ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies

Memory and Writing: A Conversation with Norma Elía Cantú

Cristina Martín Hernández — 2022-11-23

Abstract

The Reception of Frankenstein in Spain by the Hand of its Illustrators

Beatriz González-Moreno — 2022-11-23

This article examines the main Spanish visual readings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from the first illustrated edition in Spain (1944) to the significant 200th anniversary of its publication. Thus, how Mary Shelley’s novel has morphed throughout time depending on the different illustrators who have approached the text can be assessed while identifying the key illustrated editions for this period. The analysis of the illustrated reception and history of Frankenstein offers a new perspective into how the novel has been both read and “seen” in Spain. The results of this study shed light on diverse aspects of the novel such as the perception of the monster and how oft-neglected characters and episodes have been slowly added to the visual rendition of the novel.

Fragmenting the Myth: Augusta Webster’s “Medea in Athens” and the Victorian Female Struggle

Marta Villalba-Lázaro — 2022-11-23

Augusta Webster’s poem “Medea in Athens” offers a dramatic interpretation of Medea’s psychological responses to Jason’s death. Using the technique of broken dramatic monologue, this poem allows the poet to offer a personal vision of a Medea in contention with her repressed emotions. Whilst the poem has been much studied by feminist scholars as a remarkable example of the struggle of the New Woman in Victorian England, this paper highlights the role played by the voice of Jason’s ghost that represents Medea’s unconscious, and that despite her desperate attempts reveals a strong patriarchal image of femininity. As the poem unfolds, it unveils how Jason’s ghost projects the intense love that the protagonist feels for him, a love from which she cannot free herself. This paper reads the poem to pinpoint contrasting issues between psychological subjectivity and agency that affected many new intellectual Victorian women in their battles against patriarchy, and their own selves.

Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë: A Neo-Victorian Biofiction of Pride and Prejudice

Dídac Llorens-Cubedo — 2022-11-23

Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (2009) is a first-person narrative of the last ten years of the Victorian novelist’s life. It is a neo-Victorian celebrity biofiction, tending to the hagiographic. It draws on various biographies of Brontë, on her letters and on her autobiographical novels. Interestingly, it also evokes Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a novel that Brontë famously disliked. The present article considers Secret Diaries within the parameters of neo-Victorian biofiction; it identifies parallelisms with Austen’s classic; it reassesses the relationship between Brontë and Austen; and, in doing all this, shows that the chronological scope of Neo-Victorianism is broad.

De la Traductología a la Tecnología: un análisis cualitativo de la unidad de traducción en la localización de contenido online

Elena de la Cova — 2022-11-23

La unidad de traducción es un concepto ampliamente debatido en los estudios de traducción, aunque el hecho de que no exista un número significativo de estudios empíricos en torno a este concepto incide en el desacuerdo sobre su naturaleza. En las tecnologías de la traducción, se trabaja con un concepto de unidad de traducción que, en principio, no parece seguir los mismos planteamientos que las nociones traductológicas clásicas. El presente estudio pretende ahondar en esta disparidad de nociones sobre la unidad de traducción, centrándose en la localización de contenido online. Para ello, se analizarán cuatro teorías entorno a este concepto, relacionadas con los enfoques funcionalista y cognitivo, dada su relevancia en la localización, así como la perspectiva usada en las tecnologías de la traducción. Para ilustrar y comprobar esta hipotética “contraposición” de enfoques, se realizará un análisis cualitativo de diferentes unidades de traducción en función de dichas perspectivas.

Vibrant Matter and Domestic Wisdom in Erin Brubacher’s In the Small Hours

Leonor María Martínez Serrano — 2022-11-23

Canadian poet Erin Brubacher’s In the Small Hours is a sequence of sparse poems which focus on the experiences and emotions underwent by the author in the aftermath of her divorce. Interspersed with memories from the past and encounters with the vitality of domestic objects, the collection shows the poetic persona making sense of her life and the world in meditative lyrics of great brevity. Drawing on Jane Bennett’s conceptualisation of “vibrant matter,” this article explores how Brubacher responds to the thing-power circulating within and around the bodies populating the Earth, whilst acknowledging a sense of communion with the more-than-human world.

Lexical Knowledge and Amount of L2 Exposure: A Study on CLIL Primary-school Learners’ Receptive Vocabulary Knowledge

Irene Castellano-Risco — 2022-11-23

L2 lexical knowledge has been an issue that has attracted much attention among SLA scholars, with studies examining the impact of different language teaching approaches on vocabulary knowledge. However, little research has been conducted to determine the amount of exposure needed for significant lexical improvement. This paper explores the impact of varying instructed amount of exposure on 112 CLIL primary-school learners’ receptive knowledge of high-frequency vocabulary. Participants were asked to respond to the 1K and 2K of the Updated Vocabulary Levels Tests (Webb et al.). Data were examined looking into differences related to the amount of L2 exposure. Findings suggest a possible effect of instructed amount of exposure on the recognition of high-frequency words, which is discussed concerning its possible implications for the CLIL instructional practice.

The Woman in White: Marian Halcombe, or Checkmate on Women’s Empowerment

Belén Fernández Crespo — 2022-11-23

Wilkie Collins’s fraudulent rhetoric of protest against patriarchal Victorian oppression is manifested through his manipulation of Marian Halcombe’s character: she does not represent an attainable example of women’s empowerment but rather of women’s subordination. Marian confronts Victorian patriarchal discourse through the doomed, symbolic games of chess she plays with Fosco and Collins, but she is inevitably disciplined, tamed, and transformed into the perfect “Angel in the House.” When the novel concludes, neither gender roles will have been changed nor equality attained, and feminine readers will have been lured into accepting that resignation, sacrifice and submission are the only alternatives.

“Completion of a Circle”: Female Process of Self-Realization and Individuation in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride and “I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth”

Manuela López Ramírez — 2022-11-23

In The Robber Bride and its sequel, “I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth,” Margaret Atwood underscores the complex feminine identity through the femme fatale, who is depicted using mythic Gothic figures, such as the vampire. Atwood contradicts socially-sanctioned roles for women. She shapes newer and more complete social and personal female identities, questioning how inadequately the patriarchal system represents their multiplicity. The author describes how the protagonists challenge the patriarchal definition of the feminine Self on their Jungian journey towards individuation, for which the fatal woman, as the Shadow Self, acts as a catalyst.

The Role of Input in the Use of Metaphor in L2 Writing

Marta Martín-Gilete — 2022-11-23

In comparison with the important number of studies devoted to metaphor comprehension by L2 speakers, scant attention has been paid to metaphor production, which would also require an account of where to find support for metaphor use. This paper explores the role that topic-based input may play in written learner discourse after exposure to metaphor-mediated instruction. MIPVU (Steen et al.), a well-known method to identify metaphor, was applied to one textbook unit as well as to essays on the same topic produced by L2 learners of English (N = 22) preparing for B2 level. The analysis revealed a remarkably high density of open-class metaphors ranging from 17.9% to 19.8% across both input and output texts. Furthermore, some similarities between input and output were found regarding not only metaphor density but also types (open- vs. closed-class metaphors) and distribution by word class. These findings suggest preliminary insights into how topic similarity may provide some support for metaphor use in metaphor-mediated instruction.

“The Shame of Being a Man”?: Masculinity and Shamefulness in Peter Ho Davies’s A Lie Someone Told You about Yourself (2021)

Ángela Rivera Izquierdo — 2022-11-23

Often drawing on a misogynistic psychoanalytical tradition that perpetuates gender stereotypes, guilt has generally been considered a “masculinised” affect, while shame has often been “feminised,” apparently causing men and women to write shame differently. Scholars have often concluded that while women tend to write themselves out of shame, men have frequently written shame in abstract philosophical terms, displaced it onto female bodies or tried to coin glory from it. These alleged differences between men’s and women’s writing in/about shame have been taken as an indicator that shame organises women’s personal sense of self but is never the baseline condition of being a man. However, this article proposes that Peter Ho Davies’s A Lie Someone Told You about Yourself (2021), a narrative about the aftermath of an abortion, can be read as an exploration of the shame of being a man in contemporary postfeminist society. The text investigates the legitimacy of the shame experienced by privileged subjects and demonstrates that the pro-feminist stance of its author/protagonist goes beyond mere imposture. In his exploration of male shamefulness, Davies’s writing aligns itself with the criticised female (or feminised) tradition of “oversharing” and vindicates the feminist adage that “the personal is political.”

Haiti’s “Painful Truths”: A Postcolonialised Reading of Trauma in Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State

Laura Roldán-Sevillano — 2022-11-23

Drawing on a postcolonialised approach to the traditional trauma paradigm, this paper analyses Roxane Gay’s novel An Untamed State as a trauma narrative which does not solely revolve around the Haitian American protagonist’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ensuing her abduction and violation in Port-au-Prince, as suggested by previous critical work. Particularly, it aims to demonstrate that Gay’s heroine is a resilient survivor of both a rape-related trauma and the traumatic blow to her partly Haitian identity caused by her direct contact with Haiti’s social and gender issues. Lastly, the essay examines how the novel delves into the unresolved cultural traumas derived from the effects of (post)colonialism in Haiti, which push the protagonist’s victimisers to commit such terrible acts.

Children of Horror in Laura Fish’s Strange Music

Gülrenk Hayircil — 2022-11-23

Laura Fish’s Strange Music is a novel depicting the lives of three different women who are traumatized and disconnected from their children through the lasting effects of slavery. The slave system as well as the oppressive white patriarchal aftermaths confine Elizabeth, Kaydia, and Sheba in such a way that they are not able to gain motherly guidance and support. As a result, the perspective of all three protagonists towards their children changes dramatically. This article intends to focus on the importance of the motherline, its disconnection, and the consequences with a close analysis of Laura Fish’s Strange Music.

Javier Calle-Martín, editor. John Arderon’s De judiciis urinarum: A Middle English Commentary on Giles of Corbeil’s Carmen de urinis

S. I. González — 2022-11-23

Abstract

Sally Rooney. Beautiful World, Where Are You

Sofía Alférez — 2022-11-23

Abstract

Arran Stibbe. Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By.

Anthony Nanson — 2022-11-23

Abstract

Anamarija Horvat. Screening Queer Memory: LGBTQ Pasts in Contemporary Film and Television

Corpus Navalón Guzmán — 2022-11-23

Abstract

Dalila Ayoun, editor. The Acquisition of Gender: Crosslinguistic Perspectives

Anastasiia Ogneva — 2022-11-23

Abstract