Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785
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Item UNA MODERNIDAD TENSIONADA: LA PRENSA CATÓLICA DE LOS AÑOS 20 EN BUENOS AIRES(2022) Maurette, Sofia; Demaria, Laura; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Según la Pew Foundation, Latinoamérica es uno de los continentes más religiosos del mundo, con más del 90% de su población identificándose como parte de una religión organizada. Sin embargo, la religión latinoamericana no ha recibido una atención equivalente a sus números. Mi investigación analiza el campo poco estudiado de la religión latinoamericana a través de la lente de su producción cultural, combinando los campos de los estudios religiosos con los estudios literarios y culturales latinoamericanos. En mi trabajo afirmo que definiciones estrechas sobre la Modernidad e ideas normativas sobre el lugar de la religión en la esfera pública moderna, uno de los postulados de la "teoría de la secularización", han resultado en una lectura sesgada de los movimientos y textos religiosos latinoamericanos, generalmente considerados incompatibles con sus aspiraciones modernas.En mi tesis me centro específicamente en las revistas católicas argentinas y su compromiso con las consecuencias del proceso de modernización del país a principios del siglo XX. Para una de estas revistas, Criterio (1928-presente), esto significó elaborar un lenguaje que adoptó la retórica de los movimientos de vanguardia para atraer a la élite intelectual a la que deseaban convertir. La revista femenina Noel (1920-1939), por otro lado, al contrastar la construcción tradicional de género dentro del catolicismo con las nuevas definiciones de feminidad adoptadas por los movimientos feministas contemporáneos, se convirtió en un espacio seguro para sus autoras en el cual construir y realizar una comprensión del género que, si bien respaldaba explícitamente una cosmovisión patriarcal, reformulaba sutilmente el papel de la mujer dentro de ella.Item 'Irishness' in Caribbean and Latin American Literature: The Diasporic and Liminal(2017) Glynn, Douglas Michael; Cypess, Sandra M; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines representations of the diasporic Irish within the varied literary imaginaries of the Caribbean and Latin America and argues that these representations create a literary paradigm surrounding ‘Irishness’. The project begins by offering a racialized historical overview of the Irish commencing with the conquest of Ireland and following up to the modern day. I then relate observations elucidated by this overview to current conceptions of Irish identity while specifying many of the diaspora spaces to which the transatlantic Irish arrived. I utilize a transamerican approach to literature which permits cross-cultural and multilingual readings of texts that would otherwise remain in isolation to each other. Putting my study into dialogue with scholars like Robin Cohen, William Safran, Avtar Brah and Laura Zuntini de Izarra, I define the terms ‘diaspora’ and ‘diaspora space’ while seeking to underscore the corollaries between these concepts and representations of the Irish in diaspora. After establishing the ways in which I understand and use these terms, I employ the works of Victor Turner and Sandor Klapcsik, among others, to lay down my theoretical framework of the liminal and liminality. In doing so I directly interconnect theories of diaspora and liminality which provides a unique theoretical perspective, and later interject my own nascent theory of the ‘figure’ to better deconstruct the Irish characters under study. Reading a selected corpus of literature from writers such as American-Guatemalan Francisco Goldman, Cuban Zoé Valdés, Jamaican Erna Brodber, Mexican Patricia Cox, American Carl Krueger, and Argentines Rodolfo Walsh and Juan José Delaney, through the liminal process allows me to analyze literature from multiple perspectives while decentering previous literary criticism that has not recognized this multiplicity embedded in liminal readings of narratives. Over the breadth of the project I look to these and other scholars in my efforts to (re)define, dissect, work and wield the terms ‘diaspora’, ‘liminal’ and ‘liminality’ in a variety of fashions, adding to them my own ideas of perpetual liminality, while extracting and examining the representations of ‘Irishness’ found through each of my textual analyses.Item Alan Pauls: Poéticas del anacronismo(2016) Charry, Luis F.; Demaría, Laura; Merediz, Eyda; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Alan Pauls (b. 1959) is an Argentine novelist and essayist. His works have barely been studied outside of Latin America; therefore, my work will be one of the first to focus critically and theoretically on his oeuvre and raise awareness of his importance to Contemporary Latin American Literature. The fundamental concept of my thesis is anachronism, which I develop by investigating the ways in which the present and the past are interconnected in the same temporal space. My dissertation has two interconnected parts. In the first, I propose an approach to Pauls’ literary work that emphasizes its engagement with literary and cultural theory. Specifically, I analyze how Pauls’ first novels –El pudor del pornógrafo (1984), El coloquio (1989), Wasabi (1994)– are strongly influenced by various theoretical discourses, especially the work of Roland Barthes. The guiding question of my dissertation’s first part is how one can narrate a fictional text without strictly appropriating narrative devices. Namely, I suggest that Pauls’ conception of literature is inevitably related to critical discourse. In the second part, I study a trilogy that Pauls wrote about the 1970s in Argentina: Historia del llanto (2007), Historia del pelo (2010), and Historia del dinero (2013). Here I focus on how Pauls uses the 1970s to propose a new conceptualization of the “political.” For Pauls, the “political” is not represented in the great events of a particular time but rather in the “effects” that these events produce; these effects are minor, almost imperceptible, and for that reason much more powerful as a literary event mechanism per se. From my point of view, this new conceptualization of the “political” contains in itself a problematic issue: the articulation between personal experience, history, and fiction. In conclusion, this interrelation between theory, politics, history, and fiction defines the path of my dissertation, which would have been just the “starting point” in my personal attempt to reconfigure the map of the Latin American literary contemporaneity.Item LATIN AMERICAN COMING OF AGE NARRATIVES: A SYMBOLIC AND PHYSOANALITICAL READING(2009) Roman, Ruth; Aguilar-Mora, Jorge; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Childhood is a disquieting age subsequent to the inexorable exile from love. After being banned from the only boundless union of love it will ever experience, the child sets upon a relentless journey to invent her/himself. Thus, the child surmounts its first creative challenge by transposing feelings of sorrow and loss; its first self silhouette is forged from the hardships of grief. The child assimilates its loss through symbolization, and in doing so, s/he begins her/his irreversible pursuit of identity and self-definition. This dissertation explores eight Latin American childhood narratives. The child protagonists of these stories reconstruct their world, so as to insert themselves in it. In order to achieve this, they must construct a first identity or façade through which they access their own narratives. The initial chapter focuses on three Andean boys who trial test schoolboy demeanors in and out of the school's enclosure: Timoleón Coloma (Ecuador, 1888) by Carlos Tobar; Gran Señor y Rajadiablos (Chile, 1948) by Eduardo Barrios; Los Ríos Profundos (Perú, 1957) by José María Arguedas. The second chapter explores the paternal home where three girls rehearse appearances and social behaviors: Ifigenia (Venezuela, 1924) by Teresa De la Parra; Balún Canán (México, 1967) by Rosario Castellanos; La Madriguera (Argentina, 1996) by Tununa Mercado. The third and last chapter visits the fictional childhood of two Cuban poets. We witness the dawn of imagery creativity in the poetic identity of two Caribbean boys: Paradiso (Cuba, 1966) by José Lezama Lima and Celestino antes del Alma (Cuba, 1967) by Reinaldo Arenas. Furthermore, each of these initial attempts at cohesive identity thrive in transition, not only because of the nature of their childhood passage but also because of the volatile social and historical landscapes these eight novels depict. After examining the different identity constructions in childhood, the following questions can be answered: with what symbolic resources do Latin American children elaborate their first identities? Who are their role models? What symbolic processes activate when confronted with threatening events? In order to answer these questions this dissertation draws insights from the disciplines of psychoanalysis and symbolic anthropology, especially from the assertions of Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, Gilbert Durand and Gastón Bachelard.