TERRES DE TAUREAUX: Les jeux taurins de l'Europe à l'Amérique. By Jean‐Baptiste Maudet

TERRES DE TAUREAUX: Les jeux taurins de l'Europe a l'Amerique. By JEAN-BAPTISTE MAUDET. xvi and 496 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog., index. Madrid: Casa de Velazquez, 2010. $55.00 (paper), ISBN 9788496820371. This cultural-historical geography of bullfighting will enchant those who read French and are piqued by the spatial and temporal dimensions of a tradition that evolved in Spain and spread to the New World. The corrida, bullfighting's formal version, stands at center stage in this well-documented story, but all forms of combat between humans and bovines that have a geographical expression are considered. Some irony might be seen in the fact that humans domesticated cattle about 8,000 years ago by selecting for their tameness the aurochs, Bos primigenius, which then evolved into the Bos taurus extant today. Yet in bullfighting, the valued trait is ferocity of the animal, exactly the opposite of the manageability on which its domestication was based. The French geographer who authored this fetching book he called "lands of bulls" started the project as a doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne under the direction of Jean-Robert Pitte. The book begins with a systematic appraisal of the unity and diversity of tauromachian practices and their integration into festivals. Organized regionally, the next section describes all manner of bullish encounters are described as they occur in Spain, Portugal, and southern France and the countries of North, Central, and South America. Andalusia, where a herding culture existed on the Guadalquivir Delta, is the cultural hearth of the corrida. In the sixteenth century, individuals in Ronda and Seville began to codify the program as a progression of heightening drama. The Andalusian love of spectacle and their innate flair, or what Spaniards call gracia, contributed to that development. Professionalized bullfighting diffused slowly through Spain, consolidating in the mid-eighteenth century. Not until a century later, however, did all the larger Spanish cities and many smaller ones have a bullring in which to stage the fiesta brava. Unlike the long, drawn-out seasons of team sports, corrida programs have been connected to annual festivals. Spain's three most prestigious bullfighting events occur in spring or early summer: the April Fair in Seville, San Isidro in Madrid, and San Fermin in Pamplona. The sanfermines events gained fame less for their corridas in the arena than for the running of the bulls through the streets en route to the bullring. Ernest Hemingway's novel, The Sun also Rises, published in 1926, sealed the reputation of the Pamplona happening in the popular imagination. Yet Spaniards have tended to focus their tauromachian knowledge on themselves as the authentic aficionados. Conversations with all kinds of people in the little world of bullfighting provided the author with abundant insight. An undiscerning clientele is blamed for why resort cities on the Mediterranean coast catering to foreigners tolerate the most inept toreros and recreant bulls. Portugal developed its own variant, in which the various human players are mounted on horseback and the bull is not killed. Enshrined in Portuguese custom, a law subsequently made the Spanish-style corrida illegal in that country. The south of France is the place to see an intellectualized version of the Spanish-style corrida. More of a native tradition there is the acrobatic bull running in two regions, Les Landes and the Rhone Delta, where the bull--or cow--not the human participant, gets the applause. Outside southwestern Europe, bullish games of various kinds attract the most enthusiastic participants and followers in the Americas. About half of Latin America accepted the professionalized corrida version, led by Mexico, where the elite venue is the Plaza de Toros Mexico in the capital, the world's largest bullring. Major South American corrida programs, which often include well-known Spanish matadors, occur in Cali, Bogota, Medellin, Manizales, Valencia, San Cristobal, Merida, Quito, and Lima. …