Iberian Studies. Dialogues from Italy

Overview & Synopsis

Iberian Studies have developed in the last quarter of a century to the point of making one speak of a real Iberian Turn. Starting from the rejection of the classic scheme that places the two states (Portugal and Spain) as privileged agents of the representation of the Iberian space, the proposal of the Iberian Studies is to work on the system of historical exchanges and interferences that have shaped the cultural fabric of the peninsula, investigating both the points of connection as much as those of the fracture between its different realities (such as the Basque, Catalan and Galician ones, as well as the Castilian and Lusitanian ones). Accompanied by a “Reasoned Bibliography on Iberian Studies and Iberian Studies from Italy”, this volume examines the state of the art, with particular attention to the Italian context, in which these researches show a still unequal rooting and diffusion. A first section, dedicated to a general framework of the discipline and the exposition of theoretical issues and method problems, is followed by a second that presents critical contributions that address individual case studies. Born in part as a reaction to the so-called ‘crisis of Hispanism’, Iberian Studies offer themselves as an alternative to the traditional model of peninsular Hispanism, to its uninational and monolingual paradigm. They also place the emphasis on diversity and the relational aspect, looking with suspicion at every hegemonic design aimed at establishing a ‘centre’ within a heterogeneous cultural landscape. Attentive to the phenomena of immigration and linguistic minorities, to the colonial past and relations with the Latin American world, but also to the themes of comparativism, translation, theory and the rethinking of criticism, Iberian Studies are a field in which not only debates about literature and the arts are included, but also about ideology.