On the subject of Shakespeare, there was huge cross-fertilization
(stealing, imitating, getting inspiration from) between the Italians,
the Spaniards and the English. These guys were very aware of what the
others were doing. An age of tremendous creativity, no question. The
great Spanish century was followed by fussiness and a Baroque style
that eventually became ridiculous (Baltasar Gracián, for example), and
then from bad to worse until the late nineteenth century and then a
couple of great generations of poets and novelists. By then, in fact
since long before, the influence of France was overwhelming on Spanish
literature, and there was also a fair amount of German influence.
Literary ties with England were pretty much nonexistent. The
spectacular rebirth in the twentieth century of literature in Spanish
happened in Latin America, where most of the great writers were and
are from. And those guys were heavily influenced by Faulkner and
Hemingway, not so much by European or even Spanish models (there are
notable exceptions, like Borges, Bioy and Alejo Carpentier).
An interesting early noir writer is Argentinean Roberto Arlt, despised
in his day for "writing ugly" but later considered a classic, with his
reputation growing.
Best,
mrt
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 02 Mar 2009 EST