Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item "Je ne vous dirai point, mon très cher fils" Correspondance de Catherine de Charrière de Sévery 1780-1783(2016) Lanz, Anne-Marie; Benharrech, Sarah; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the principles of education imbued in a three year correspondence between an eighteenth century woman and her teenage son from the French speaking region of Vaud, current day Switzerland. Despite her great respect for the literature and ideas of the new pedagogues of the Enlightenment, especially J.J. Rousseau and Mme de Genlis, Catherine de Charrière de Sévery maintained the traditional perspective of education of the Ancien Régime. To explore the concepts of education and instruction through the epistolary practice, this research is based on the corpus of 107 letters that Mme de Sévery wrote to her son Vilhelm between 1780 and 1783. Additional documents - among them Mme de Sévery’s diaries - from the particularly rich archival holdings of this aristocratic family have been used to complement her correspondence. Most previous studies on family correspondence have dealt with mothers to daughters, or fathers to sons, whereas this research is centered on letters between a mother and her son. The location of this family – Lausanne and the Pays de Vaud – provides a particular regional perspective due to two factors: immersion into a region uniformly Protestant, and the dual-influence of Germanic and French cultures. The study analyzes the educational principles that appear throughout Mme de Sévery’s letters by comparison with three literary works of the 18th century: a familiar correspondence, the Lettres du Lord Chesterfield à son fils (1776); the fundamental education treatise by J.J. Rousseau, Émile, ou de l’Éducation (1762); and a pedagogical treatise written by Mme de Genlis as an epistolary novel, Adèle et Théodore, ou lettres sur l’éducation. Using letters as the main tool to guide her son’s upbringing, Mme de Sévery highlights the moral and family values that are most important to her and leads him to find his place in society.Item Espacios de mujeres españolas: memorias, represión, fragmentos y espectáculos, 1939-.(2013) Di Stravolo, Loredana Margaret; Naharro-Calderón, José María; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Spain suffered a huge repression, as General Francisco Franco overtook an established Republican Government and stayed in power for nearly forty years. People lived in fear; a fear so severe that they were forced to repress their memories of wartime events. After the death of Franco in 1975, Spain established a democratic-monarchic government. Again, forgetting the past was the path taken by all political parties to avoid any confrontations, as memory slipped into oblivion. In my investigation, I will contribute to the excavation of the past and help break the silence by focusing on Spanish women's spaces during the social context of the Spanish Civil War, Spain's postwar, Transition to Democracy and PostTransition. I will study theories of memory based on the research of Paul Ricoeur, Tzvetan Todorov, Pierre Nora, and Maurice Halbwachs, as a source to explore Spanish women's spaces and identities as well as their contributions, not only to society and culture but also to the literary world. The authors at the core of my study include: Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite, María Luisa Elío, Mercé Rodoreda, Carmen Praga, Tomasa Cuevas, Dolores Medio, Dulce Chacón, Ricardo Vinyes and Javier Cercas. My research spans several genres, with novels and testimonies by and about women that use memory - individual and collective - as a vehicle to reconstruct their feminine identities and spaces. Although Spanish women were trapped in a patriarchal society during the postwar years, they were able to skillfully manipulate the imposed censorship to express themselves and their needs. The texts that I include in my investigations can be broken into three main phases: repressed memory, fragmented memory and spectacular memory. This dissertation shows how memory can serve as an agent for liberation especially for women of an oppressed and forced silence of the past.Item SOÑADORES LITERARIOS: DE BERNAT METGE A FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO. "EL SUEÑO" Y SU APORTACIÓN AL RELATO HISTÓRICO-CULTURAL DE DOS ÉPOCAS.(2013) Santos Sopena, Oscar Oliver; Sánchez Martínez de Pinillos, Hernán; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation, titled Literary Dreamers: From Bernat Metge to Francisco de Quevedo, explores the intersection of culture, religion, and literary theory in the work of two Iberian Peninsular authors: Bernat Metge (Barcelona, ca. 1340/46-1413) and Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (Madrid, 1580 - Villanueva de los Infantes, 1645). The first chapter of the study analyzes the work of several Catalan and Castilian authors who use the motif of the dream in a specific humanist perspective as a literary genre and a philosophical classical discourse. Chapters two and three outline the cultural and literary landscape of two primary texts: Lo somni (1396- 99) by the Catalan Humanist Bernat Metge, and Los sueños (1627) by the Castilian Baroque Francisco de Quevedo. Both works represent excellent examples of the use of the dream motif from the Medieval to the Baroque period. As I juxtapose Catalan and Castilian literature, I examine the historical, social, cultural, and ideological perspectives of Catalan Humanism and the Castilian Baroque, two movements that traditionally have not been understood together. Thus, I suggest that Catalan and Castilian texts should be explored in relation to the notion of Christian Humanism, which I understand as a philosophical epistemology linking Christianity and Anthropocentrism. In the context of Humanism and Christianity, the use of the dream motif emerges as both a literary genre and an artistic-philosophical device. To understand the author's strategy, it is crucial to re-examine the extension of Classical, Biblical, and Oriental reminiscences, which helps us analyze the development of dreams in Peninsular literatures. This dissertation seeks to illuminate the cultural, historical, and literary influences of Catalan and Castilian literatures, which are not always taken into account despite the fact that Catalan Humanism preceded the development of Castilian Humanism since the 14th Century. I will examine how Italian Humanism came to the Iberian Peninsula through the Crown of Aragon's connections to Southern France, Italy, Corsica, and Sardinia. I argue that this cross-pollination of humanisms from the Mediterranean world served as a bridge between the different civilizations and cultures since the time of the Catalan prehumanist Ramon Llull (Palma de Majorca, 1232 - Tunis, 1316). This study proves the existence of Catalan Humanism and its importance for Spanish literature, and will lead to a better understanding of European Humanism.Item Rewriting the French Colonial Topos of the Island in the Works of Marie Ferranti, Jean-François Samlong, and Chantal Spitz(2012) Baage, Silvia; Eades, Caroline; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The island trope is a recurring theme in colonial travel literature but how do contemporary authors of the French-speaking world conceptualize the island in the 20th and 21st century? My project examines the complexity of the notion of islandedness in the works of three contemporary authors of Francophone islands outside the French Caribbean: Corsican author Marie Ferranti, Réunionese author Jean-François Samlong, and Tahitian author Chantal Spitz. Drawing on different discourses of postmodernity including intertextuality, supermodernity, the hyperreal, the time-image, and violence, I argue that the island becomes an important site from which ethnography, the crisis of time and meaning, and techniques of resistance are negotiated and constructed. In my analysis, I build on various foundational theories of cultural contact from the French Caribbean and Francophone Africa to account for the diversity and difference of the non-French Caribbean island text. Particular attention will be given to the literary text as a tool to reflect upon a colonial past and neo-colonial present in three different contexts of the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific.Item USING BORDERLANDS LITERATURE TO INCREASE INTEREST IN LITERACY IN THE HERITAGE LANGUAGE: TEACHER RESEARCH WITH LATINO/A TEENAGE STUDENTS(2011) Cabrero, Magda A.; Valli, Linda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This ethnographic action research documents my reflective practices as a teacher of Spanish for Heritage Speakers as I worked to engage my Latino/a students in literacy. In pursuit of this goal, I used borderlands literary topics, which deal with the dual experience of the immigrant or child of immigrants who lives a bicultural and bilingual existence, to guide students to explore their linguistic and cultural identities. I used several strategies to engage students, including independent reading, discussions of class readings, projects, movies and writing assignments. Throughout the process, I sought to acknowledge students' agency and draw on their perspectives, seeking their input and making use of reading topics that addressed the issues of socio-economic marginalization with which many students identified. As I lacked previous experience teaching Spanish for Heritage Speakers classes, I also sought the professional advice of five teachers who were veterans of the course. My experience suggests a connection between identity exploration and interest in reading in the Latino/a teenager, a finding with implication for how to engage the Latino/a student in literacy. My experience also sheds light on the roles played by the teacher of Latino students and the curriculum, as well as on the use of ethnographic action research as a way to become culturally responsive. This research adds to the body of knowledge about the experiences of 1.5 and 2nd generation students, including students of dual Latin American heritage, and emphasizes the heterogeneity within the Latino/a culture.