The aim of this thesis is to facilitate dialogue between the narrative fiction of three Spanish women novelists (Carmen Martin Gaite, Rosa Montero, and Lourdes Ortiz) and key concepts in the writings of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. The thesis centres on the concept of dialogue, both within and beyond textual boundaries. Dialogue may be an integral part of a narrative, where at a most basic level, characters are engaged in conversation; the thesis starts by focusing on texts which contain a split narrative voice, resulting in intratextual dialogue between two conversation partners, or interlocutors. On a second level, there may be a dialogue between the diverse levels of a more complex narrative; the texts analysed in the third chapter demonstrate this further fragmentation of the narrating voice. In these novels, a plurality of voices may be found, as well as written texts produced by the characters. All of these internal dialogues make up what is known as intratextuality and contribute to a text's heteroglossia. A further category of dialogue occurs when a text refers, by citation, mimicry, parody or revision, to other, external texts. This dialogue between texts is intertextuality; a fourth chapter develops an analysis of intertextual dialogues between independent novels or entire genres. These divisions of the thesis can only be relative, as will be seen when overlaps occur. The conclusion offers a discussion of a novel by Martin Gaite which brings together all of the three elements (dialogue, heteroglossia, and intertextuality)previously discussed separately. The fragments, strands, and webs referred to in the introduction to the thesis indicate the complexity of contemporary narrative fiction written by women; these. texts are composed of fragments of other, pre-existing discourses, combined to produce various strands of plot and overlapping webs of intrigue. Dialogue emerges as a salient feature of contemporary narrative fiction written by women. Whether it is also a feature of texts written by men, and the implications of their use of this strategy, still remains to be seen. By concentrating on women novelists, the thesis illustrates how Bakhtin's theory can be applied to a feminist analysis and a gendered reading of literature; and indicates the many substantial connections that exist between the texts produced from the late 1970s to early 19908 by the three different Spanish women writers.

Existen numerosas razones para considerar a Jose Luis Sam pedro como un autor fundamental. Octubre, octubre, publicada a principios de los ochenta tras casi veinte anos de composicion, es una de las obras de mayor riqueza conceptual y estilistica de la narrativa espanola del s. XX. En ella cristalizan los temas, las tecnicas y los motivos que caracterizaran, a partir de ese momento, los mundos ficticios de su creador: un universo modelado por el equilibrio entre la mas alta tradici6n poetica y una sorprendente originalidad, y en el que la reafirmaci6n de la identidad, la idea de la coexistencia 0 la tensi6n entre 10 vivido y su dimensi6n mas absoluta se consolidan como nociones centrales de su metafisica. La profunda densidad humana y psicol6gica de los individuos que transitan por sus novelas, entregados a la busqueda constante de si mismos, determina la orientaci6n de este trabajo. EI objeto de esta tesis es indagar en el proceso de construccion de los personajes de Los Circulos del Tiempo tomando como referencia basica la ya clasica organizaci6n binaria de la novela como historia y como palabra. Tiempo, espacio y discurso son, pues, las tres categorias del relato que canalizan la mirada sobre el personaje y descubren, a la vez, las claves del mundo literario de Jose Luis Sampedro. Asi, los dos primeros capitulos giran en torno a la estrecha relaci6n entre tiempo e identidad y desentrarian el sentido de la imagen que da titulo a la trilogia: la de los circulos concentricos. Los dos capitulos siguientes analizan la trascendencia simb61ica del espacio fisico como correlato del hombre interior y ahondan en el motivo del desplazamiento como signo de la transformaci6n espiritual. Los dos capitulos finales, centrados en los conceptos de la selecci6n y el orden narrativo, destacan la funci6n del narrador en el proceso de caracterizaci6n del personaje a traves de categorias como la voz, la perspectiva, las anacronias y los enunciados descriptivos. EI valor critico de este trabajo, justificado ante todo por la ausencia de estudios publicados sobre la obra de Sam pedro, no reside unicamente en el analisis de los mecanismos internos de las novelas de Los Circulos del Tiempo 0 en la consideraci6n de la trilogia como un todo. La intertextualidad ofrece tam bien el camino para iluminar el significado universal de estas novelas y su dialectica constitutiva de sencillez y complejidad.

The literary oblivion Gabriel Miró (Alicante, 1879 – Madrid, 1930) has fallen into nowadays invited a revision of his work. As he was a difficult author, he never had a mass readership. But he did have many more readers than today. Miró was, indeed, a literary eminence. He was awarded distinguished prizes such as the Mariano de Cavia for journalism, and was involved in debates that were very controversial in the media. In this thesis I have discussed the possibility that Miró has been neglected because of a specific way of reading his work. From the very beginning of his literary career, he has been considered a poet in prose, a lyricist or even a stylist, overlooking his qualities as a (Modernist/Avant-Garde) novelist and the ideological and social content that, although subtly, is found in his books. This, of course, distanced him from the reader, as literary taste for the last 100 years or more has favoured the novel of dramatic development which is best represented by the best-seller. It has been argued that it was the Generation of 1927, and especially its poets Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Dámaso Alonso and Gerardo Diego, who are responsible for this lyrical reading. They praised Miró, but their view, although more positive than previous clichés, was still in the sphere of the poet. Certainly, there are stylistic influences (defined here by the broader notion of projections) to be found in the poetry of these authors. However, in order to promote a new and narrative interpretation of Miró‘s work, I have studied how these stylistic devices, as well as narrative techniques and structures, are projected in four of the novelists of this generation – Benjamín Jarnés, Juan Chabás, José Ballester and Carmen Conde.

This thesis is a critical contribution to the study of Colombian novels published between 1951 and 1987 which aims to explore the political and ideological environment, pressures and cultural contexts within which they were shaped. Taking into account the label ‘novelas de la violencia’ applied to many of them this thesis proposes to tackle them as products of historical contingency given the broader implications these novels possess and it asks to what extent and how the novels express the notions of politics and ideology. It approaches, first, the controversial power system of the liberal and conservative parties as understood historically during this period in order to evaluate the politico-ideological power relations that led to novel production. Then, following the link between politics and ideology it offers a close reading of nine representative novels, as case studies, to trace the contingencies mediating the reproduction of bipartisan power together with the necessity of reforms and the demand for political participation experienced by the lower classes. The novels are studied individually and, while drawing upon Jane Tompkins’s notion of the novel as the ‘product of historical contingencies’, the case studies highlight some of the historical aspects introduced earlier, such as bipartisan regular coalitions in the 1950s that, later on, gave rise to the National Front and the guerrilla conflict. In its attempt to go beyond the traditional views on these novels the study also incorporates theoretical views such as those of Terry Eagleton on politics considered as a ‘machine’ that is fuelled by ideological preaching and ‘indoctrination’, Pierre Macherey’s theory of the unspoken as well as the Gramscian notion of the intellectual, among others. Delimiting the field and the specific internal dynamics that characterise the period before the 1990s, the thesis ultimately reveals how these novels incorporate in them the particular issue of the ‘letrado’, its legacy and evolution lying at the centre of Latin American discourse. Offering an analysis on the Colombian ‘letrado’ and its ideological affiliations ranging from communism to liberalism to conservatism, it identifies the respective political affiliations of each of the authors, the role of the intellectual and his impact on the political process in twentieth-century Colombia.

The primary aim of this thesis is to explore and critically interrogate Isabel Allende’s popularity cross-culturally in Britain and Spain. It analyses readers’ responses to Allende’s works as well as the discourses surrounding her public representation, an approach that is ‘readerly’ but must also take account of production and text. This approach is intended to further the understanding of Allende’s work which so far has always been analysed from a textual perspective. However, the relationship between Allende’s popularity, her texts, public representation and readers has not been yet analysed in detail. This thesis is innovative in other ways too. Methodologically, it approaches readers through the under studied cultural form of the reading group. It also incorporates a comparative dimension by looking at the reception of Allende in two different cultural contexts: the British and Spanish respectively. Finding out about Allende’s popularity has involved asking readers about their reading experiences as well as analysing the production of discourses around her public representation. Paul Ricoeur’s (1984, 1988) perspective on authorial intentions and readers’ responses to texts helps in understanding the intricacies surrounding what is involved in reading any text. It draws attention to Allende’s and her publishers’ authorial strategies, her ‘strategies of persuasion’ and the specificity of the lives and contexts of British and Spanish reading publics. Equally, this ‘readerly’ approach draws on feminist audience research and primarily on the work of Ien Ang and Janice Radway. Their work with viewers and readers respectively is particularly useful in establishing and developing methodological parameters for the study of reading groups. As a whole, this thesis contributes to the understanding of Allende’s cross-cultural popularity by situating readers at the centre.

According to critics, post-transition Spain has developed into a neo-baroque, postmodern 'society of the spectacle'. The emphasis on society as spectacle, and identity as performance is evident in the work of Adelaida Garcia Morales, Cristina Fernandez Cubas and Pilar Pedraza. Their writing foregrounds theatricality, performance and ritual, in that characters perform their identity in accordance with audience and setting, seeking to be seen and acting out their fears and desires within their own personal theatres of fantasy. Critics tend to view Spain's neo-baroque spectacle in terms of widespread pessimism, undercut by horror and violence produced when human existence is reduced to mere spectacle and when meaning beyond the superficial play of performances is destroyed. Although the Gothic, undoubtedly a salient feature of much of contemporary Spanish writing, particularly by women, may be understood as an apt mode for the articulation of such pessimism, for writers such as Garcia Morales, Fernandez Cubas and Pedraza, who interpret the Gothic as a neo-baroque, theatrical aesthetic, the Gothic affords a space wherein gendered identity may be reconfigured. Their reworking of Gothic tradition and themes, emphasising the uncanny, horror, abjection, and ambiguity reveals the macabre sense of absence of meaning informing the excessive spectacle. Yet by means of Gothic excess, these writers are able to free up discourse and allow for new configurations of identity. Common themes are present in the works of Garcia Morales, Fernandez Cubas and Pedraza: questions of spectatorship and spectacle, the significance of appearance rather than reality, and writing the self through narrative and theatricality. Most importantly, the void subsumed beneath the play of appearances is foregrounded as the absence and negativity deemed constitutive of identity by recent performance theories informed by post-structuralism and psychoanalysis. Two texts by each Spanish writer are studied in terms of how the excessively visible draws attention to that which is unrepresentable or 'unmarked', in order to challenge the socio-cultural marking of women's identity with imagistic value. That which defies representation is explored in these texts in terms of the abject, the monstrous and the grotesque, which are nonetheless aestheticised to reinterpret notions of horror. Using gender as a category of analysis, this thesis employs diverse theoretical approaches (acknowledging postmodern self-referentiality, pluralism and language games, film theories of the gaze, gender as performance and masquerade, abjection) to examine the neo-baroque Gothic aesthetic created by women writers in the context of postmodern Spain and to analyse how issues of theatricality, performance, spectacle and horror are instrumental to new, empowering conceptualisations of women's identity.

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Lydia Cabrera's career spans much of the twentieth century and her many books provide a unique insight into Afro-Cuban religions, customs, and folktales. Her work crosses the boundaries between ethnography, linguistics and fiction and her texts are inscribed with the dual strands of the African and Iberian cultures that fuse together to form the Cuban. Nonetheless, Cabrera's oeuvre remains relatively unknown outside Spanish-speaking academic circles and to date very little of it has been translated. This research project aims to address Cabrera's unwarranted obscurity by presenting English translations of twelve of her Afro-Cuban tales alongside hitherto unpublished archival material. Polyvocality is identified as a key feature of her work and ways in which 'voice' operates in her four collections of short stories are analysed. It is considered important that all the participants in the story-telling chain be 'heard' in any new presentation of Cabrera's work. This means paying attention to Cabrera as author of the published texts, but also to the informants who were her oral sources, to the translator, and to the reader of the new English versions. The fact that Cabrera's tales often encompass both the scientific (ethnographic) and the artistic (literary), makes the process of translating them a rich and complex endeavour. In formulating a creative response to this complexity, insights are drawn from visual art, concrete poetry, and ethnography. The notion of 'thick translation' (Appiah 1993/2000) provides the theoretical underpinning for the multimodal artefact which is developed. This PhD therefore also crosses disciplines - translation studies and interactive media - and comprises two parts; a written thesis and a DVD-Rom. Ultimately, it is suggested that one future direction for translation is to take a 'visual turn' towards a practice which does more than offer one written text in the place of another.

This thesis examines the various kinds of material (including diary-style writing, impressions of people and places, and notes on work in progress) collected in Carmen Martìn Gaite's Cuadernos de todo and subsequently considers the significance of diaries, letters, and life-writing in her novels of the 1990s. After observations on the importance of diaries and letters in women‟s literature, there is an assessment of such narrative material in the contemporary novel and references to how Foucault's essay on 'self-writing' serves to channel the ideas of the self-reflective capacities of letters and diaries. There follows an examination of Cuadernos de todo, with particular reference to the use of diaries and letters in Martín Gaite's work, their relationship to the 'writing-cure'. The section dedicated to Cuadernos de todo opens with an analysis of the first cuadernos (which were written in the 1960s) as notebooks used by the author as a site for her reflections on society and other matters, themes which are developed in her later novels. Next, there is a discussion of how Martín Gaite used these cuadernos as a writer‟s notebooks, for developing ideas on her novels and essays, showing the close link between the authors 'diaries' and her work, between life and literature. The cuadernos americanos constitute the last part of the assessment of Cuadernos de todo. Written during different periods the author spent on lecture-tours and as a university teacher in the United States, these cuadernos americanos are particularly significant for her development as a novelist. They reveal a new approach to diary-writing as, free from the family and the social commitments she had in Spain, the author found more time for reflection. The last of the cuadernos americanos is also a clear example of the use of diary writing as therapy, of the 'writing-cure'. The final part of the thesis focuses on Martìn Gaite's four novels of the 1990s – in which the use of diaries, letters, and life-writing is especially significant. Here the theories of Donald Winnicott and Nancy Chodorow on child development and motherhood, themes which run troughout Martín Gaite's writing, are discussed to shed additional light on the author's approach to life-writing and fiction.

No description available.