Browsing by Subject "Spanish literature"

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19th century plantation counter-discourses in Juan Francisco Manzano, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido), and Eleuterio Derkes
(2010-12) Oleen, Garrett Alan; Arroyo, Jossianna; Salgado, César Augusto; Nicolopolus, James R.; Harney, Michael P.; Sidbury, James; Bernucci, Leopoldo
My purpose in writing this dissertation is to re-evaluate the works of three influential Spanish-Caribbean authors who seem to be remembered more as exceptional historical characters rather than for their literature itself. Although often considered to be important contributors to the Spanish-Caribbean literary canon, these writers have also suffered a measure of marginalization as scholars have relegated them to the status of discursive subjects rather than evaluate them as authorial agents. As a consequence, the majority of their works have not been fully recognized as important factors in nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first century literary production. I show how in their writings – many of which have been misunderstood, under-evaluated, and/or forgotten altogether – these writers narrated their own precarious situations and lifted their voice in protest against slavery, racism and economic oppression at a time when the dominant discourses and heavy-handed controls of the Spanish colonial government strictly forbid them to do so. These authors are Juan Francisco Manzano, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) and Eleuterio Derkes. Because these authors lived in Cuba (Manzano and Plácido) and Puerto Rico (Derkes) as colonial subjects underneath the oppressive structures of their respective plantation and hacienda economies based on sugar production and slave labor, they experienced difficult colonial conditions and as such are able to narrate this life through a unique perspective that other writers associated with the dominant discourses of the time could not. While these brands of hegemony were indeed forced upon them as writers and artists, it did not stop them from narrating and communicating their unique Spanish Caribbean perspective. I show how these authors, as marginalized figures of nineteenth century plantation society, engineered their own discourses around these hegemonic institutions – writing between the lines of hegemony and concurrent with it at the same time – in order to create an alternative image of nineteenth century Spanish Caribbean society that requires further critical consideration and perspective.
The child’s perspective of war and its aftermath in works of adult prose and film in Mexico and Spain
(2011-05) Nickelson-Requejo, Sadie; Higginbotham, Virginia, 1935-; Robbins, Jill, 1962-; Fierro, Enrique; Pérez, Domino; Reed, Cory; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth
This dissertation investigates the literary and cinematic use of the child’s perspective to present the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War and their aftermath in several Mexican, Spanish, and international (Mexican-Spanish collaborative) narratives of the 20th and early 21st Centuries written by adult authors and filmmakers, and targeted for adult audiences. The Mexican narratives are Cartucho and Las manos de mamá by Nellie Campobello, Balún Canán by Rosario Castellanos, and Bandidos, a film by Luis Estrada; selected Spanish works are El espíritu de la colmena by Víctor Erice, Cría cuervos by Carlos Saura, and El sur by Adelaida García Morales; and both international works are films by Guillermo del Toro, El espinazo del diablo and El laberinto del fauno. I attempt to determine the textual or cinematic function of the child as first person (homodiegetic) narrative viewer in these works, and I study the different ways in which this child’s point of view is constructed in order to depict the overwhelming tragedy of war. I note patterns and diversities in subject matter presented by the narrative voice, and observe the characteristics of the child narrative viewer’s world and priorities (as presented by the authors and filmmakers), paying careful attention to how each perceives and understands his or her country’s violent upheaval and its aftermath. The theoretical framework of this investigation draws mainly from trauma theory, Gothic studies, and the tradition of the fairy tale. I illustrate how within the war narrative in addition to the author’s/filmmaker’s desire to recreate the sentiment that a child would evoke in adult readers and viewers, the child narrative viewer is employed for three main reasons: to play upon or against preexisting notions of the child’s innocence; to represent (possibly subversively) the nation; and as therapeutic means of returning to a paradise lost or creating a paradise never experienced.
Editoriales globales, bibliodiversidad y escritura transnacional : un análisis de la narrativa de Enrique Vila-Matas y Roberto Bolaño
(2013-05) Navarro Serrano, José Enrique; Lindstrom, Naomi, 1950-
This dissertation explores from an interdisciplinary point of view the textual impact of globalization processes and their concurrent transformation of the cultural industry in the Spanish-language novel of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Here it is argued that the elimination of barriers to capital flows and foreign investment, in conjunction with changes in intellectual property laws and the implementation of new communication and information technologies, have led to the creation of multinational media conglomerates able to restrict the choices made by individuals on not only of what can be read, but also what can be listened to and watched. This work defends the idea that the metafictional frame found in works by the Chilean Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) and the Spaniard Enrique Vila-Matas (1948) epitomizes a novel approach to transnational writing. In their narratives, both authors portray and resist globalization by proposing a bricolage of stateless literati scattered across the globe in search of enigmatic writers, tantamount in my interpretation to out of print or unpublished books. Coincidentally, both novelists began their career in the same independent publishing house, the Barcelona-based Anagrama, and were later published under major imprints. Moreover, these recognized novelists, both recipients of the prestigious Herralde and Rómulo Gallegos literary prizes, have become points of reference for the next generation of Latin American and Spanish authors.
Homometrías : representaciones de deseo homosexual en la literatura del Siglo de Oro español
(2008-05) Santana, Miguel Angel, 1966-; Reed, Cory A.
Homometries : Representations of Homosexual Desire in Spanish Golden Age Literature traces literary representations of homosexuality during this period. Traditional criticism is written from a perspective that reflects the heteronormative idiosyncrasy that permeates this literature. In my study, I interpret the authors' textual imaginings and how they manipulate hegemonic ideals of identity and sexuality to highlight overt or encoded attempts to subvert the concept of transhistorical heterosexuality. My study valorizes "anachronistic" queer literature. It differs from those in the 1990s by averting from the consideration of homosexuality as a recent "invention". I revisit Spanish Golden Age texts to illustrate how human relations in this era can provide the spaces where alternative sexual identities can take hold. I propose five imperatives, one, it is necessary to admit that these texts incorporate not only hegemonic ideals but all the intensities of human desire; two, when these intensities have to do with homosexuality they are registered in three levels: codified, embedded in a homophobic concept, or silenced; three, when the codification appears in a positive context it can be identified through the rhetoric of homoeroticism or masculine love (homosociality would be the asexual variation and feminine love its lesbian counterpart); four, homophobia can be recognized in condemnatory, moralistic, or mockery situations; and five, the language of the closet exists in textual suggestions, in what is not pronounced but can be identified. Each chapter deals with and elaborates on each of these imperatives, with Chapter 1 acting as the theoretical platform. Chapter 2 focuses on homoeroticism through the poetry of don Juan de Arguijo. Chapter 3 studies a feminine man in the episode of Leandra and Vicente in Don Quijote, here, I propose the term, "homoscapes" (homo-relieves) as the identifiable characteristics of hegemonic gender transgressions. In Chapter 4, I revise Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's homosociality to show how homosexual relationships between men could have been maintained in La boda entre dos maridos, a Lope de Vega play. Chapter 5 analyzes homophobia and its representations in Celos con celos se curan, a play by Tirso de Molina. And, Chapter 6 deals with the interpretation of the language of the closet in El castillo de Lindabridis, a play by Calderón de la Barca.
Journalistic affect in the Spanish historical novel, 2000-2004
(2014-08) Cousins, William Christian; Robbins, Jill, 1962-
This dissertation adds to the discussion of historical memory in Spain regarding the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship by examining three texts published between 2000 and 2004: Las esquinas del aire: En busca de Ana María Martínez Sagi (2000) by Juan Manuel de Prada; Soldados de Salamina (2001) by Javier Cercas; and El vano ayer (2004) by Isaac Rosa. I argue that these texts exemplify a unique tendency in the literature of historical memory that articulates the act of remembering through new narrative and ethical postures born of what I term journalistic affect. This dissertation identifies the tendency beginning in the early 2000s for fiction to articulate the act of remembering through the compilation and examination of truth objects. Not only do the truth objects shape the narrative of these novels, endowing the act of remembering with real-world consequences, but also the truths are embodied in objects thereby locating them outside the framework of contestable speech acts. Moreover, the search for and collection of these objects operate within a journalistic epistemological framework in that the authors or protagonists use the truth(s) embodied in one object to locate another, resulting in the act of assembling a constellation of embodied truths and the shaping of a more holistic understanding of the individual that is the aim of the search. The protagonists in these novels have to search for the modernizing discourses that never took root in a Francoist Spain that never entirely faded away, never had an overt counter-revolution, and never proved itself completely criminal on the public stage the way other nationalist dictatorships in Europe and Latin America had. They show us a Spain that has to catch up with discourses about ethnicity, gender (homosexuality), rural/urban spaces in modernization, and an historical iconography for nationhood that had not essentially been renovated since the mid 1960s. As such, the individuals in these works see an inherent lack in the Europeanized Spain that has been culturally colonized by the continent, a situation that engenders a need to reevaluate a national subject position largely frozen since 1939.
La historia de los prejuicios en América : La Conquista
(2006-12) Marroquín, Jaime, 1971-; Fierro, Enrique
This is a history of the relationship between prejudices and reality during the first century of the Spanish Conquest and colonization of America. The study deals particularly with the Discovery and Conquest of La Española and La Nueva España. The authors studied are Cristóbal Colón, Ramón Pané, Pedro Mártir de Anglería, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Bartolomé de las Casas, Hernán Cortés, Francisco López de Gómara, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Vasco de Quiroga, Toribio de Benavente "Motolinía", Diego Durán, Bernardino de Sahagún and José de Acosta. There is a change in the perception of reality during the Renaissance. It brings a separation between the realms of the earthly and the divine as well as a glorification of the self, known today as individualism. There is also a great tension between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Spain. A way of seeing the world that privileges the divine fights ferociously with another one that suddenly has an immense need to understand the real, concrete world. This tension makes the study of the early descriptions and interpretations of America particularly interesting. They document the ways in which the Western imagination learns to apprehend reality in the very beginnings of the Modern Age. The writers of the Western Indies struggle with their words, their ideas, their faith and their own life in their attempt to describe and understand the New World. The process is highly complex and superbly exemplifies Marx's concept of ideology: the awareness that there is always a real and an imaginary way interacting with each other when we try to live and understand reality. Idealizations, prejudices, inventions, fantasies, destructions and abuses coexist in the texts of the "Cronistas de Indias" with a heroic effort to describe, understand, classify and explain a reality that is totally alien to their eyes and their mental schemes. This effort reaches an end with the triumph of the Counterreformation in Spain. All the early history of the New World had to be proof of a divine plan and so, many of the truths, methods and ideas that the early writers of America had gained, with a truly heroic effort to overcome ideological limitations, started to get lost once again.
The paradoxical exemplar : the image of Saladin in Don Juan Manuel's El conde lucanor
(2011-12) Atmaca, Delia Avila; Harney, Michael, 1948-; Sutherland-Meier, Madeline
Don Juan Manuel’s laudatory portrayal of Saladin, the Muslim Sultan of Babylon, in Exempla 25 and 50 of El Conde Lucanor presents an interesting paradox, particularly when considering that the fourteenth-century text was intended as moral instruction for a Christian audience. This report addresses this paradox by determining Saladin’s placement within Juan Manuel’s moral and spiritual philosophy through textual and comparative character analyses. The first section applies Victor Turner’s social drama theory in a textual analysis of Exempla 25 and 50 to establish Juan Manuel’s representation of Saladin as a triumphant figure, capable of meeting and overcoming challenges to his honor and virtue. The second section applies M. M. Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to engage in a closer examination of Saladin’s “voice” in relation to other characters of Juan Manuel’s exempla for the purpose of revealing the ambiguities and finer intricacies of Saladin’s character. These analyses serve to raise and address paradoxical questions relating to Juan Manuel’s presentation of Saladin as both a Muslim adversary and friend of Christendom.
Perito
(R. Fernandez Palmeral, 0000-00-00) Palmeral, Ramon F.