CRITICAL TESTIMONIES

Abstract

These Critical Testimonies bring together contributions by distinguished authors of literary theory in the Hispanic context. Enric Sullà (Barcelona, 1950), lecturer of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature since 1988 and professor of the same area at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona since 2008, recalls and puts in perspective the “arribada desitjada” (“desired arrival”) of French structuralism to Catalonia and Spain in the late sixties and early seventies. Nora Catelli (Rosario, 1946), exiled in Barcelona in 1976 and lecturer of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the Universitat de Barcelona since 1997, reflects in her text—a conference from 1987—about “los límites teóricos del discurso crítico en la reflexión actual” (“the theoretical limits of critical discourse in contemporary thought”). The section closes with a text by Beatriz Sarlo (Buenos Aires, 1942), a member of Los libros (1969-1976) and director of Punto de vista (1978-2008), in addition to serving as one of the main promoters of the theoretical renovation of Argentinean criticism since the late 1970s. In “Barthesianos de por vida,” originally written in 2005 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Roland Barthes’ death and republished in this issue of 452ºF to commemorate the centennial of his birth, Sarlo sketches a portrait of “un escritor que tomaba sus argumentos de la literatura o los convertía a la literatura” (“a writer who took his arguments from literature or turned them into literature”) and vindicates the reading of Barthes.