Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785
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Item Violencia, retórica y persuasión: revisión del debate en torno a la evangelización indígena(2014) Rodriguez, Maggy; Merediz, Eyda M.; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the sixteenth century, true piety and virtue became issues of primary importance for the emergent Spanish imperial design which sought to define Catholic Orthodoxy and to evangelize the people of the newly discovered regions of America. The antagonists of the famous Contienda de Valladolid (1550), Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, were involved in responding to the emperor's inquiry about the legality of the war that Spaniards were waging against the indigenous people of the New World. The legal and political implications of their opposing arguments have been thoroughly studied by numerous scholars. Nevertheless, the main focus of this study is to explore the ways in which the implicit script of their work contributed to the religious debates of the century. The ultimate question debated in Valladolid, I argue, was to inquire into and develop the methods and rules on how to preach and promote the Holy Catholic Faith in the New World, which was concerned, above all, with perfecting the life of the spirit. These evangelizing ideas appear in Sepulveda's Demócrates Segundo as well as the summarized content of Las Casas' De unico modo, whose doctrine served as the basis for his legal arguments during the dispute. Such emphasis reveals that, although Sepúlveda and Las Casas had differing interpretations of Aristotle's ideas and opposing views on the legitimacy of the conquest and colonization of America, the authors agreed on the need to readdress evangelization, given the new challenges posed by the cuarta terrae. This dissertation recovers the missionary plan outlined in the Valladolid Debate and examines the nuanced differences of the methods proposed by Las Casas and Sepúlveda. It suggests that Sepulveda proposes a quasi-natural way of Christianizing Amerindians that requires their submission to the Spanish government so that, by imitating a superior model, the naturally inferior beings would rise to the excellence prescribed by the law of nature and become Christians. On the other hand, Las Casas advocates a more natural way of arriving to the truth through a cognitive model that relies on their reasoning rather than on emotions, as was recommended by the ecclesiastical rhetoric of Fray Luis de Granada.Item Desglosar la memoria. La sensibilidad del tiempo en la obra poesía de José Antonio Ramos Sucre(2009) González, Pausides; Aguilar Mora, Jorge; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the theme of memory in the poetry of José Antonio Ramos Sucre (1890-1930), a Venezuelan poet associated with the country's first literary vanguard group known as the "Generación del 18". In order to fully understand the poetry of Ramos Sucre, it is important to begin by looking at the thematic shift that occurred in his writing when his interest in the glorious past of the nation completely gave way to a poetically recreated notion of universal memory. Such displacement can be seen as a manifestation of what Walter Benjamin called "loss of experience." Through this lens, it is possible to show that the work of Ramos Sucre is part of a collective sense of grief born mainly from the Venezuelan reality of the nineteen twenties, the years during which the country was deeply entrenched in the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez. The sense of grief is expressed through a poetic subject, the "I" in Ramos Sucre's poems, which is tied to a continual remembrance, and specifically to the experiences that are part of its duration. Here it becomes clear that Ramos Sucre's work was greatly influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson. This dissertation performs an unconventional reading of the poetic work of Ramos Sucre, in which the existence of a single self is identified, a single "I" that is capable of remembering all of his own experiences. Finally, this dissertation shows how the poetic subject in Ramos Sucre's poetry expresses his memory through writing, and how the purpose of his writing is to achieve his own oblivion. We conclude our work by considering the orphic nature of that oblivion, so that the "loss of experience", expressed through an exceptional voice of the Venezuelan vanguard such as Ramos Sucre, ends up being replaced by the need for a return to the orphic country that so captivated the imagination of the Romantic poets.Item LA THEATRALITE ET LA CRITIQUE DE LA DROITE DANS LES MANDARINS DE SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR(2009) Bayliss, Ann; Verdaguer, Pierre; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines the use of theatrical forms to illustrate social criticism in Les Mandarins. Simone de Beauvoir draws from works of classic theater and literature to depict the confluence of art, politics, and money in a capital city. Henri, editor of a political newspaper and a writer, is a contemporary Alceste whose desire to live in a better world seems at odds with his impulse to abandon it. Anne, wife of the leader of a left-wing movement, and a psychologist, is a modern Marion, loving, practical, and idealistic. As they and their friends search for meaning and solvency, they struggle against pessimism, fatalism, complacency, artistic escapism, the national interest argument among nations, the military-industrial power complex, and paranoia. Their tragic missteps recall Hamlet, while their everyday life invites comparison to a medieval farce, and the lovers take their cues from Beaumarchais. For the protagonists, as for the author herself, art and writing become a reason and a vision of human solidarity, putting into question the necessity of a world order dominated by capital.Item Manifestations of the Body: The depiction of the Human Body in the 16th Century Germany as expressed in Texts by Martin Luther(2007-04-25) Glockner, Gunther Johannes; Pfister, Guenter; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The foremost concern of this study is to articulate the thoughts and attitudes towards the notion of embodiment during the first half of the 16th century. The dissertation argues that in depicting the concept of the body within the social order as well as within the thoughts of an individual, one must look at the cultural traditions of that society, because assumptions of the body are always socially constructed. In capturing the voice of the time, attention is given to the texts of Martin Luther. The findings of the research show, that body perceptions of the time are encoded in church theology, scholastic philosophy, cultural practice, and institutionalized pedagogy.Item "...bajo el tumulto no hay nada": Formas para el mal en las literaturas hispanoamericanas del siglo XIX.(2007-03-28) Ponce-Ortiz, Esteban; Aguilar Mora, Jorge; Sosnoswski, Saúl; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The idea of evil is a cornerstone where different discourses have come into contact. This idea has touched philosophic discourses as well as medical and psychiatric ones, and it is part of the every day speech of ordinary people. The general opinion is that human beings are a defined species whose conscience has the power to more or less locate without difficulty where evil and good exist. Therefore, there is a social need to locate the place of evil, and this need allows the fixation of "that place" within the political and religious discourses. In this sense, evil, one of the most complex concepts, became one of the most manipulated categories at the service of power and the authoritative order. This dissertation deconstructs the fabrication process of evil's images, and the manipulative Latin America's fabric of morals trapped on the dialectic process among liberal and conservative political factions. The bipolarities Church - State, individuality - society, or rationality - instinct, among others, are reviewed as a complex set of tensions. Such tensions appeared peculiarly exposed in poetic works despite their cryptic nature. Poetry is used as a tool to unveil the same phenomenon in non-poetic texts that construct an apparently coherent political discourse. Multiple poetic and literary representations of evil have replicated the foundational narrative that centers on a dilemma for human beings: to choose between individual impulse and the restraint of public morals. Literature in Latin America shows diverse poetic notions of evil, from the orthodox Catholic idea to the materialist denial of the existence of evil. Between these two poles, other approaches arose usually in agreement with political affiliations that nevertheless proved inconsistent allowing for the proliferation of unorthodox positions. The study focuses on selected poetry works by Andrés Bello ("Las fantasmas"), Esteban Echeverría ("El ángel caído"), José Eusebio Caro (selection), Juan León Mera (selection), Rubén Darío ("El coloquio de los centauros") and José Martí (Versos libres).