The Barcelona Reader
Cultural Readings of a City
Published on 24. July 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
464 pages
978-1-78694-032-2 (ISBN)
Description
Over the last twenty years there has been a growing international interest in the city of Barcelona. This has been reflected in the academic world through a series of studies, courses, seminars, and publications. The Barcelona Reader hinges together a selection of the best academic articles, written in English, about the city, and its main elements of identity and interest: art, urban planning, history and social movements. The book includes scholarly essays about Barcelona that can be of interest to the student and the general public alike. It focuses on cultural representations of the city: the arts (including literature) provide a complex yet discontinuous portrait of the city, similar to a patchwork. The authors selected create a kaleidoscope of views and voices thus presenting a diverse yet inclusive Barcelona portrait. The Barcelona Reader offers a multifaceted assessment that will be essential reading for anyone interested in this iconic city.
Reviews / Votes
Reviews'Bou and Subirana offer us a great collection of articles on the city of Barcelona written in English (...) in a book with a wide approach to the subject. The city is, by definition, a complex creation and its interpretation therefore demands a plurality of views ("ways of seeing" according to John Berger). Barcelones, in the words of Manuel Vazquez Montalban, expresses this multifocal attitude to observe reality and face the object of study. (...) With the help of twenty-one top-level essayists, they have turned Barcelona into a field of study of increasing interest. The complexity of the city demanded, as we say, multiple knowledge. The look that the texts present to us is the result of an interpretative framework that the authors define in so far as they practice it.'
Toni Molla, L'Espill 'A cultural feast for both visitors and residents, the city is captured with depth and precision in The Barcelona Reader [...] Overall, the reader provides an in-depth study of Barcelona, from its crimes and graveyards, to its grand streets, to the questions of authenticity and tourism, to the showcase of the 1992 Olympic games. This is a reader that achieves its raison d'etre, covering a broad range of specialities and topics for just about everyone. Ultimately, The Barcelona Reader succeeds in capturing the true essence of the city.'
Padraig Collins, AIGNE
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Liverpool
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78694-032-2 (9781786940322)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Enric Bou has been chair of the Hispanic Studies Department at Brown University (Providence), between 2002 and 2011, and president of the North- American Catalan Society between 2007 and 2010. Currently he is professor in the Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies at Universita Ca' Foscari in Venice. His latest book is Invention of Space. City, Travel and Literature (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2013), published also in Catalan: La invencio de l'espai. Ciutat i viatge (Publicacions Universitat de Valencia, 2013). Jaume Subirana is Associate Professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, and he has been visiting professor at Duke University, University of British Columbia, Brown University and Universita Ca' Foscari in Venice. He edited Willkommen in Katalonien. Eine literarische Entdeckungsreise (dtv, 2007), and has published Barcelona acrostic, Barcelona 365. Temps i ciutat and recently, BarcelonABC. Alfabet d'una ciutat/A City Alphabet (2013).
Content
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Introduction: Barcelona: Cultural readings of a city - Enric Bou and Jaume Subirana
I City, history, and territory
1. Barcelona: The siege city - Robert Davidson
2. Barcelona as an adaptive ecology - Ferran Sagarra
3. A present past, Barcelona street names, from Victor Balaguer to Pasqual Maragall - Jaume Subirana
4. 'The asylum of modern times': Barcelona and Europe - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
5. A fragile country - Colm Toibin
II City and society
6. Barcelona and modernity - Brad Epps
7. Football and identities in Catalonia - Alejandro Quiroga
8. The family and the city: Power and the creation of cultural imagery - Gary Wray McDonogh
9. Memory and the city in Barcelona's cemeteries - Elisa Marti-Lopez
III Art, architecture, and the city
10. Picasso among his fellows at 4 Gats: Beyond Modernisme? - Jordi Falgas
11. Gaudi: Poet of stone, artistic hedgehog - Maria Marin i Torne
12. El Poble Espanyol / El Pueblo Espanol (1929) - Jordana Mendelson
IV The Olympics and the city
13. Barcelona: Urban identity 1992-2002 - Donald McNeill
14. From the Olympic torch to the Universal Forum of Cultures: The after-image of Barcelona's modernity - Joan Ramon Resina
V Literature, cinema, and the city
15. La Gran Encisera: Three odes to Barcelona, and a film - Josep Miquel Sobrer
16. The deceptive dame: Criminal revelations of the Catalan capital - Stewart King
17. A Biutiful city: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's filmic critique of the 'Barcelona Model' - Benjamin Fraser
Notes on contributors
Introduction: Barcelona: Cultural readings of a city - Enric Bou and Jaume Subirana
I City, history, and territory
1. Barcelona: The siege city - Robert Davidson
2. Barcelona as an adaptive ecology - Ferran Sagarra
3. A present past, Barcelona street names, from Victor Balaguer to Pasqual Maragall - Jaume Subirana
4. 'The asylum of modern times': Barcelona and Europe - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
5. A fragile country - Colm Toibin
II City and society
6. Barcelona and modernity - Brad Epps
7. Football and identities in Catalonia - Alejandro Quiroga
8. The family and the city: Power and the creation of cultural imagery - Gary Wray McDonogh
9. Memory and the city in Barcelona's cemeteries - Elisa Marti-Lopez
III Art, architecture, and the city
10. Picasso among his fellows at 4 Gats: Beyond Modernisme? - Jordi Falgas
11. Gaudi: Poet of stone, artistic hedgehog - Maria Marin i Torne
12. El Poble Espanyol / El Pueblo Espanol (1929) - Jordana Mendelson
IV The Olympics and the city
13. Barcelona: Urban identity 1992-2002 - Donald McNeill
14. From the Olympic torch to the Universal Forum of Cultures: The after-image of Barcelona's modernity - Joan Ramon Resina
V Literature, cinema, and the city
15. La Gran Encisera: Three odes to Barcelona, and a film - Josep Miquel Sobrer
16. The deceptive dame: Criminal revelations of the Catalan capital - Stewart King
17. A Biutiful city: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's filmic critique of the 'Barcelona Model' - Benjamin Fraser