Basque Classics Series
This collection seeks to provide in English translation key texts
and authors in the cultural development of the Basque Country. It
will also publish anthologies and possibly monographs of key
near-contemporary scholars of outstanding worth who have made
serious contributions to our understanding of Basque history,
linguistics and culture.
Published by the Center for Basque Studies. To order contact the Center for Basque Studies (775.784.4854) or you may request titles from any major book dealer, who will
obtain them on order if they are not in stock.
The Basques
by Julio Caro Baroja (2009)
Translated by Kristin Addis
The Basques (Los vascos) was first published in 1949, and the current edition is a translation of the third revised edition published in 1971. The Basques is a comprehensive study of Basque culture from an anthropological and historical point of view. In The Basques, Julio Caro Baroja studies Basque material culture including population center development, farming, seafaring, mining, and ironworking, as well as social structure, mentality, mythology, arts, music, poetry, among many other topics. In The Basques, Baroja eschews grand theory in any guise (be it of sweeping culture areas and cycles, Marxist, ahistorical functionalist, or structuralist) in favor of concretely defined culture areas that must be understood in their own historical terms. He defends the primacy of cultural differences in human affairs, including their capacity to define distinctive ethnic groups. However, the latter were to be understood as both unique historical precipitates and the result of a complex (indeed functionally integrated) interaction between the crucial components of society, economy, geography, and culture. Baroja specifically eschewed explanations of human difference as expressions of inherent racial propensities (a postulate that still informed at least some of the social scientific thinking of his day). In the foregoing regards the author proved to be thoroughly modern and even visionary, however as always his journey to such conclusions deviated from conventional pathways. Throughout his career, Caro's gaze wandered over a vast array of subjects, but Basque Studies remained his one abiding interest. The Basques is the cornerstone of that corpus and remains unique within Basque literature, as was its influence over subsequent generations of Basque Studies scholars.
Koldo Mitxelena: Selected Writings of a Basque Scholar
Edited by Pello Salaburu (2008)
This work brings together a number of texts by Koldo Mitxelena (also known as Luis Michelena) concerning the Basque language, its history, and its literature. The Basque language is used on both sides of the Pyrenees, along the Bay of Biscay, in the borderlands between Spain and France. It is a non–Indo-European language of unknown origins and with no known relatives; it is an ergative language, with a very different syntactic structure from Spanish, French, English, or German. Some of the texts in the present work are more general or informative, while others require a degree of familiarity with linguistics. The reader will find a clear explanation of the Basque language, together with a systematic account of the theories surrounding its relationship with other languages, its dialects, and its literature.
Furthermore, there is ample information
about certain central features associated with the history of the language,
about its phonetic and phonological system, and about the first writings
in Basque. Also included is the text of his unification proposal that,
since 1968, has made the written unification of the language possible.
As a general criterion, the texts selected here have not been previously
published in English.
Selected Writings of
José Miguel de Barandiarán:
Basque Prehistory and
Ethnography
Edited by Jesus Altuna (2008)
Noted Basque ethnographer José Miguel de Barandiarán was an exceptional witness to an entire century of the history of the Basque Country. He was born in 1889 and died in 1991, just prior to his 102nd birthday, having remained active until a year before his death. An ordained priest, he dedicated most of his life to researching the past of his homeland. His research included excavating caves and dolmens as well as recording the traditional lifeways, legends, and superstitions of the Basque people. His findings were published in hundreds of articles appearing in the Anuario de Eusko-folklore and other journals, as well asseveral monographs.
This work includes an extensive introduction by the editor, Jesús Altuna,with biographical information on Barandiarán and a discussion of the selected writings. These are taken from Barandiarán’s books Mitología vasca (Basque Mythology), El Hombre prehistórico en el País Vasco (Prehistoric Man in the Basque Country), and Bosquejo etnográfico de Sara (An Ethnographic Sketch of Sara). Included are a number of Barandiarán’s drawings, plus photographs, bibliography, and an index.
Anthology of Apologists and Detractors of the Basque Language
by Juan Madariaga Orbea (2006)
Translated by Frederick H. Fornoff, María Cristina Saavedra,
Amaia Gabantxo, and Cameron J. Watson.
A thorough
introduction is followed by texts from numerous authors
presenting arguments on the excellence or inferiority of the
Basque language. "From the seventeenth through the nineteenth
centuries . . . a number of Spanish and French authors made it
their business to point out the barbarity and lack of literary
development of the Basque language . . . On the other hand, the
Basque apologists sought to legitimize the [language and foral system] through the creation of a construct, more or
less mythical in essence, which with great frequency relied on
the excellence of the Basque language for its justification . .
. This anthology attempts to present the most important works of
this secular polemc."
The Basques: of Lapurdi, Zuberoa, and Lower Navarre: Their History and Their Traditions
By Philippe Veyrin
Philippe Veyrin wrote Les Basques de Labourd, de Soule et de Basse Navarre: leur histoire et leurs traditions during an extraordinarily tumultuous period in French Basque history. He started the manuscript in 1941, one year into the German occupation of the Basque coast when Vichy propaganda about regionalism gave some Basques hope for a new ethnic status and a restoration of ancient rights. The director of the Basque Museum (Musée Basque) in Baiona urged Veyrin to "write a new book about the Basques . . . and to make a portrait of the Basques available to all those who are curious to know more about or who love the most interesting, albeit smallest, pays in France, known throughout the world for its language, traditions, and virtues," a region that "arouses intellectual interest and commands respect." As the leading institutional base for Basque ethnic identity in 1942, the Musée Basque was ideally placed to publish the first four hundred copies of Les Basques. The museum brought out the second edition of Les Basques in 1943, with a print run of two thousand copies that sold out almost immediately. In his foreword, Philippe Veyrin explained that he sought not so much to describe as to explain the Basques and their land and, at every turn, to link the present with the past. The CBS Press is proud and pleased to publish Veyrin’s classic work, The Basques of Lapurdi, Zuberoa, and Lower Navarre: Their History and Their Traditions, in English translation for the first time.
The Old Law of Bizkaia (1452):
A Critical Edition
Compiled, edited and annotated by Gregorio Monreal Zia
(2005)
In
1452, Bizkaians assembled beneath their sacred Oak of Gernika
and approved a redaction of the laws and customs that had
informed their legal practices for centuries. Text provides
clear insight into the Bizkaian concept of community and its
participation in the elaboration of law, encompassing an
extraordinary range of individual and collective liberties.
Hardback