The seventeenth century saw an epistemological shift, which resulted in indeterminacy with regards to the supernatural. This indeterminacy is exploited by María de Zayas, albeit not necessarily consciously. In twelve out of her twenty novellas something happens that falls within the remit of the supernatural sensu lato – in the early modern period a crucial distinction was made between the supernatural sensu stricto (the miraculous) and the preternatural (the marvellous). Sometimes she treats magic as real, sometimes as false, now as a prank, then as a harrowing experience. But even when magic is described as efficacious, her discourse is permeated by indeterminacy. Her stories of the Devil may seem traditional at a first glance, but closer inspection reveals that the author plays a clever game with the reader. The Devil’s purported good deed in one of the tales is nothing but subterfuge, fooling protagonists and modern critics alike. Her miracles share much with classical hagiography, except that in some instances she imbues her tales with an almost Gothic sense of the uncanny. This also applies to other episodes, including premonitory dreams, disembodied voices and the undead. There is no doubt that Zayas uses the supernatural as a means to shock and titillate her audience. As such it ties in with other transgressive aspects of her work. But if she courted the vulgo with her sensationalist stories, some of which were recycled as relaciones de sucesos, she also aimed to impress the culto with her baroque narrative labyrinth where nothing is what it seems. Not only are women innocent victims of irrational male violence, they are subjected to evil spells and the influence of malignant stars more powerful than free will. There really is no way out for them.

This thesis explores the convergences and divergences in the personal conceptualizations of play, space and idealized reader constructs as they are manifest in the short fictions of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, the sudden fictions of AnaMaría Shua and, more recently, in the hypertext fictions of Belén Gache. The four chapters that make up this thesis offer an in-depth examination of how the narrative strategies employed by each individual author are used in an attempt to imbue the reading process with a game-like quality that serves to reduce the ontological distances between author, text and reader. As such, this thesis not only identifies key developments in the thematic and stylistic concerns of the Argentine short story, but also situates the reader’s position in relation to what I call the ‘narrative space’. This ‘narrative space’ refers to a spatially-inflected manifestation of the cognitive, imaginative and emotional experiences of the ideal reader construct that foregrounds his/her role in the co-production of narrative meaning. Such a focus not only allows this thesis to engage with each author’s individual contribution to the literary politics of the contemporary Argentine short story, but also facilitates a serious consideration of the short story’s ongoing dialogues with increasingly prevalent new media technologies.

This thesis investigates personal development and identity formation in Esther Tusquets and the female protagonists in her trilogy, composed of El mismo mar de todos los veranos (EMM) (1978), El amor es un juego solitario (AJS) (1979) and Varada tras el último naufragio (VUN) (1980). Recent autobiographic publications had made it possible to shed light on the author behind the literature and had provided indications that supported a hypothesis of life influencing literature. This thesis approaches the question of identity formation primarily through the female protagonists in the trilogy. Their emotional and sexual development, analysed in Chapter 2 and 3, is seen as indicatory of a similar developmental path taken by Tusquets. Chapter 2 and 3 therefore focus on the protagonists’ identity development in emotional and sexual terms and elicit further parallels that exist between the literary plot and the author’s life by complementing the analysis with a conceptual background on autobiography, auto-fiction and psychoanalysis in women’s development. The backdrop of auto-fiction suggested that textual analysis of Tusquets’ autobiographic literature should also allow for a margin of scepticism regarding the reliability of its content. The conclusions derived from Chapters 2 and 3, were seen as paramount because they allowed for putting the later analysis of the author on issues, such as love, sex, motherhood, career, solidarity, individuality and independence, into context. The objective of Chapter 4 was to extract Tusquets’ perspective on womanhood and identity put forward in the trilogy. To do so, her definition of femininity, evidenced by her autobiographic works and her novels, was analysed against the backdrop of patriarchal history, thought and theory provided by Marilyn French, Kate Millett and Gerda Lerner. All this led to a conclusive portrait about Esther Tusquets’, her identity and development in regards to womanhood, as well as, a renewed analysis of her protagonists and their identity formation process.

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This thesis analyses seven of Galdós’s key Novelas contemporáneas – Lo prohibido (1884-1885), the four Torquemada novels (1889-1895), Ángel Guerra (1891) and Misericordia (1897) – in the context of contemporary discourses regarding the socio-economic changes which Spanish society had experienced from the 1830s. Adopting a socio-historical approach, this study emphasizes the variety of ideologies which Galdόs’s contemporaries embraced in response to the changing socio-economic circumstances of their own time, as well as the author’s own engagement with these diverse currents of thought. The particular focus is to examine Galdós’s preoccupation in these novels with questions relating to the creation and distribution of wealth in the modern money-centred society of Restoration Spain. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 analyse in detail the historical account of the ascent of the bourgeoisie which Galdós presents in Lo prohibido, the Torquemada series and Ángel Guerra. In these novels, Galdós links the wealth of his bourgeois characters to the speculative climate which resulted from the economic policies of the liberal State. In Ángel Guerra and the last of the Torquemada novels, Torquemada y San Pedro, Galdós brings into focus the social effects of the most representative of these liberal policies, Mendizábal’s 1835-1836 desamortización. I examine Galdós’s engagement here with the intense contemporary debate on this controversial policy. Chapter 4 analyses Galdós’s treatment of the themes of pauperism and charity in Misericordia in relation to contemporary discourses on the cuestión social. This study reveals Galdós’s perception, which he shares with other contemporary authors, of living through a time of profound social transformation.

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This thesis explores representations of menstruation in contemporary literature produced by Latin American and Spanish women writers. The study is motivated by the need to open up the subject of menstruation, in both literary studies and wider terms, and analyses works in which authors decouple menstruation from traditional, patriarchal conceptualisations in which periods are limited to the ambit of reproduction and defined negatively, as shameful, an embarrassment or a burden. This study identifies contemporary works from across Spanish-speaking countries that engage with menstruation as well as detecting and analysing trends and approaches to menstruation and recurrent images associated with periods. This shows that menstruation, despite its taboo status, is a subject widely explored in women’s literature in Spanish. The four main content chapters explore the alternative imaginaries that question traditional representations, whether by displaying overtly subversive representations or through a more muted approach. These chapters are structured thematically around the axes of eroticism, trauma, transitions and rape, and demonstrate that menstruation can be conceptualised from a plurality of perspectives which avoid the traditional association with fertility. Moreover, the study demonstrates that menstruation plays a significant role within these texts. Therefore, this study also creates a corpus of ‘menstrual texts’, a term coined to refer to works which not only make menstruation visible but also make use of it aesthetically and assign to menstruation an important role within the narrative, including as a main theme, image or motif, plot trigger, and/or as a narrative device. The comparative chapters analyse a number of selected texts, namely: Diamela Eltit’s Vaca sagrada (1991), Andrea Jeftanovic’s Escenario de guerra (2000), Solitario de amor (1988) and other works by Cristina Peri Rossi, Marta Sanz’s Daniela Astor y la caja negra (2013), Esther Tusquets’ El mismo mar de todos los veranos (1978) and Ana Clavel’s Las Violetas son flores del deseo (2007).

No description available.

This thesis analyses the English versions of Spanish chivalric romance as examples of translation practice in early modern Europe. It focuses specifically on three works: Margaret Tyler’s "The Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood" (c. 1578), a translation from Book I of the Spanish romance "Espejo de Príncipes y Caballeros" (1555) by Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra; Anthony Munday’s "Palmerin D’Oliva" (1588), Parts I and II, a translation from the French "L’Histoire de Palmerin D’Olive" (1546), which Jean Maugin had translated from the anonymous Spanish romance "Palmerín de Olivia" (1511); and Books I to IV of Anthony Munday’s "Amadis de Gaule" (1590-1619), all translated from the first four books (1540-1544) of the French "Amadis de Gaule" series, translated by Nicolas Herberay de Essarts from the Spanish "Amadís de Gaula" (1508) by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. I analyse the way in which Tyler and Munday use their translation practice to reflect or comment on aspects of their contemporary culture. I examine the way that the translators’ modifications work next to their literal translation. Through a comparative study between the translations and their sources, I focus specifically on how both translators draw attention to the topics of marriage and sexuality in their texts. I also analyse in particular Tyler’s treatment of the classical material in her source and Munday’s attention to the topic of religion. In this respect, this thesis fills particular gaps in the knowledge of literal translations and of early modern romance. Moreover, it widens the scope for exploring the figures of Margaret Tyler and Anthony Munday, showing that the gendered aspect of the former’s translation is only one aspect of her practice and that the latter’s work is more complex than has commonly been assumed.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the representation of Cubanness in a selection of Leonardo Padura Fuentes’s detective novels by analysing the different identity aspects which appear in his work. I argue that Padura's representation of Cuban identity is interesting because it challenges any essentialist and homogenising model, in favour of a wider and more complex interpretation of contemporary Cubanness. My analysis is framed around the relationship between time, space and identity, taking into account the different social elements that inform identity construction, and analysing how they interact with the spatio-temporal context and change accordingly in response to it. Considering identity as the result of a set of positions shifting across time and space, each of the chapters of the thesis compares official imaginaries of the Cuban nation and national identity with alternative and different representations of Cubanness, in order to demonstrate the arbitrariety of any rigid identity classification. Thus, in the chapter on Pasado perfecto and Vientos de cuaresma, I analyse how Padura, thanks to a multidirectional approach to memory, contests the monolithic image of the Cuban past and proposes a summative and not exclusive approach to identity construction. In the chapter on La neblina del ayer this multiple approach to Cuban history, space and identity is expanded and incremented through the concept of the palimpsest. The chapter on Máscaras uses the concept of gender and identity performativity to show how Padura describes the multiple and conflicting facets that coexist within this definition of contemporary Cubanness. Finally, the analysis of Paisaje de otoño expands Padura’s challenge to any essentialist and exclusive approach to Cuban nation and identity, including the diaspora community in his representation of contemporary Cubanness. The goal of this analysis is to shed new light on Padura’s work and on his representation of Cubanness as a de-territorialised, impure, complex and fluid form of identity.