Esquivel suggested that Barahona's De qué manera illustrates how women have internalised society's devaluation of the private, domestic sphere in favour of the public. We have seen how a closer analysis of the representation of domestic knowledge as learned and the way that the kitchen becomes a site of self-realisation in 'Lección' complicate this view. Equally, a more nuanced characterisation of Barahona's text might also be required. The kitchen is less important in De qué manera as the girls spend a lot of time in cafes and bars signifying their growing independence as they move away from home. Nevertheless, the kitchen space is not devalued. For María, having her own 'gran cocina de leña' forms part of her ideal future life (Barahona 15). Her dream is realised when she moves to the mountains with her second husband and prepares chicken with potatoes and tortillas for her parents when they visit each Sunday. For María, therefore, the kitchen is highly valued and is an integral part of her vision of an independent life. Although she is happy, as Esquivel asserted, María has internalised society's devaluation of her domestic role. From a young age, she dreamt of a house in the mountains 'donde sembrar melocotones y construir una casa con una gran cocina de leña' (Barahona 15). María pursues her dream even though she knows that for her friends this situation would be pitiful: 'Aquí estoy tranquila, dos niñas, un marido que de seguro a ti te parecerá horrible y aburrido, una casa limpísima, dos pequineses, cuatro peceras y bastantes kilos de más' (10). Claudia, on the other hand, whom Leda accuses of being a self-styled 'escritora incomprendida', prioritises her writing and her career in journalism, never marries and at the end of the novel, although she has lived abroad and achieved a lot in her professional life, she is left longing for her lover, Valentín, a revolutionary who has not returned from a mission (9). From Esquivel's point of view, De qué manera can be seen as a step forward from 'Lección' because María does not outrightly reject the private sphere in the same way Castellanos' character does and she has a choice to spend time in the kitchen or not, but she is self-conscious about her decision - aware of how it is viewed by a society that devalues the kitchen space. Barahona's text acknowledges the satisfaction María derives from her role, as well as acknowledging its limitations from Claudia's perspective. Likewise, the novel notes Claudia's professional achievements, while recognising the personal sacrifice they have entailed. Thus, while both choices are validated to some extent, De qué manera indicates that it is not ideal that women are expected to choose and no solution is presented to this impasse. From this viewpoint, De qué manera's position may be closer to that of Como agua than Esquivel's characterisation implies. Both texts share the view that women should be free to have a career without sacrificing the benefits associated with a domestic life but only Esquivel's text, in keeping with the criteria for a nueva literatura, attempts to present the kitchen space as non-gendered.

For Esquivel, Castellanos and Barahona, problems arise when women have no choice but to spend time in the kitchen. Even when there is no choice, for Esquivel, as well as for Sor Juana and Arredondo, the kitchen can still be an important site of refuge. Although most of 'Estío' is set outside, the kitchen is a place to which the narrator retreats when trying to hide from her incestuous feelings. For Sor Juana the kitchen was at least a place where she could acquire secular knowledge, quietly resisting those who told her to give up her studies. As Nina M. Scott writes: 'The convent was as close as she could come to a room of her own in which to nurture her intellectual life' (513). Sor Juana also questioned the gendered division of space as being detrimental to both men and women. Thus, she claims that Aristotle missed out because he was denied the opportunity to learn from being in the kitchen: 'Si Aristótoles hubiera guisado, mucho más hubiera escrito' (de la Cruz 986). In this way, the 'Respuesta', like Como agua, participates in 'la tarea de cuestionar la división estructural en esferas que sirven a la ideología patriarcal para catalogar en un registro u otro de acciones y pensamientos' (Ortiz 121). In this sense, Esquivel's assertion that the kitchen had been devalued in earlier literature could be nuanced.

Although Esquivel did not comment on the (albeit minor) references to the kitchen in 'Fruta madura', it is also not sufficient to say that the kitchen is devalued in this story. The unnamed protagonist is expected to support her husband's political career by staying at home. She comes to resent the way in which she is side-lined despite being instrumental in his success. She was the overlooked 'cocinera multiplicadora de panes el día de la elección' and she compares herself to the railway sleepers which we travel over but ignore (Mendoza 99). As her role is not chosen and is not recognised, she is resentful of her domestic duties, which are listed without enthusiasm: 'la mesura del pan casero, las servilletas almidonadas, la comida recetada por bisabuelas de rancho y tiempo' (Mendoza 100). The protagonist bemoans the lack of significance her husband attaches to her domestic role, but it is important to note that she recognises the vital role she has played in her husband's success and so she does not devalue the domestic realm even if it remains a space that is encoded as exclusively female. While Esquivel's predecessors went some way to addressing the challenge of valuing the kitchen space, for them it remained a woman's domain. They may not have endorsed the status quo, but they did not show an alternative. In this context, the way 'Intimas' and Como agua argue for the representation of the kitchen as a site of renewal for both men and women as part of a nueva literatura marks a significant shift.

Food, Sexual Pleasure and the Celebration of Female Sexuality

Esquivel's call for a nueva literatura celebrating sexually liberated women was linked to and reflected the emergence of a group of increasingly independent, educated middle-class women. Within her nueva literatura, as well as a uniting of food and (written) knowledge and revaluing the kitchen as a non-gendered space, Esquivel imagined that there would no longer be a negative association between food and sexual pleasure and that there would be a celebration of female sexuality. Debra Castillo explains that as the number of women authors and readers in Mexico grew, so too did the interest in positive representations of female sexuality in literature:

Whereas earlier Mexican best-sellers (including the century's first major best-seller, Santa) tended to be not only male-authored but also implicitly aimed at a male audience, modern Mexican best-sellers are more likely to be woman-authored and aimed at an audience of women, especially those leisured middle-class women who are now assumed to make up the bulk of book buyers in the country. Sales figures indicate not only that these women read prodigiously but that they overwhelmingly read works by other middle-class women in which women have positive protagonic roles. Even more interestingly, works like Sefchovich's and those of her colleagues who make it to Mexican best-sellerdom tend to highlight images of women who freely express their sexuality and who are not castigated for their adventurous love lives. National allegory, it seems, is giving way in these best-sellers to meditations on sexual politics, at least in what sells to the eager Mexican audience. (33)

As Esquivel suggested in 'Intimas', the representations of women in literature were connected to women's changing role in society.

In 'Intimas', Esquivel identifies Mendoza's 'Fruta madura de ida' as illustrating the potential for a positive connection between food and sexual pleasure. She uses a quote from 'Fruta madura' to describe the fruit in the Garden of Eden, even though Mendoza's story does not reference the Genesis myth and so the quotation is taken out of context. Building on this quotation from 'Fruta madura', 'Imtimas' identifies Eve picking the forbidden fruit as the foundational moment - as a result of which 'quedaron unidos la comida, el saber y el placer dentro de una creación literaria' ('Intimas', 71). As we know, in the Genesis account (Chapter 3) eating the forbidden fruit is associated with pleasure (the food on the tree looks appetising) and the knowledge of sexuality and sexual difference, because upon eating the fruit the couple, who had been naked, feel the need to cover their bodies. According to Esquivel, 'Fruta madura' reverses the traditional association, which stretches back to the Genesis story, between food, sexual pleasure and sin. In Mendoza's story, the fruit is connected to sexual pleasure and the protagonist's developing self-knowledge and awareness, but the element of sin is omitted. By citing Mendoza's text in relation to the Genesis narrative, Esquivel subtly highlights how Mendoza and, by extension, her nueva literatura seeks to rewrite this foundational text in a way that reclaims women's right to pleasure and to a voice with which to tell their own story.

Esquivel was correct to say that 'Fruta madura' connects food and sexual pleasure without sin, but this represents only a partial reading of the story. Narrated by a woman looking back on her younger self, referred to in the third person as 'la niña', 'Fruta madura' is built around a comparison between her and a basket of fruit that she receives from her admirer-husband. Initially, both are appetising and it is from this early part of the story that Esquivel took her quotation for 'Intimas'. The description of the fruit has clear sexual overtones: 'se diría que tanta redondez eran matrices cortadas, pulpas sexuales, afiladas riquezas para lamerse, comerse mejor' (Esquivel, 'Intimas', 71 and Mendoza 98). The fruit is linked to the sexually 'ripe' female body: 'la broma pesada de los capulines acharolados de laca, ojos de india, los duraznos velludos, nalgonas las peras, lomos de cocodrilo de las piñas' (Mendoza 98). While these descriptions are associated with the young woman and her admirer, looking at the basket the narrator realises that she is still like the fruit; they will both mature and lose their appeal. As she says at the end of the story: 'Como la fruta madura: nos caemos del árbol' (Mendoza 100). It is for this reason that the woman suggests to her servant that they should eat the fruit and die, so that neither will have to suffer the fate of aging. The servant agrees to this pact because she says men no longer pay attention to her anyway. In this context, female sexuality is not celebrated but is presented as overly dependent on male desire. The eating of the fruit will not bring pleasure, only relief from the knowledge that they are no longer desirable to men and the pressures of trying to be sexually appetising. Thus, while the opening descriptions of the basket of fruit do, as Esquivel suggested, link food and sexual pleasure, the story overall complicates this connection. Equally, however, as in 'Lección', thinking about the fruit leads the protagonist to greater awareness of her situation. As a result, 'Fruta madura' draws attention not only to the problematic connection between food, women's sexual pleasure and male desire, but also to the objectification of women (who are treated like pieces of fruit) and highlights the way in which women are discarded by society as they get older. In this sense, perhaps the most significant contribution of Mendoza's text is the way the narrator who has been cast aside is nevertheless able to voice her own subjectivity and to assume agency.

Arredondo's 'Estío', like the Genesis narrative, associates food and sexual pleasure with sin and so, for Esquivel, was an example of how food and sexual pleasure have been wrongly separated ('Intimas' 77-8). The sin committed is that of incest as the protagonist-narrator lusts after her son, Román, while her son's friend lusts after her, forming a triangle of unrequited love. From the outset, food and passion are connected as the protagonist, her son and her son's friend eat together at home and later while standing in the river. After bathing in the river, the narrator describes bringing food from the house and falling asleep under the mango tree. Subsequently, as her desire becomes harder to control, she sends her son and his friend out alone and tries to satisfy her incestuous feelings by voraciously eating mangoes. As Beatriz Espejo writes: 'su sensualidad aflora más tarde cuando, acalorada, se sienta en la escalinata que da a la huerta para comer con voracidad tres mangos maduros dejando correr el jugo por su garganta' (30). The discomfort she feels when La Toña catches her eating reflects her guilt about her feelings: 'Me quedé con el mango entre las manos, torpe, inmóvil, y el juego sobre la piel empezó a secarse rápidamente y a ser incómodo, a ser una porquería' (Arredondo 16). Nevertheless, she derives some temporary satisfaction from the food as she allows the last drops of liquid to run down her neck, leading to a feeling of release: 'Y sin saber por qué comencé a reírme alto, francamente' (16). Finally, she enters a phase of wilful denial, which is reflected in her complete withdrawal and the declaration: 'Creo que casi no respiraba [...] tampoco tenía necesidad alguna' (Arredondo 22, emphasis added). This lack of any need presumably includes food, so that it is only by denying all of her appetites to the point of feeling suffocated that can she resist temptation. Compared to Como agua, 'Lección' and even Sor Juana's 'Respuesta', food plays a minor role in 'Estío'. Yet the scene in which the protagonist eats the mango is unforgettable. This scene, contrary to Esquivel's vision for a nueva literatura, links food and illicit sexual pleasure in a semiotic system in which desire for the former is used to signal the narrator's true sexual feelings. One appetite can be temporarily satiated through the other, but in the end only asceticism can save her from sin and this is a high price to pay.

In drawing on a semiotic system linking food and female sexual desire, 'Estío', 'Lección' and Como agua follow a long tradition in Hispanic literature including, for example, Leopoldo Alas' La Regenta. According to Lévi-Strauss, a sign is used to express the one by the means of the other and categories relating to food can 'be used as conceptual tools with which to elaborate abstract ideas' (1). With reference to female sexuality as represented in myth, Lévi-Strauss notes that the sexual code often 'becomes latent and is concealed beneath the alimentary code' (369). Furthermore, Freud argues that repression is often accompanied by displacement, whereby what is repressed finds a channel for expression which is less obvious and, therefore, less threatening to the status quo (Chapters 2 and 4).

In the context of this tradition, Castellanos' text is unusual because the narrator-protagonist expresses her lack of sexual feelings towards her husband through food even though, from the point of view of patriarchal society, her feelings would be less sinful within the context of marriage than the feelings of incest experienced by the narrator of 'Estío'. As Alemañy-Valdez tells us, in 'Lección' 'todas las alusiones a la carne remiten a lo sexual' (6). The protagonist reports that the appearance of the meat 'me inhibe el hambre' (Castellanos, 'Lección', 838). The meat, which is 'rígido por el frío' and 'rojo, como si estuviera a punto de echarse sangre', may not look appetising but the real reason she is repulsed is because it reminds her of the appearance of her and her husband's sunburned bodies and how he made her lie on her back to have sex, which she did not enjoy because of her sunburn (838). Brigley Thompson and Gunne suggest that the narrator's 'sexual life is symptomatic of the oppressive nature of her marriage and her domination by her husband' (281). In 'Intimas', Esquivel was concerned that food and female sexual pleasure were too often linked to sin. Food has been used to conceal sinful sexual desire as in 'Estío', but in 'Lección' it is used to veil the narrator's equally socially unacceptable feelings of repulsion towards her husband. Nothing in 'Lección' suggests that food, like sex, does not have the potential to be pleasurable and without sin, but Castellanos' story is a useful corollary as it points out that the removal of sin alone is not enough to prevent either food or sex from provoking disgust.

Despite setting out her hopes for a nueva literatura in which food and sexual pleasure were not associated with sin, in Esquivel's Como agua food and sexual pleasure are connected with sin and Tita's desire for her sister's husband is concealed beneath an alimentary code. Thus, following Pedro's marriage to Rosaura, food becomes a 'código nuevo de comunicación' between Tita and Pedro when other forms of communication are prohibited (Esquivel, Como agua, 50). Pedro, for example, expresses his delight at Tita's cooking in front of his wife: 'cerrando los ojos con verdadera lujuria: - ¡Este es un placer de los dioses!' (49). In the long term, however, Tita, like the mother in 'Estío', cannot sublimate her desires through food, and she suffers a breakdown as a result of which she too stops eating as well as speaking. As Ibsen has noted, 'the connection between food and expression is underscored in the novel as Tita refuses to eat and to speak following her emotional breakdown' (137). Thus, although 'Estío' and Como agua connect food, sexual pleasure and sin, they imply that denying these appetites is destructive for women.

Not only would Esquivel's nueva literatura remove the link between food, sexual pleasure and sin, it would also reconcile food and sexual pleasure without relying on traditional gender roles. Reading Como agua in the light of 'Intimas', therefore, leads us to reflect on the scene in which Tita communicates with Pedro through her cooking so that the act of eating becomes tantamount to a sexual experience in which Tita takes the active role instead of the traditional passive role:

Tal parecía que en un extraño fenómeno de alquimia su ser se había disuelto en la salsa de rosas, en el cuerpo de las codornices, en el vino y en cada uno de los olores de la comida. De esta manera penetraba en el cuerpo de Pedro, voluptuosa, aromática, calurosa, completamente sensual. Parecía que habían descubierto un código nuevo de comunicación en el que Tita era la emisora, Pedro el receptor y Gertrudis la afortunada en quien se sintetizaba esta singular relación sexual, a través de la comida. Pedro no opuso resistencia, la dejó entrar hasta el último rincón de su ser sin poder quitarse la vista el uno del otro. (Esquivel, Como agua, 49-50, emphasis added)

Victoria Martínez suggests that Pedro's passivity in this encounter, to which we are told 'no opuso resistencia' as Tita 'penetraba en [su] cuerpo', is evidence of his weakness and his 'failings as a man' (Esquivel, Como agua, 50 and Martínez 30). In 'Intimas', however, Esquivel argued that binary thinking which opposed knowledge and pleasure, active and passive was mapped onto a division of the masculine and feminine and needed to be challenged (72 and 82). In light of this statement, Pedro's passivity should not be judged as a failing. Indeed, one way to overcome this false dichotomy imposed by binary thinking, Esquivel suggested, was through the preparation and consumption of food because the energy invested in the food by the woman preparing it 'convierte al acto de comer en un acto de amor' ('Intimas', 82, emphasis added). She continued:

se invierte, revierte y amalgama el rol sexual de la pareja. El hombre se convierte en el ser pasivo y la mujer en el activo. La energía de la mujer, mezclada en los olores, los sabores, las texturas, penetra en el cuerpo del hombre, calurosa, voluptuosa, haciendo uno el placer gastronómico y el sexual. (83, emphasis added)

Esquivel's repeated association of women with food preparation and the significance of cooking as a means to express their love is not unproblematic, as it continues to rely on patriarchal associations of women with the domestic sphere. However, the similarities between the vocabulary used by Esquivel in both texts is striking, suggesting that her intention at least was to overturn traditional gender roles and to portray an ideal state where gender is overcome: 'Aquí no hay guerra de sexos. Están superados' ('Intimas', 83). On closer inspection, then, the scene in which Pedro eats the food Tita has prepared should not be viewed as portraying a simple reversal of roles whereby Tita becomes active and Pedro passive but, as Esquivel's formulation implies, 'se invierte, revierte y amalgama el rol sexual de la pareja' (83). Tita and the food she has prepared penetrate Pedro's body but, like the food, she is also consumed by him. For his part, Pedro surrenders himself to Tita and the pleasures arising from the food she has prepared, but he also actively devours it and, by extension, her. In this scene at least, Como agua presents a less conservative, more complex view of gender relations which goes beyond a simple binary distinction - albeit one that still apparently relies on women fulfilling their role as cooks.

In Tita's case, food and sexual pleasure are connected in terms of the repression of her feelings. It is in the portrayal of Gertrudis, however, that Como agua models the ideal of nueva literatura, showing the fulfilment that can be achieved when food and sexual pleasure are connected in a way that is liberating. In one of the most memorable scenes in the novel, Gertrudis eats the quails in rose petal sauce Tita has prepared and is so overcome with passion that she runs away with Juan. We are told that Tita prepares the same meal each year on the anniversary of her sister's departure, 'como ofrenda a la libertad que su hermana había alcanzado' (Esquivel, Como agua, 56). Esquivel thus links the enjoyment of food and sexual pleasure to personal freedom. Tina Escaja points out that, in the end, Gertrudis' status is 'legitimized triply: by her marriage to her first love; by legitimizing her own identity as a mulatta through having a biracial child within wed-lock; and by social recognition and financial power' (21). Gertrudis is confident in her own sexuality, which she conceives as being free of sin, even if others may judge otherwise, she has a positive attitude to food and the kitchen, and marries a man who is equally at home in the kitchen and respects her career. Barring the fact that she cannot cook, Gertrudis' life and happiness is what is on offer for the women of the nueva literatura.

In Como agua food is also the link between generations of women, as Tita's recipes, which she received from Nacha, bring Gertrudis home and are passed on to her great-niece via Esperanza. This valuing of food as something that brings friends and family together and which evokes memories was overlooked by Esquivel in her consideration of a nueva literatura but represents an interesting point of convergence between Como agua and De qué manera, in which food and drink are also associated with family ties. When Claudia leaves home, food is high on the list of the items she will take with her: 'el diccionario anarquista que le regaló el abuelo aragonés, sus semillas de zanahoria para la huerta, agujas, ganchillos y toda clase de manualidades' (Barahona 34). The cost of independence from one's family is also expressed in terms of food as Leda buys her own cake for her twentieth birthday and is sad that it is the first birthday cake that was not made for her by her mother: 'Delante del pastel ríe, sin poder ocultar cierta tristeza [...] Y, aunque disfrutara de sus nuevas posibilidades económicas, sentía que ese síntoma marcaba un gran cambio' (55). Indeed, in De qué manera independence often leads to loneliness, signified by meals alone with only memories for comfort. As Claudia prepares her fish in Canada, she misses home, friends and family. It is this experience of eating alone that leads her to write to María after so many years. In contrast, when she returns home she is happy to spend time with her family and food is at the heart of this gathering: 'Surtido con vino, horchata, picadillo de papaya verde y maduro con queso. Domingo de café y flan de coco entre los helechos. Después, una cremita de cacao mientras se acurrucan los niños y los gatos en las mecedoras para oír las historias de la que llega' (76). Although the relationship between food and family did not feature as part of her nueva literatura, both Como agua and De qué manera invite us to reflect on the link between food and the joy of family.

In 'Intimas', Esquivel did not comment on the relationship between food and pleasure in Sor Juana's 'Respuesta' or Barahona's De qué manera. Closer examination, however, reveals that there is a link between food and pleasure in these texts. In the 'Respuesta', Sor Juana writes with excitement about 'los secretos naturales que he descubierto' and the pleasure she derives from having the freedom to learn. In De qué manera, as well as being associated with family ties, food is connected to the pleasures of friendship which in turn are linked to the development of a sexuality that is independent of men. At the beginning of the novel, when Claudia, Leda and María are teenagers, they form the 'Cuerpo Activo de Mujeres Amantes'. The title of their group is a declaration of their intent to claim their own sexuality. When the group of girls meets, they share their experiences with boys and tell one another what they have learned about sex. The sharing of food and drink is an integral part of this gathering as they sit in Leda's room drinking beer, making pizzas and dancing as part of their 'ritos libertarios' (Barahona 16). On one occasion, after Leda has told her friends that she was raped and Claudia has confessed that her mother regularly overdoses on pills, the girls toast using a special liqueur. The opportunity to speak about what has been repressed, culminating in a toast, affirms the bond between the girls as well as the connection between open communication, mental wellbeing and a healthy enjoyment of food that is also evident in 'Estío' and 'Lección'. Later, when the girls have grown up and are growing apart, Leda has learned to enjoy fine wine and food but the distance between the girls is signified by the fact that Claudia and María are no longer interested in the wine, food or what she says (Barahona 56). Again, food is part of a semiotic code that expresses what cannot be said openly. Finally, the girls' reconciliation is signified by another toast when Leda vows to start afresh after her lover has left her. Friendship, confirmed by the sharing of food, provides an antidote to this failed relationship. These bonds, expressed through food, are not sexual but the ties of friendship are more important in the girls' lives as they provide solace after failed sexual relationships. Esquivel's focus in 'Intimas' and Como agua was on the link between food and sexual pleasure in men and women. This focus on heterosexual sexual relationships as being at the centre of her nueva literatura led her to overlook the way in which the other woman-authored texts she cited remind us of the joys of freedom, the pleasure of learning and the importance of female friendship in the context of sexual development and healing.

Conclusions

Esquivel used her speech at a public event that is at the heart of the Mexican cultural calendar to cite the work of five Hispanic women authors. In so doing, she drew attention to their work and invited new audiences to engage with it while grounding herself and her novel, which had been the subject of so much controversy, within a broader canon of women's writing about food, knowledge and pleasure. This article took up the invitation implicit in that speech to go back and try to better understand not only Esquivel's work but also that of her literary foremothers. Looking at how her predecessors had represented the relationship between food, knowledge and pleasure, Esquivel suggested that we need a nueva literatura which would break down the boundaries between these categories, revalorise the kitchen and female sexuality and undermine gendered binary thinking. By reading Esquivel's own novel in light of these comments, it has been possible to discern how she tried to implement this agenda in her work. In this respect, perhaps her greatest innovation was to try to reimagine the kitchen as a non-gendered space which was needed by men as much as women. Nevertheless, even she was not completely successful in fulfilling all the criteria of the nueva literatura - particularly in the way that she continued to associate women with domestic knowledge, even as she put it on an equal footing with written knowledge. Furthermore, closer examination of the texts she cited implying they were examples of the 'old' literature has revealed that some of her characterisations need to be nuanced and revised. Often Sor Juana, Castellanos, Mendoza, Arredondo and Barahona did more than she recognised to challenge the devaluation of the kitchen space, the regulation of female sexuality and to imagine new relationships between food, knowledge and pleasure. They did so typically not by portraying an ideal situation, but by refusing to endorse the status quo as it was represented in their texts. Esquivel's misreadings may be symptomatic of the way in which Gilbert and Gubar have posited that even as women authors need to create a literary tradition in which to locate themselves, their relationship to them remains ambivalent.

While Como agua and the 'Respuesta' value the knowledge acquired in the kitchen, they do not completely undo the gendered binaries that associate women and the domestic as 'Lección' does. Esquivel was correct that De qué manera shows how women internalised the devaluation of the private sphere but closer examination revealed that this situation is regretted in the novel. The kitchen provides refuge for Sor Juana and the mother in 'Estío', but for Castellanos' protagonist and, to a greater extent, Tita the kitchen becomes a site of resistance and empowerment - even if in 'Lección' this resistance ultimately leads to a rejection of that space. Equally, for Tita embracing the kitchen means apparently conforming to a traditional gendered division of space, thus highlighting the double bind that even when women claim the kitchen space, the way it has been devalued undermines their position. There is, however, hope for change as represented by Tita's ancestors. In connecting food and sexual pleasure as a form of liberation, for Gertrudis Como agua comes closest to achieving the link Esquivel desired in her nueva literatura. However, Como agua, like 'Estío' also draws attention to the high price women pay for repressing their feelings. The link between food, sexual pleasure and a female sexuality free from sin is present in 'Fruta madura' and 'Lección', but these texts highlight the way in which women's sexuality too often depends on men and that the freedom from sin alone is not sufficient to guarantee sexual pleasure. De qué manera, meanwhile, reminds us of the longstanding association between food, family and friendship that is also present in Como agua but which Esquivel overlooked.

I should like to conclude this article by reflecting as to whether it may be unreasonable to draw so many conclusions from Esquivel's speech which was later published as 'Intimas'. The fact that Esquivel deemed it, and the other pieces in Intimas, worthy of being edited, gathered and published speaks to the importance she (and her publisher) attached to them. Too often, newspaper and magazine articles, interview transcripts, epilogues and prologues and other such "ephemera" produced by authors are overlooked. Yet, to take one recent example, the work of Liliana Weinberg on prologues written by Borges showcases the value of looking at the full range of an author's publications. Ignoring Esquivel's speech while poring over the letters and unpublished draft texts of male authors smacks of a double standard. Treating Esquivel's speech as a theoretical intervention also invites us to question our assumptions about what constitutes theory, what theory should be like and who writes it. As Taylor argues, drawing on the work of Eliana Ortega, 'the task of the feminist critic is one of continual awareness of and openness to diversity and difference' ('Latin American Feminist Criticism Revisited' 98). Chicana feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga and Ana Castillo have already shown through their texts, which challenge boundaries between theory and fiction, that there is a need to question traditional Western forms of theory and their suitability to express different experiences. As Sonia Saldívar-Hull has noted, 'Chicanas ask different questions which in turn ask for a reconstruction of the very premises of "theory"' (220). Dismissing Esquivel's speech as too insubstantial or insignificant to merit attention is simply to reinforce existing hierarchies and replicate the way in which some critics tried to dismiss her work as 'literatura light' to be read for pleasure but not taken seriously. We should reserve the right to interrogate her ideas for a nueva literatura and interpretations of her chosen texts. Yet, we must also understand her strategy of naming a tradition of Hispanic women authors in her speech within a broader context of feminist literary criticism which has sought to recover and revaluate women's contribution to literature and to interrogate how women are represented in it in ways that both reflect and influence women's lived experience.

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Thirty years after the publication of Laura Esquivel's polemical bestselling novel Como agua para chocolate (1989), she and other Spanish American women authors still struggle to be heard and to be taken seriously. There is a particular reluctance to pay due attention to non-fiction interventions by women authors.

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With Dr Tori Holmes,  'Entre Portugal e o Brasil / Between Portugal and Brazil: conversation with Alexandra Lucas Coelho'. 8 Dec. 12-1pm, sponsored by

@camoes_ip. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/between-portugal-and-brazil-conversation-with-alexandra-lucas-coelho-tickets-131051734265#

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Ying Chen's Ficion. An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging.
http://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Ying-Chens-Fiction

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With Dr María Tavares, 'Desafios do Portugal Contemporâneo / Contemporary Portugal: Challenges Conversation with Joana Gorjão Henriques' - Friday 11 December, 12-1pm, 2020 sponsored by

@camoes_ip https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/contemporary-portugal-challenges-conversation-with-joana-gorjao-henriques-tickets-131051872679#

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Did you know you can study a language from Beginner level?!

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Did you know you can study a language from Beginner level?!

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What degree pathways can I study with a language?

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What degree pathways can I study with a language?

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Click here and find out how many subjects you can study with a language.

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Find out what our students say about studying a language at QUB.

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Find out what our students say about studying a language at QUB.

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See what they have to say below...

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Find out about the modules that may be on offer across all the Language areas.

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What have some of our students gone on to do after graduation?

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What have some of our students gone on to do after graduation?

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Where do students go on their Year Abroad?

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Where do students go on their Year Abroad?

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Click on the map below and find out more!

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Prof. Greg Toner in discussion.

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Research across the Modern Languages - Prof. Isabel Torres

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Research across the Modern Languages - Prof. Isabel Torres

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"We have an incredibly collegial environment ... Modern Languages is incredibly diverse - but what always strikes me in particular about Modern Languages at Queen's, is the intensity of the contribution to research base and to the discipline nationally and internationally."

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Vice-Chancellor's Prize for Research Culture: Modern Languages QUB

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Prof. Isabel Torres - Admitted to the British Academy.

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Prof. Isabel Torres - Admitted to the British Academy.

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Professor Isabel Torres has an international reputation in Spanish Renaissance (‘Golden Age’) Literary and Cultural Studies; her major contribution has been in the field of Renaissance and Baroque poetics. In 2016, she was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy – one of Spain’s highest accolades – in recognition of her outstanding scholarly contribution to Spanish literature.

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Discussion with Prof. Mícheál Ó Mainnín.

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Languages at Queen's University Belfast on Facebook Watch

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French at QUB hosting Society for French Studies Annual Conference 2021

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French at QUB hosting Society for French Studies Annual Conference 2021

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The 62nd annual conference of the Society for French Studies will take place at Queen's University Belfast, on 28-30 June 2021.

To supplement papers transferred over from our 2020 conference, which was unavoidably cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are pleased to invite additional proposals for papers (in English or French; duration: 20 minutes) and for panel sessions. Please see the call for papers, below, for further information.

The deadline for proposals is 30 September 2020; proposals should be sent to the Society's Conference Officer, Dr Victoria Turner, at the following address: sfsconf2021@gmail.com.

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2021 annual conference | The Society for French Studies

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The 62nd annual conference of the Society for French Studies will take place at Queen's University Belfast, on 28-30 June 2021. To supplement papers transferred over from our 2020 conference, which was unavoidably cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are pleased to invite additional proposals for papers (in English or French; duration: 20 minutes) and for panel sessions.

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The Language of Disease.
Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France.

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The Language of Disease
Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France

Steven Wilson

Click cover to enlarge

Booksellers & libraries:
ipage® at Ingram

Research Monographs in French Studies 62

Legenda

July 2020 * 158pp

ISBN: 978-1-781885-60-4 (hardback) * RRP £75, $99, €85

ISBN: 978-1-781885-64-2 (paperback, 2021)

ISBN: 978-1-781885-68-0 (JSTOR ebook)

Modern French Fiction

While the 'venereal peril' of nineteenth-century France was responsible for thousands of deaths, much attention has focused on the range of social anxieties with which it was associated, including degeneracy, depopulation, state surveillance and public morality. In this interdisciplinary study, Steven Wilson redirects attention onto the body as locus of syphilis. Combining a critical medical humanities approach with close readings of medical and literary texts, Wilson explores the ways in which canonical and non-canonical writers of the time found a language to represent the diseased body. Drawing on scholarship from gender studies, theology, pain studies and word/image relations, this engaging study investigates what the language used in nineteenth-century French literature tells us not only about the pathological function and lived experience of syphilis, but about the role played by literature in representing disease.

Steven Wilson is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Queen's University Belfast.
Cite this volume in standard MHRA style
Bibliography entry:
Wilson, Steven, The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France, Research Monographs in French Studies, 62 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2020)

First footnote reference: ³⁵ Steven Wilson, The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France, Research Monographs in French Studies, 62 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2020), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: ³⁷ Wilson, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Cite this volume in MHRA author-date style
Bibliography entry:
Wilson, Steven. 2020. The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France, Research Monographs in French Studies, 62 (Cambridge: Legenda)

Example citation: 'A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work' (Wilson 2020: 21).

Example footnote reference: ³⁵ Wilson 2020: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Permanent link to this title:

www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Language-Disease
www.mhra.org.uk/publications/rmfs-62

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Modern Humanities Research Association :: All Publications :: The Language of Disease

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Click cover to enlarge Booksellers & libraries: ipage® at Ingram Research Monographs in French Studies 62 Legenda July 2020 * 158pp ISBN: 978-1-781885-60-4 (hardback) * RRP £75, $99, €85 ISBN: 978-1-781885-64-2 (paperback, 2021) ISBN: 978-1-781885-68-0 (JSTOR ebook) Modern French Fiction While the 'venereal peril' of nineteenth-century France was responsible for thousands of deaths, much attention has focused on the range of social anxieties with which it was associated, including degeneracy, depopulation, state surveillance and public morality.

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Find Dr Anna Tristram's newest article on 'Variation and change in future temporal reference with avoir and être', Journal of French Language Studies.

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Variation and change in future temporal reference with avoir and être | Journal of French Language Studies | Cambridge Core

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Variation and change in future temporal reference with avoir and être - Anna Tristram

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In Modern Languages we take excellence in teaching seriously.

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In Modern Languages we take excellence in teaching seriously.

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Congratulations to Dr Ashley Scott Harris, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

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Did you know that at QUB you can study the links between China and France?

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Did you know that at QUB you can study the links between China and France?

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Find out about more Dr Ros Silvester's work by reading her study of Gao Xingjian’s film, 'La Silhouette sinon l’ombre'.

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Intermediality and Film Consciousness in Gao Xingjian's La Silhouette sinon l'ombre

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Abstract. This article employs Merleau-Pontian phenomenology to deconstruct the mind-body unity in Gao Xingjian's film La Silhouette sinon l'ombre (2003), whic

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... that Prof. Janice Carruthers is currently the Arts Humanities Research Council  Leadership Fellow in Modern Languages?

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'When I heard about the role, I thought it looked like an extremely important job,' says Janice Carruthers of her new position as AHRC's Leadership Fellow in Modern Languages. 'It was also one that really interested me and which I felt my experience would equip me to do.'

Janice is embedded in the world of Modern Languages, and has been for her entire career. Once she discovered a facility for languages at secondary school, she pursued her interest with singular purpose, studying French and German before taking a PhD in French Linguistics. She has taught and researched in the field since 1989, heading up the School of Modern Languages at Queen's University, Belfast, from 2011 to 2016.

Asked why the Leadership Fellow role is especially relevant now, she outlines the major challenges that currently face Modern Languages. Recruitment of students is part of the problem with numbers dropping, especially in French and German. 'We have not always been able to convince key people about the importance of languages,' she says. 'Yet there is a now a vast body of evidence to suggest that languages are vital for the future of the UK, especially post-Brexit.' She stresses that people need to be made aware of the far-reaching value of languages in terms of diplomacy, security, international relations, societal cohesion and conflict resolution. 'And don't forget the importance of inter-cultural skills that language graduates have,' she says. 'Their ability to be at ease in other countries and cultures, builds a deeper level of cultural understanding'.

Her story so far
Qualifications:
BA in Modern and Medieval Languages, Cambridge University; MPhil in Linguistics, Cambridge University; PhD in French Linguistics, Cambridge University.
Employment:
1989: appointed to Queen's University Belfast to teach and research French Language and Linguistics.
2011-2016: Head of the School of Modern Languages, Queen's University Belfast.
2017: Priority Area Leadership Fellow, Modern Languages, AHRC

The resistance to studying Modern Languages she attributes to the myth that speaking only English is sufficient, the perception that languages are difficult, and the lack of understanding around how important languages are and what opportunities are available for language graduates.

She will work with the AHRC to ensure that Modern Languages grow as part of its research portfolio. The AHRC's support of Modern Languages recognises their importance and is to be applauded, she says. 'The AHRC could have taken a pessimistic view, but they have done the exact opposite. They have intervened and injected a huge amount of funding through Open World Research Initiative (OWRI) and appointed a Priority Area Leadership Fellow. That's a very strong signal about the importance of languages for the UK and for our external relations. I want to see Modern Languages thriving in the AHRC as a vital part of its research portfolio.'

One of the ways she will do this is to work with the four new AHRC-funded OWRI projects, all of which have Modern Languages at their core. 'One of my key roles as Leadership Fellow is to help maximise the impact of these multi-million pound projects,' she says. 'The range of languages across all four is enormous and includes global, minoritised, heritage and indigenous languages. The key thing about the projects is that they are multi-institutional, inter-sectoral and multi-disciplinary. The aim is to form partnerships with other disciplines within arts and humanities but also subjects like education and cognitive science, and with a large number of non-academic partners.' Janice considers the Open World Projects as one of the most exciting things that's happened to modern languages in the last ten years: 'They are transformative projects; quite radically different, they are designed to change the research landscape, to impact on university curricula and to draw more students into the discipline.'

Alongside her work on the projects, Janice will spend the next three years improving the dialogue between the Modern Languages community and the AHRC by talking to both. 'This is multi-faceted and tricky,' she says, 'but it's what I need to do.' She will also champion Modern Languages nationally, in particular within the Higher Education sector. And, finally, she will conduct her own research on language policy in the three devolved nations, and leads a Queen's strand on one of the OWRI projects (www.meits.org). 'All these elements pull in the same direction,' she says. 'There's a lot going on but it has a certain coherence.'

Asked if she is looking forward to the next three years, her answer is an emphatic yes. 'I'm very much looking forward to it. I think it's going to be very challenging but the idea of being able to play an important role in raising the profile of and promoting research in Modern Languages is extremely important to me, and is something I'm passionate about.'

As Modern Languages Leadership Fellow, Professor Janice Carruthers AHRC Fellowship involved a three-year funded project on language policy, entitled Foreign, Indigenous and Community Languages in the Devolved Regions of the UK: Policy and Practice for Growth. In co-operation with colleagues at Cambridge, they have produced a policy briefing (PDF) on community languages, stemming from a workshop involving civil servants and officials.
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'When I heard about the role, I thought it looked like an extremely important job,' says Janice Carruthers of her new position as AHRC's Leadership Fellow in Modern Languages. 'It was also one that really interested me and which I felt my experience would equip me to do.'

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... the History of Ireland in 100 Words. Did you know that 'cluas', the modern Irish word for 'ear', also means the handle of a cup? Find out about this and more in the book edited by Prof. Greg Toner and  editing team.

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Published by Royal Irish Academy

October 2019

HB

Number of pages: 320

ISBN: 9781911479185

Shortlisted for 'best Irish-published book of the year' at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2019.

Did you know that Cú Chulainn was conceived with a thirst-quenching drink? That 'cluas', the modern Irish word for 'ear', also means the handle of a cup? That the Old Irish word for 'ring' may have inspired Tolkien's 'nazg'? How and why does the word for noble (saor) come to mean cheap? Why does a word that once meant law (cáin) now mean tax? And why are turkeys in Irish French birds? From murder to beekeeping and everything between, discover how the Irish ate, drank, dressed, loved and lied.

This book tells a history of Ireland by looking at the development of 100 medieval Irish words drawn from the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of the Irish Language. Words tell stories and encapsulate histories and this book captures aspects of Ireland's changing history by examining the changing meaning of 100 key words. The book is aimed at a general readership and no prior knowledge of the Irish language is required to delve into the fascinating insights it provides. The book is divided into themes, including writing and literature; food and feasting; technology and science; mind and body. Readers can explore words relating to particular concepts, dipping in and out where they please.

This book is also available on JSTOR. For more information, institutions can visit Books at JSTOR or contact participation@jstor.org.

You can buy the e-book here.

Solve our book cover jigsaw puzzle here.
Reviews:
'A fascinating read... Three leading Celtic Studies scholars, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Gregory Toner have combined to produce a word hoard that through an English-language commentary on 100 Irish-language words deftly takes in the many faceted history of life on the island of Ireland. They are assisted in this task by the impish, illustrative bravura of Joseph McLaren'. Michael Cronin, The Irish Times, 02/12/2019. Read the full review here.

Resources for schools: This book is created in collaboration with Queen's University and Cambridge University who have written resources for schools. You can access these resources at the Department of Anglo-Saxon in Cambridge

About the authors

Sharon Arbuthnot

Sharon Arbuthnot is a Senior Researcher at Queen's University Belfast and an expert on lexicography and medieval glossaries. She has published widely on medieval Irish language and literature and her research includes an edition of 'The Fitness of Names' (Cóir Anmann) relating the stories of how many early Irish heroes got their names.

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh is Professor of Celtic and Medieval Studies at the University of Cambridge. She has written extensively on medieval Irish literature and history and on Ireland's place in the wider world. Her books include Brian Boru: Ireland's Greatest King?, as well as a co-authored volume on Norse-Irish relationships, Norse Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World.

Gregory Toner

Gregory Toner is Professor of Irish at Queen's University Belfast. His many publications range across Irish language, literature and place-names, including two volumes in the Place-names of Northern Ireland series, and an edition of the medieval Irish text 'Da Coca's Hostel' (Bruiden Da Choca). He has a particular interest in digital scholarship in Celtic Studies and is the leader of the electronic Dictionary of the Irish language projec: http://www.dil.ie/.

Joe McLaren (illustrator)

Joe McLaren is a freelance illustrator and graduate of the University of Brighton. He has taught Foundation Illustration at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. Among his recent clients are Penguin, Faber, Random House, Orion, Folio, Oxford University Press, Vintage, The Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times.

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Shortlisted for 'best Irish-published book of the year' at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2019. Did you know that Cú Chulainn was conceived with a thirst-quenching drink? That 'cluas', the modern Irish word for 'ear', also means the handle of a cup? That the Old Irish word for 'ring' may have inspired Tolkien's 'nazg'?

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Find out more about this multilingual project with Prof. Mícheál Ó Mainnín and Prof. Janice Carruthers.

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MEITS is a major interdisciplinary research project funded under the AHRC Open World Research Initiative. Linguistic competence in more than one language - being multilingual - sits at the heart of the study of modern languages and literatures, distinguishing it from cognate disciplines. Through six interlocking research strands we investigate how the insights gained from stepping outside a single language, culture and mode of thought are vital to individuals and societies.

MEITS is delighted to announce its new series of language taster classes!

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We are delighted to announce the publication of a new Policy Briefing on Languages, Business, Trade and Innovation, co-authored by Wendy Ayres-Bennett (PI MEITS) and Janice Carruthers (AHRC Leadership Fellow in Modern Languages), and funded by the two AHRC major research projects.

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LSP publishes high-quality peer-reviewed language research in accessible and non-technical language to promote policy engagement and provide expertise to policy makers, journalists and stakeholders in education, health, business and elsewhere.

Language underpins every aspect of human activity, social, economic and cultural. Insights from language and linguistics research can improve policy making and have the potential to impact on a wide range of areas of public life.

We publish Policy Papers, Opinion Articles, short and accessible papers from the Research Lab and Dialogues. We also occasionally publish policy reviews.

LSP promotes the multidisciplinarity of linguistics and language research and welcomes contributions from diverse disciplines including, but not restricted to, linguistics, modern languages, cultural studies, cognitive science, developmental linguistics and psychology, sociolinguistics, corpus and computational linguistics, education, health sciences, psychology and neuroscience. For information on how to submit a paper, please see our Editorial Guidelines.

ISSN 2515-3854

When we think about language policies we tend to think big. We might think of national mandates which determine the official language(s) of a country, or policies for education which specify the medium of instruction in state schools. While such policies will undoubtedly influence our experience of living, working or studying in a particular country, the language practices that each individual chooses to follow (or perhaps more controversially, chooses to impose on others) reflect much deeper ideologies. Recently I have come across several examples that have made me reflect on these 'everyday language policies' and particularly on what they might represent. Here are a few examples...

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A few weeks ago, I was involved in writing a case study which forms part of a booklet for the MEITS project addressing some big issues in language learning. The theme that I was responsible for was 'why do people learn languages?'. This is a question often asked by the general public and in policy making; it is also a very difficult one as the motivations for language learning are many, and very complex. I was hoping to find some straightforward answers in our research, but was struggling to distil a common message across the project, as our strands do not seem to directly address the question of motivation but tend to focus on a related issue on 'the benefits of language learning'. As the title of the MEITS project indicates, the key message is that Multilingualism can Empower Individuals and Transform S ocieties and there are multiple benefits of language learning, be they social, cultural, cognitive, educational, economic or even health-related.

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Due to Covid-19 lockdown, I have been working from home for some time along with our youngest son and daughter. So far, the arrangement is going well, although things can get a bit tetchy as cocktail hour approaches on Fridays!

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modern foreign languages (and abbreviation mfl)

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ahrc (arts and humanities research council)

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MEITS | Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS)

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MEITS is a major interdisciplinary research project funded under the AHRC Open World Research Initiative. Linguistic competence in more than one language - being multilingual - sits at the heart of the study of modern languages and literatures, distinguishing it from cognate disciplines.

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Why not find out more about the links between environment and Irish folktales?

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Why not find out more about the links between environment and Irish folktales?

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Find out more about the relationship between environmental conditions and Irish folktales in this article by Dr Marcas MacCoinigh

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Staff in Irish at QUB play a key part in the Place Names NI Project and to date have collected information on more than 30,000 place names from all over Northern Ireland?

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How does literature reflect female memory in socialist and democratic eras?

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How does literature reflect female memory in socialist and democratic eras?

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Dr Maria Tavares explores the work  of Cape Verdean, Mozambican and Angolan women in No Country for Nonconforming Women.

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Modern Humanities Research Association :: All Publications :: No Country for Nonconforming Women

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Click cover to enlarge Booksellers & libraries: ipage® at Ingram Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 32 Legenda 30 September 2018 * 232pp ISBN: 978-1-781885-33-8 (hardback) * RRP £75, $99, €85 ISBN: 978-1-781885-34-5 (paperback, 1 August 2020) ISBN: 978-1-781885-35-2 (JSTOR ebook) Cape Verde, Mozambique and Angola are three young nation states characterized by a long colonial past, a successful liberation war, and a post-independence socialist history.

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Find out more about digital cultures in Brazil!

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Find out more about digital cultures in Brazil!

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Dr Tori Holmes is on the editorial board for an exciting new series by Tamesis Studies in Popular and Digital Cultures

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This new series aims to publish intellectually enriching and engaging research into the popular cultures of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, both analogue and digital. Topics covered in the series include visual and audio-visual art forms (photography, graphic art and comics, advertising, graffiti, animation, film, telenovelas and television more generally), literature (folklore, mass-market novels and novellas, the 'middlebrow', visual novels), embodied arts (performance art, theatre, dance, popular and traditional music, body art and fashion), as well as all the potentially 'viral' new genres of popular culture facilitated by the Internet and social media platforms (blogs, memes, YouTube videos, hashtag campaigns, video games, and so on). The series encompasses studies both of these particular manifestations and of the industries and practices that accompany them; and it analyses not only 'grassroots' cultural expressions but also the ways in which Hispanic and Lusophone cultural forms have been appropriated, commodified and distributed transnationally. Providing a forum for cutting-edge studies on demotic forms of cultural production as well as the new cultural dynamics facilitated by digital technologies, the series seeks to advance scholarly understanding of how people creatively explore, debate and challenge events, attitudes, ideas and identities.

The series is open both to standard monographs and edited collections and short form (35,000 - 60,000 words) monographs. All volumes in the series will be made available in both print and eBook formats, and Open-Access publishing is also an option.

Series Editors

Thea Pitman, Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Leeds and Vice-President of the Society for Latin American Studies.

Stephanie Dennison, Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Leeds and President of the Association of British and Irish Lusitanists.

Editorial Board

Tori Holmes (Queen's University Belfast), Edward King (University of Bristol), Yeidy Rivero (University of Michigan), Paul Julian Smith (Graduate Center, CUNY), Nuria Triana Toribio (University of Kent), Luís Trindade (University of Coimbra), Eduardo Viñuela (University of Oviedo), Scott Weintraub (University of New Hampshire).

Preliminary enquiries and proposals from prospective authors are welcome.

These should be sent to the Commissioning Editor, Dr Megan Milan: mmilan@boydell.co.uk. All submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration.

Tamesis Books, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer, provides a forum for the best current work relating to the culture, literature, film, history and social sciences of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds.

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Tamesis Books: Call for Proposals Tamesis Studies in Popular and Digital Cultures - Proofed, a Boydell & Brewer Blog

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This new series aims to publish intellectually enriching and engaging research into the popular cultures of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, both analogue and digital.

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... that Dr Maria Tavares is Co-editor of the Literary Encyclopedia: African Lusophone Literatures and Cultures?

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The Literary Encyclopedia is a constantly evolving and updating repository of authoritative reference work about literary and cultural history. All our articles are solicited by invitation from specialist scholars in higher education institutions all over the world, refereed and approved by subject editors in our Editorial Board. The LE is thus uniquely , and authoritative. Its online format allows for rapid publication and frequent updating of articles; its integrated digital resources (author life-chronologies, customisable timelines, thematic or course-oriented bookshelves, related article clusters, critical bibliographies) respond dynamically to teaching and learning demands.

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The Literary Encyclopedia is a constantly evolving and updating repository of authoritative reference work about literary and cultural history. All our articles are solicited by invitation from specialist scholars in higher education institutions all over the world, refereed and approved by subject editors in our Editorial Board.

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Coronavirus: how artists in the Spanish-speaking world turn to religious imagery to help cope in a crisis.

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Coronavirus: how artists in the Spanish-speaking world turn to religious imagery to help cope in a crisis.

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See the link below for an article by Dr Ricki O'Rawe

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The Virgin Crown: appeared on a wall in Madrid on March 13, the day before Spain went into lockdown. Ernesto Muñiz

While millions of people across Europe and beyond have been forced into lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, some artists have used their time in isolation to create work using religious imagery as a way to tell the story of the crisis. On the streets of Madrid, graffiti artist Ernesto Muñiz reimagined the imagery related to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as a means of interpreting the current situation.

The Virgin's heart becomes a rendering of the virus, the cause of the world's suffering. The Virgin herself is wearing a gas mask, yet her sorrowful eyes, pose and garments are all instantly recognisable. This image of the Virgin seems to suggest that we should place our trust in science, wear our masks and the suffering will pass.

She is no longer the icon calling us to pray, but she is still asking us to have faith - this time in science.

This recourse to the image of the Virgin in particular should come as no surprise. To Catholics she is the perfect incarnation of suffering, hope and love. Western cultures have long turned to the image of the Virgin Mother for comfort or to express ideas about unconditional love. It's why Beyoncé invoked her in the photos she released to mark the birth of her children, for instance.

During the 20th century, influenced by thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, the place of religion in society changed. People questioned its role and purpose. They also began to explore its diversity, as cultures changed and swapped ideas, helped by shifts in geopolitical power, the democratisation of education, and advances in technology. The period of crisis that culminated in two world wars and the detonation of an atomic bomb only hastened the search for new modes of spiritual belonging.

Art and spirituality in the hispanic world

We're working on a project that looks at the way religion and spirituality more broadly has been used by women artists and writers across the Spanish-speaking world. Even if religious practice and belief has waned, the cultural potential for spiritual images that try to address the fundamental question of what purpose our lives might have is still very much evident.

Argentine artist Raquel Forner spent time in Europe and witnessed the second world war. In El Drama, a series of paintings she completed between 1939-47, Forner drew upon a tradition of religious imagery to help make sense of the horrors of war.

Her works drew comparisons to those of the Spanish religious painter El Greco thanks to the colours she uses as well as the ways in which she renders some of her figures in this particular series. Then, from 1957 until her death in 1988, she worked on paintings that questioned what it meant to be human, especially in light of our expansion into space.

Another artist that recognised the potential for modern transformations of spiritual feeling was the Mexican artist Remedios Varo. She believed that the ritualistic practices of planning and executing a painting offered the solace found by many other people through religious belief. Displaced by war, disconnected from her family and friends and unsure about the future, she began to weave a personal spiritual vision, based on a diverse set of teachings, from Jungian psychoanalysis to witchcraft and GI Gurdieff's Fourth Way.

Painting became Varo's method of exploring the transformative impact of the ideas she encountered. Art was not a substitute for religion as it was for many modernists - for Varo it became an alternative religious practice, freed from the restrictions of centralised, hierarchical institutions.

Build your own spirituality

To see how widespread such shifts in religious belief and practice have been in the 20th and 21st centuries, we need only remember Pope Benedict XVI's discomfort with such spiritual freedom. In a speech to young German Catholics in 2005 he warned against "do-it-yourself" religion, sometimes referred to disparagingly as "cafeteria" Catholicism or "pick-n-mix" Christianity.

Benedict, of course, was reacting to the ways in which religious practice has changed over centuries as it crossed borders between places, peoples and disciplines, warning that: "If it is pushed too far, religion becomes almost a consumer product. People choose what they like, and some are even able to make a profit from it." Both Forner and Varo understood the fluid symbolic potency of such religious evolution even in a more secular time.

During the current crisis, many people - like Muñiz, the graffiti artist from Madrid - still draw on religious and spiritual imagery to help us make sense of what is happening. Even within the institutions of religion, the aesthetics of worship have had to adapt to the current lockdown.

We've seen selfies take the place of the congregation in a church in Valencia and the image of Virgin del Pilar made available via webcam for worship by people who would usually attend the Basilica del Pilar in Zaragoza, north-eastern Spain.

The Guardian published an image of a group of Colombian women praying in masks before receiving food handouts at Amigos Misión Colombia in Bogotá, among a selection of images showing how Latin America was adapting to the crisis.

It seems that the coronavirus has prompted many people to turn again to a patchwork of religious and artistic practices - weaving them together to give shape to their fear, but also to their need to embrace a creative community-building exercise.

No matter how secular and rational modernity or post-modernity might sometimes seem, it appears that we still need to turn towards some form of spirituality and even traditional religious imagery to help us. We need it to try to make sense of the world around us, especially when our lives seem more precarious and at the mercy of an invisible and unstoppable virus.

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Coronavirus: how artists in the Spanish-speaking world turn to religious imagery to help cope in a crisis

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Religious imagery has traditionally been a popular vehicle for artistic expression, providing comfort during conflict.

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Dr Anne Holloway's work with her students in providing feedback and encouraging excellence was recognised in the QUB Students Union Awards.

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Find out how art can bear witness to the physical and psychological effects of child abuse in this article by Dr Sarah Bowskill.

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... that the world-leading journal, The Bulletin of Spanish Studies, is hosted at Queen's and one of the General Editors is Prof. Isabel Torres?

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BSS is operating as usual during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will update you if this situation changes Hispanic Studies Author and Subject Indexes of Articles and Reviews 1923-2003 now searchable online

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Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America Frequency: Yearly ISSN: 1475-3820 eISSN: 1478-3428 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14753820.2020.1702273 Abstract This introductory article argues for making food central to a praxis of cultural studies in the transhispanic world and the importance of inserting Hispanist voices into the arena of food studies scholarship more broadly.

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Spain - shattered to its core by war, civil war, and revolution.

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Spain - shattered to its core by war, civil war, and revolution.

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Find out more about a nation in crisis in this series of essays co-edited by Dr Geraldine Lawless.

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The nineteenth-century Hispanic world was shattered to its core by war, civil war, and revolution. At the same time, it confronted a new period of European and North-American expansion and development. In these essays, authors explore major, dynamic ways that people in Spain envisaged how they would adapt and change, or simply continue as they were. Each chapter title begins with the words "How to...", and examines the ways in which Spaniards conceived or undertook major activities that shaped their lives. These range from telling the time to being a man. Adaptability, paradox, and inconsistency come to the fore in many of the essays. We find before us a human quest for opportunity and survival in a complex and changing world. This wide-ranging book contains chapters by leading scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain.

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Manchester University Press - Spain in the nineteenth century

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The nineteenth-century Hispanic world was shattered to its core by war, civil war, and revolution. At the same time, it confronted a new period of European and North-American expansion and development. In these essays, authors explore major, dynamic ways that people in Spain envisaged how they would adapt and change, or simply continue as they were.

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The 18th century Spain meets the 21st century computing.

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The 18th century Spain meets the 21st century computing.

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Dr Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa formed part of the team working on fashioning a distinctive Spanish font for use in contemporary print and digital media.

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In 2007, The Calcografía Nacional Española organized a project directed by José María Ribagorda with the objective of divulging the invaluable typographic heritage produced in Spain in the 18th century through the "Imprenta Real".

This project included the recovery of the types designed by Geronimo Gil for the edition of the most beautiful "Quixote" never edited, printed by Joaquín Ibarra for the "Real Academia de la Lengua" in 1780. This font was called "Ibarra Real".

José María Ribagorda decided in 2015 that Octavio Pardo would be the first collaborator to play the design. Octavio was the first student of the University of Reading MA Typeface Design program to study this project.

Designed by José María Ribagorda

Try this font

Free Download

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In 2007, The Calcografía Nacional Española organized a project directed by José María Ribagorda with the objective of divulging the invaluable typographic heritage produced in Spain in the 18th century through the "Imprenta Real".This project included the recovery of the types designed by Geronimo Gil for the edition of the most beautiful "Quixote" never edited, printed by Joaquín Ibarra for the "Real Academia de la Lengua" in 1780.

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How do concepts around the domestic interior help us understand the social and artistic world of 19th-century Belgium?

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How do concepts around the domestic interior help us understand the social and artistic world of 19th-century Belgium?

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Read Dr Claire Moran's latest article to find out!

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Did you know you can study French Crime Fiction at Queen's?

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Did you know you can study French Crime Fiction at Queen's?

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Find out more about the work of Dr Dominique Jeannerod and the Crime Fiction Research Group.

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International Crime Fiction Research Group

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The International Crime Fiction Research Group, based at the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities in Queen's University Belfast, was created in 2013. It brings together scholars from disciplines such as literature, film studies and cultural history. Its principal aim is to organise a series of initiatives themed around issues relating to the international genres of crime fiction, in order to establish long-term collaborations with other UK and European scholars and Libraries. It will involve crime authors and series editors, and other stakeholders in the circulation of crime fiction, such as publishers, critics, translators and specialised retailers. It builds on a series of conferences held to date by the Ireland-based International Crime Genre Research Network, in partnership with Dr Kate Quinn (University of Galway) and Dr Marieke Krajenbrink (University of Limerick) in Galway (2005), Limerick (2007), Cork (2009) and Belfast (2011).

The group's leading research programme investigates processes of international circulation and exchanges in the crime genre. Based on quantitative analyses and on qualitative readings, it investigates phenomena of translation and imitation between the leading modern cultural industries in which the genre was developed in the 19th Century (in the US, France and the UK) and their importing into, and appropriation by other cultural areas. It seeks to assess trends and influences, as well as the genre's tensions between conforming and diversity in different languages, literatures and cultures. The research group will therefore include studies of acculturation, dissemination and will measure the success, both commercial and critical, of works of crime fiction from various cultural areas, in and outside Europe.

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International Crime Fiction Research Group

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The International Crime Fiction Research Group, based at the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities in Queen's University Belfast, was created in 2013. It brings together scholars from disciplines such as literature, film studies and cultural history. Its principal aim is to organise a series of initiatives themed around issues relating to the international genres of...

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Travel to Martinique in the work of Dr Maeve McCusker?

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Travel to Martinique in the work of Dr Maeve McCusker?

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Explore the 'enigma of arrival' in Traversay’s Les Amours de Zémédare et Carina

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'We Were All Strangers Here': Time, Space, and Postcolonial Anxiety in Traversay's Les Amours de Zémédare et Carina, et description de l'île de la Martinique - 24 Hours access

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'We Were All Strangers Here': Time, Space, and Postcolonial Anxiety in Traversay's Les Amours de Zémédare et Carina, et description de l'île de la Martinique

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You do not currently have access to this article. Subscription prices and ordering 'We Were All Strangers Here': Time, Space, and Postcolonial Anxiety in Traversay's Les Amours de Zémédare et Carina, et description de l'île de la Martinique - 24 Hours access

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Did you know that not all assessment at QUB is written?

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Did you know that not all assessment at QUB is written?

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Click below to see how Dr Fiona Clark's students have used textiles to interpret stories.

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Find out about the Spanish & Portuguese Society!

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Find out about the Spanish & Portuguese Society!

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A dynamic, student-led society.

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Katie and Anna's Patatas Bravas This is the second of our videos of Some of our students making tapas dishes. Here, the girls make some lovely patatas bravas (I know from firsthand experience - ate some!) Once again, here are the details of our tapas competition - we look forward to seeing somne entries! Competition: We've been sharing video tutorials on how to make different tapas. Your challenge? Follow and make one of the recipes, share a picture or video of the finished result on your story and tag us in it! The best-looking tapas will be announced at our Tapasy mascarillas event and rewarded with a fantástico prize!! (NB: you don't have to be going to Tapas y mascarillas to participate in this competition - we wil also announce the winner online) Deadline is Monday 5th October at 8pm. To be in for a chance of winning, the picture or video you share on your STORY must be YOUR ATTEMPT at one of tapas recipes and you Must TAG US.

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Katie and Anna's Patatas Bravas This is the second of our videos of Some of our students making tapas dishes. Here, the girls make some lovely patatas bravas (I know from firsthand experience - ate some!) Once again, here are the details of our tapas competition - we look forward to seeing somne entries!

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For those who love all things French!

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Bonsoir à tous et à tous. Given the current situation with COVID-19, we have decided to cancel our future Café Français events until further notice.
Thank you so much for your support during the year and we hope you enjoyed it.
Take care of yourselves and we will email out some film/ music/ book recommendations to help your own studies.
Love, QUB French Society x

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Bonsoir à tous et à tous. Given the current situation with COVID-19, we have decided to cancel our future Café Français events until further notice. Thank you so much for your support during the year and we hope you enjoyed it.

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Find out more about An Cumann Gaelach QUB

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Find out more about An Cumann Gaelach QUB

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Cultúr / Ceol / Craic

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Bígí linn amarach ag a 7 a chlog! Beidh Aodhán Ó Baoill ag déanamh cur i láthair ar Zoom faoina eispearas ar an Camino de Santiago!!

Link Zoom le teacht

Join us tomorrow at 7, Aidan will be chatting on Zoom about his experience on the Camino de Santiago!!

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Bígí linn amarach ag a 7 a chlog! Beidh Aodhán Ó Baoill ag déanamh cur i láthair ar Zoom faoina eispearas ar an Camino de Santiago!! Link Zoom le teacht Join us tomorrow at 7, Aidan will be chatting on Zoom about his experience on the Camino de Santiago!!