front cover of Vida y muerte de San Cristóbal
Vida y muerte de San Cristóbal
Juan de Benavides
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020

As the patron of travelers, Saint Christopher inspired one of the most popular cults in the medieval era, which spread across Europe and especially the Iberian Peninsula. Artistic renderings of the saint were found near the doors of most Spanish Gothic churches, and paratheatrical representations of Saint Christopher were also commonplace in religious processions. His conversion and martyrdom were often staged between the fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. 

In the theater, Juan de Benavides’s Vida y muerte de San Cristóbal is one of two known comedias dealing with the saint, but it was heavily censored after its premiere. The immense popularity of St. Christopher and other primitive saints first drew the attention of the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s, when the Catholic Church attempted to suppress the influence of the earlier saints due to their fantastical nature. The stories of these saints were censored, rewritten or even omitted in the post-Tridentine martyrologies. This publication is the first critical edition of the only extant copy of Benavides’s playscript. The circumstances surrounding Benavides’s play continue a dialogue about such important topics as censorship and the influence of the church over artistic production.

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Voices From an Empire
A History of Afro-Portuguese Literature
Russell G. Hamilton
University of Minnesota Press, 1975

Voices From an Empire was first published in 1975. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The literature of the various regions of Lusophone Africa has received relatively little critical attention compared with that which has been focused on the work of writers in the English- and French- speaking countries of Africa. With the profound changes which are occurring in the social and political structures of Lusophone Africa, there is particular need for the comprehensive look at Afro-Protuguese literature which this account provides.

Professor Hamilton traces the development of this literature in the broad perspective of it social, cultural, and aesthetic context. He discusses the whole of the Afro-Portuguese literary phenomenon, as it occurs on the Cape Verde archipelago, in Guinea-Bissau, on the Guinea Gulf islands of Sao Tome and Principe, in Angola, and in Mozambique.

In an introduction he discusses some basic questions about Afro-Protuguese literature, among them, the matter of a definition of this body of writing, the implications of the concept of negritude, the role of Portugal and Brazil in Afro-Portuguese literature, and the social and cultural significance of the dominant literary themes found in the various regions of Lusophone Africa. Because he sees the regionalist movement in Angola as the most significant in terms of a neo-African orientation, he begins the book with an extensive study of the literature of that country. Many examples of afro-Portuguese poetry are given, both in the original language and in the English translation. There is a bibliography, and a map shows the African regions of study.

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Voices from the Silence
Guatemalan Literature of Resistance
Marc Zimmerman
Ohio University Press, 1998
The conquest, colonization, independence, the liberal reforms, the regimes, revolution, and dictatorships, the insurrections and ongoing peace dialogues all are combined in a narrative projecting the most important forces in Guatemalan history from the Mayan period to our own times. Using excerpts from poems, novels, stories, essays, and interviews by writers ranging from Cardoza y Aragón and Nobel Prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias to the indigenous and testimonial voices of Rigoberta Menchú and Mario Payeras, this full sampling of a country’s literature is, in truth, a documentary of realism and magic. Voices from the Silence bears witness to a nation’s long journey toward some ideal community for which so many have fought and died. Texts translated by Marc Zimmerman with the collaboration of Robert Scott Curry, Linda Thelma Campos, Preston Browning, Brad Stull, and Anne Woerhle.
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