A book collects half a hundred literary critiques that Antonio Vilanova published on the weekly ʻDestinoʼ between 1950 and 1960
Antonio Vilanova, hispanist, essayist, writer and professor from UB, published literary critiques on the journal Destino during more than 15 years. Now, the anthology La letra y el espíritu collects the articles he wrote between 1950 and 1960. Adolfo Sotelo, professor of History of Spanish Literature and dean of the Faculty of Philology of UB, is the author of the book that has the same title than the section in which Vilanova wrote his critiques.
Antonio Vilanova, hispanist, essayist, writer and professor from UB, published literary critiques on the journal Destino during more than 15 years. Now, the anthology La letra y el espíritu collects the articles he wrote between 1950 and 1960. Adolfo Sotelo, professor of History of Spanish Literature and dean of the Faculty of Philology of UB, is the author of the book that has the same title than the section in which Vilanova wrote his critiques.
Next Tuesday, 4 March, at 7.30 p.m., the book is presented at the Aula Capella of the University of Barcelona. The event, chaired by the rector, Dídac Ramírez, has the participation of Adolfo Sotelo, who prefaces the book, Lluís Izquierdo, retired professor of Spanish literature and poet, and Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, novelist and journalist who writes now on the supplement “Cultura/s” of La Vanguardia.
To be exact, the book collects 54 literary critiques of French, Italian, German, British, Russian and North-American works arranged in chronological order according to the date they were published. Sotelo ensures on the prologue that “Vilanovaʼs weekly articles are a chronicle of Spanish, Catalan and foreign languages literature that cannot be compared with any other Spanish publication”.
Sotelo selected the articles with the aim of offering a “rich, suggestive and representative” collection. Among many others, we find: “Rilke y la vocación poética”, which starts the anthology, «William Faulkner y la epopeya del Sur», «George Orwell y su obra», «Bonjour, tristesse, de Françoise Sagan», «Thomas Mann como representante de la era burguesa», «Lolita, de Vladimir Nabokov», «La poesía de Salvatore Quasimodo» and «La muerte de Albert Camus», which closes the book.
Antonio Vilanova (1923-2008) was disciple of Martí de Riquer and professor of Pere Gimferrer. He got his PhD degree from the University of Madrid with the thesis Las fuentes y los temas del Polifemo de Góngora, supervised by Dámaso Alonso. He was professor at UB for nearly fifty years —from 1946 to 1994—, he directed and supervised many literary collections, and he worked as crític at Destino, where he happened to meet Néstor Luján and Joan Perucho. Moreover, he was member of the jury of many literary awards. He was particularly prolific during his last years when he published La crisis española de fin de siglo y la generación del 98 (Publicacions i Edicions de la UB, 1999), Nueva lectura de La Regenta de Clarín (Anagrama, 2001), Emili Vilanova i el seu temps (Quaderns Crema, 2001) and Auge y supervivencia de una cultura prohibida: literatura catalana de posguerra, (Destino, 2005).