ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies

Home away from Home: Imageability and Way finding in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck

Svetlana Stefanova — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This essay explores the process of orientation in migratory space in three of the twelve stories that make up Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s collection The Thing around Your Neck— “Imitation,” “On Monday of Last Week,” and “The Thing around Your Neck”—from the perspective of Kevin Lynch’s theory of wayfinding, developed in his work on urban spaces The Image of the City. The analysis of how gender and class affect the female protagonists’ conceptualization of home is based on Lynch’s notion of imageability. The metaphorical extension of the concepts of imageability and wayfinding aims to grasp migrants’ psychological and emotional experiences of orientation. Taking as a point of reference three highly imageable objects—masks, mirrors, and letters—the study of the protagonists’ wayfinding in America reveals the tension between reality and imagination in the creation of mental images of home. In her recognition of the potential of female agency, Adichie draws a parallel between the protagonists’ reorientation in the exilic space and their reorientation in their intimate relationships.

“The Sin Eaters” by Sherman Alexie: A Dystopian Island in a Mostly Auspicious Archipelago

Aitor Ibarrola Armendáriz — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The belated publication of Sherman Alexie’s story “The Sin Eaters” as part of the collection The Toughest Indian in the World (2000) is worthy of the interest of biographic-textual scholars for its singularity. Not only did the author delay its appearance due to the very sinister tone of the story, but he decided to include it at the very heart of a collection, which is very different both stylistically and thematically. Paradoxically, however, the dystopian vision of the United States in the late 1950s offered by “The Sin Eaters” is an effective “counterweight” to the rest of the materials compiled in the collection. Assisted by the ideas of experts in the field of dystopian fiction, the article analyzes the story as an adequate counterpart and complement to the other, more promising, pictures offered in the volume.

Revisiting The Confessions of Nat Turner: Censorship in its Spanish Translation

Miguel Sanz Jiménez — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This paper studies the Spanish translation of William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. It observes the effects that institutional and self-censorship have had in Andrés Bosch’s version, first published in 1968 by Lumen as Las Confesiones de Nat Turner.

Presented as the fictional autobiography of a historical figure, the novel is based on a failed revolt that took place in a Virginia plantation in 1831. The source context is described and contrasted with the target one, paying attention to the paratexts that have conditioned the novel’s reception in Spain. Accessing the General Archive of the Administration shows that Bosch’s translation was self-censored in a possible attempt to avoid the institutional intervention that would have delayed the book’s publication. Research also shows that this same version is the one being republished in the early twenty-first century.

An Analysis of Animal Metaphors in Episodes of Gender Violence Reported in Spanish and Canadian Newspapers

Irene López — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article explores animal metaphors in episodes of gender-based violence reported in Spanish and Canadian newspapers. It analyzes the most common zoomorphic representations of female victims in real cases of gender-based violence documented in the news in Spain and Canada from 2006 to 2022. The research shows how the bestial iconography articulates discourses of gender-based violence and how the male perpetrator sees the abused woman through an animal lens to dehumanize, sexualize, exert, and even justify his violent actions.

The Spanish Descamisado(s): Zero-Translating in the London Papers during the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823)

Silvia Gregorio Sainz — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article analyses the introduction and use of the word descamisado(s) in newspapers around London during the Spanish Liberal Triennium. It focuses on how the term was introduced, the editors’ sources of information, and the evolution of its meaning, paying attention to the representation of the radical liberals involved and the events portrayed. As previous studies centred on the use of the term by Peronism, this draws on the references found in London periodicals at that time. A critical review provides information on the press’ role during the liberal revolutions and might bring to light the importance of translation in newspapers.

Of the Awefull Afterlife of Cats. From the Illustrated Book to the Stage

Ester Díaz Morillo — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

(1939) de T. S. Eliot adquirió mayor popularidad tras ser adaptado a musical por Andrew Lloyd Webber (1981). El entretenimiento popular fue para Eliot una fuente de inspiración, lo que hace especialmente interesante examinar el proceso contrario: ver cómo su poesía ha inspirado otras artes y cómo esta adaptación ha interpretado o transferido el ritmo y sentido del humor de

Practical Cats. Este artículo se centra en cómo el musical Cats de Lloyd Webber está en continuidad con las teorías de Eliot sobre drama, música y baile, especialmente influenciadas por el

music hall.

“Sorry, one more time”: The Role of Resolution Strategies in a Virtual Exchange partnership

Patricia Guill-Garcia — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

With new technologies rapidly developing and the growing relevance of communicative competence in language education, Virtual Exchanges (VEs) are receiving increased attention in research within the framework of the Interaction Hypothesis. One of the intrinsic elements of interaction is Negotiation of Meaning (NoM), a process in which students attempt to solve communicative issues. Nevertheless, few studies have scrutinised how students solve these breakdowns in VE interaction. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most employed resolution strategies in three online audio-visual interactions. The participants are university students from Japan and Spain who carried out one-hour Zoom interactions. Methodology-wise, Clavel-Arroitia’s categorisation was adapted to the purposes of this study in order to identify the strategies in the corpus. The results illustrate how certain factors (language proficiency, cultural background, and communicative dynamics, among others) condition the strategies employed, emphasising the complexity of foreign language learners’ interaction.

“The Voice of the Sea Speaks to the Soul“: Voicing Silence in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and in Rebecca Migdal’s Graphic Adaptation

Ana Abril Hernández — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article examines Kate Chopin’s second novel, The Awakening, in conjunction with a graphic novel of this work developed by Rebecca Migdal in The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3 and aims to study the use of silences in Chopin’s novel and the graphic version. This analysis examines non-linguistic communication presented in Chopin’s novel in the figure of her literary alter ego, Edna Pontellier. The methodological framework of this investigation draws on intermedial semiotics with the aim of discussing the use of the literary resource of silence as a visual communicating device in Chopin’s cornerstone of feminist literature The Awakening.

“You Knit to Save Your Life”: Trauma and Textile in Ann Hood’s The Knitting Circle (2006)

Celia Torrejón-Tobío — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This paper includes a hermeneutic revision of Ann Hood’s novel The Knitting Circle (2006), a text that has been scarcely approached from the perspective of literary theory and criticism. In order to carry out this analysis, particularly focused on its protagonist, the presuppositions of trauma studies are employed, especially the considerations of Laurie Vickroy, as well as the semiotics of the textile in terms of its discursive and collective potential. Through the prism of close reading, it is proposed that the textile activity (and, by extension, the community that is generated around it) fosters a process of psychological recovery that depends not only on the articulation of the traumatic event, but also on the forms of social experiencing established around that episode.

“Undiverted Hearts”: Domestic Alienation and Moral Integrity in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and Henry James’s Washington Square

María Valero Redondo — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

My aim in this article is to argue that Henry James’s Washington Square (1880) is an unacknowledged reworking of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814). To this purpose, I have analyzed both narratives as fictions of domestic alienation in which the heroines refuse to allow their individuality to be subdued by; (a) patriarchal authority and parental mismanagement; (b) the interferences and meddlings of their manipulative aunts; or (c) the libertine corruption of their deceitful suitors. Although they have been subjected to coercion and manipulation, Fanny Price and Catherine Sloper rebel against the pressures of parental authority and emerge as the true preservers of moral integrity.

“The Things I Touched Were Living“: Autotopography, memory, and identity in Patti Smith's M Train

Silvia Hernández Hellín — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

In 1995, Jennifer A. González coined the concept of “autotopography” to refer to those collections of objects which contain autobiographical information and may therefore become “museums of the self.” This paper analyzes Patti Smith’s M Train as an autotopographical narrative in which the author displays (through text and photography) the many objects that connect her to the past, acting as triggers for her memories and as repositories of identity. This article stresses that looking into the nature of autobiographical objects, and their links to the different ways of remembering, will allow us to further understand how lives are constituted on the page.

Book review: Emily Houlik-Ritchey (2023). Imagining Iberia in English and Castilian Medieval Romance

Robert F. Yeager — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Book review: Hanna Nicklin (2022). Writing for Games. Theory and Practice.

Clara Sánchez Trigo — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Issue 44, 2023

ES REVIEW — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200