The Spanish novelist Jesus Fernandez Santos (1926-1988) published twelve novels and four collections of short stories between 1954 and 1988. Over the years his work has been the subject of many articles and five monographs which have, overwhelmingly, studied his fiction in terms of changing narrative modes, constant themes, geographical determinism in rural communities, and existential anguish. However, an important and valid approach to analysing his work involves the assessment of Jesus Fernandez Santos as a dissident voice within the system, a serious critic of the main ideological tenets of the Francoist regime. From his belief that man is a product of historical circumstances, he explored the consequences of the socio-economic and political structures of the country and the prevailing culture on the lives of his characters, exposing the negative effects in terms of lack of sense of personal worthiness, alienation, inability to communicate with others, lack of community spirit, and so on. In so doing, he challenged the triumphalistic myth of the regime: that the Spanish individual and national identity constituted an eternal essence that Franco was helping to safeguard and develop. Thus, Jesus Fernandez Santos's narrative can be viewed as a counter-discourse. In my thesis I study three aspects of the narrative of Fernandez Santos that have been particularly neglected in previous studies. First, the theme of challenging social values by making individuals aware of the injustices of the system and presenting the transformation of social and political relationships as a valid goal in life. The author maintained that the personal is always political, that we are all part of the system. Second, I examine his perception of Catholicism as a negative influence on the development of the self and his criticism of the Catholic Church as an institution that colluded with Franco's regime in order to maintain the political and social status quo. A third aspect of Jesus Fernandez Santos's narrative that I have studied is the author's attitudes to women and feminist issues. Although Fernandez Santos's sympathetic approach to women has been acknowledged in general terms by others, I have undertaken a more detailed analysis. In my thesis I have studied how the author includes women's voices to present their perspective within the general framework of society and culture.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis studies the concept of the reading subject in the short stories of Argentine writer Julio Cortazar (1914-1984) following the model of intersubjective communication developed by German philosopher Jorgen Habermas (1929- ). According to this, the subject has to overcome an initial and conventional phase of the 'self, which represents an isolated individual who is unable to communicate, but who merely complies with established social norms and behaviours. This attitude can be associated with the behaviour of the 'subject-fama' which Cortazar describes in his narrative. Similarly, in relation to the reader ('tu'), this conventional state corresponds to a passive consumer, whose practice is analogous to that of the 'subject-fama'. In order to move beyond this conventional phase of the 'self, the reading subject has to overcome his/her solitude through a search for and participation in the alter ego. Through this process, the reading subject adopts a critical attitude in the face of social and literary expectations, to become a ccronopio-c6mplice'. This type of reading subject rejects conventional structures, and follows a poetic intuition which is intended to enable him/her to discover a more complete form: to achieve ontological possession. However, Cortazar also sees it, as necessary to reform the traditional line of occidental thought, in order to develop a stage of post-conventional identity through social and narrative engagement and participation. Hence, we relate this new phase of the 'self with the socialist notion of the 'hombre nuevo' ('new man'), which Cortazar conceives as the ideal subject for a new type of society. In order to achieve this, the 'self' has to undertake an internal revolution which would transform not only the subject's social consciousness but also his/her mental and linguistic structures. As a result, the reader would be able to become a 'se-lector', in other words, a type of reader who, like the 'hombre nuevo', is self-conscious and self-determining.

Using psychoanalytic literary criticism based around the theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, this thesis will show how the politico-literary drive of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Peruvian novels mirrors the power of the evolving ideological word—the internationalisation of a political agenda in language—that has influenced a transition in his writing over the decades. For sure, Vargas Llosa’s political trajectory is visible in the novels under discussion, from the passion of his social realism to his neo-liberal desire for a modernised Peruvian society. However, I intend to show how Vargas Llosa has never really changed his socio-political identity, given his deep-rooted, privileged position in Peruvian and Western society. To emphasise this, the novels under discussion do not appear in chronological order. Moreover, it is my intention to show how the resonance of ideology in the <i>subtext </i>unveils an illusory approach to writing, revealing an <i>Imaginary Order</i> of changeable political identification, which leads to the novelist’s deep disillusionment with the <i>Symbolic Order</i> of the Peruvian political scene. This dismay subsequently imbues Vargas Llosa’s <i>Peruvian</i> narrative with neo-liberal desire, only for this desire to be purged once and for all in the final novel under analysis. In short, Vargas Llosa’s one-time socialist desire for Peru, <i>la</i><i> patria</i>, or the metaphorical (m)otherland, as I choose to call it, is re-examined as a politico-literary obsession, and is shown to transform itself into a neo-liberal desire that becomes temporarily trapped, then re-trapped, in the late-capitalist web of literary phallogocentrism, most apparent in the socio-political power struggles symbolised in his erotic fiction. I use a broad spectrum of psychoanalytic theory throughout, centred around Lacanian notions, to re-examine the depiction of the patriarchal social order in those novels set in Vargas Llosa’s homeland. However, the idea of this other land, bearing in mind the feminine gender of the Spanish noun <i>la</i><i> patria</i>, also involves a deeper interpretation of the Peruvian novels based on psychoanalytic concepts with respect to the mother.

No description available.

No description available.