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This thesis draws inspiration from the emergence of cultural studies as an academic pursuit, in addition to the current renewal of interest in the relationship between literary works and their socio-cultural milieux, to bring together an assortment of textual traces pertaining to the River Plate around the era of Juan Manuel de Rosas, governor of Buenos Aires and de facto dictator of Argentina for most of the period 1829-1852. The main texts analysed range from private documents relating to two Scottish settler families, through accounts published by British citizens with first-hand knowledge of the region (Un inglés, Cinco años en Buenos Aires and Beaumont, Travels in Buenos Ayres and the Adjacent Provinces), to three influential pieces of early Argentinian literature (Echeverria's El matadero, Mármol's Amalia and Sarmiento's Facundo). One justification of this apparently eclectic approach lies in the prominence accorded to the incomer in the thought of liberal Platine intellectuals, a concern evinced in their literary production. The methodology involves examining the representation of certain fundamental topics across this range of written artefacts, observing frequent points of thematic convergence amongst the various texts. In this fashion, I construct an image of the River Plate region around the Rosas period, whilst also appraising the degree to which early British settlers matched the idealized notion of the immigrant present in liberal creole writings. The study is divided into four main chapters, supplemented by an introduction, conclusion and appendix. The first chapter summarizes the historical context of the young Platine republics; the second deals with the themes of society, community and family, the third focuses upon religion; the fourth considers perspectives of politics, dictatorship and civil war. The appendix consists of an unpublished settler autobiography, a remarkable account of the tribulations faced on a daily basis in the developing Argentina.

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This study proposes a non-chronological reading of the six novels written by Juan Goytisolo between 1966 and 1988 in the light of the French thinker Georges Bataille and others related to his theory of a 'general economy' of excess. My approach to these novels focuses primarily on the theme of rebellion and the paradox inherent in the quest for liberation embarked upon by each. Reading this paradox in relation to the basic Bataillian premise that transgression does not destroy the limit but completes and reinforces it, I have structured my study around the various categories Bataille formulates in his treatment of the modes of human spending which 'transcend without suppressing' the limitations of the regional economy of project and goal, accumulation and production. Thus in chapter one I examine the category of sovereignty in <I>Reivindicación del Conde don Julián, </I>applying Bataille's reading of the Sadean sovereign and 'la forme ruineuse de l'érotisme' he derives thereof, to the orgy of destruction carried out by the narrator on his native land. Chapter two explores the question of sacrifice in <I>Makbara </I>and how the quest for freedom undertaken by the two dissident protagonists of this novel assumes the form of mutual sacrifices and expenditure without profit outlined by Bataille in such works as <I>La Part maudite </I>and <I>L'Erotisme. </I>Michel Foucault's 'Preface to Transgression', written in homage to Bataille on the occasion of his death, provides the theoretical framework for chapter three's reading of freedom and the limit in <I>Juan sin tierra. </I>Here Foucault's metaphorical use of the spiral to describe the limit's constant displacement of itself in the movement of transgression is employed to take issue with the notion of freedom as a <I>cara/culo </I>reconciliation espoused by the narrator in his assault on his Spanish origins. Chapters four and five offer a psychoanalytic reading of <I>Señas de identidad </I>and <I>Paisajes después de la batalla </I>respectively.

This thesis contributes to recent reassessments of Spanish Enlightenment literature through a detailed examination of the image of America that emerges in a diverse group of fictional and non-fictional texts, principally from the second half of the. eighteenth century, which range from the eighteenth-century Spanish novel to neoclassical epic poetry; from the apologetic accounts of prominent Jesuits to travel literature and satire. By adopting New World reading strategies and analysing the extent to which the texts examined participate in colonial, imperial and abolitionist discourses of Enlightenment Europe, as well as the nature of the literary representation of America that emerges in the fictional texts studied, it aims to counter the marked critical neglect of the topos of America in eighteenth-century Spanish literature. It is argued that no understanding of Spain's treatment of America is complete without recognition of the Eurocentricism that underpins much of it. Moreover, it is demonstrated that representations of America in Enlightenment Spain were inextricably linked to the political, economic and cultural discourses of eighteenth-century Europe. To that end, Chapter One analyses Spain's economic preoccupation with America as a mercantilist entity. Chapter Two reveals that the demands of capital detailed in Chapter One jostled with the ideological and humanitarian debates that were taking place in Enlightenment Europe over the legitimacy of the American conquest and the immorality of slavery. While it is revealed that Spain largely ignored such altruistic questions of empire, she did not ignore the disparaging comments that were being made elsewhere in Europe regarding her conduct in the New World. Indeed, such was Spain's indignation in the face of European calumny that the enlightened reforms put forward by Spain's Bourbon ministers were replaced by the obsessive need of Spanish intellectuals to first of all defend Spain. It is the precise nature of this response, which it is shown switches arbitrarily between diatribe and defence, that is the focus of the detailed examination undertaken of specific texts in subsequent chapters of this thesis.

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