This thesis considers the novels of Carlos Fuentes from a thematic point of view, as well as looking at the place of the writer in Mexican narrative tradition. It also presents a brief history of the Mexican novel.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, 1975. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 1999. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 77 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-77).

Thesis (M.A.I.S.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:45:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniele Aparecida Pereira Zaratin.pdf: 737505 bytes, checksum: 74e6eaa4801e6696202d2e70009f1b16 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-07-31 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / En este trabajo de maestría analizamos los aspectos de la literatura fantástica presentes en La novela Constancia (1990), de Carlos Fuentes, a partir de una línea de investigación que La incluye en una trayectoria de otros textos fantásticos del autor mexicano. Al examinar lãs narrativas de Los días enmascarados (1954), del ciclo narrativo El mal del tiempo y de Inquieta Compañía, percibimos la reiteración de determinados ejes en esas obras, entre lós cuales están la irrupción de lo insólito como desestabilizador de una percepción de realidad racionalista y la presencia de personajes femeninos ambiguos y reveladores de ló sobrenatural. A partir de eso, primeramente reflexionamos sobre la manifestación de ló fantástico en esas narrativas, señalamos cuáles son esos ejes comunes entre ellas y buscamos posibles interpretaciones para esas recurrencias. Posteriormente, contemplamos la novela Constancia e investigamos cómo ocurre la construcción de lo insólito en ese texto teniendo em cuenta los resultados obtenidos anteriormente y las teorías postuladas por estudiosos del género fantástico y de la obra de Carlos Fuentes. Esperamos con eso aportar nuevas perspectivas interpretativas sobre esa narrativa, al producir un análisis que reflexiona sobre los procedimientos de lo fantástico en esa obra (revelaciones) y sobre la presencia de elementos que la inscriben como parte de una tradición de otros textos fantásticos del autor mexicano (continuidades). / Neste trabalho de mestrado, analisamos os aspectos da literatura fantástica presentes na novela Constancia (1990), de Carlos Fuentes, a partir de uma linha de investigação que a inclui numa trajetória de outras narrativas fantásticas do autor mexicano. Ao examinar as narrativas de Los días enmascarados (1954), do ciclo narrativo El mal del tiempo e de Inquieta Compañía (2004), verificamos a reiteração de determinados eixos nessas obras, entre os quais estão a irrupção do insólito como desestabilizador de uma percepção de realidade racionalista e a presença de personagens femininas ambíguas e reveladoras do sobrenatural. A partir disso, primeiramente, refletimos sobre a manifestação do fantástico nessas narrativas, apontamos quais são esses eixos comuns entre elas e buscamos possíveis interpretações para essas recorrências. Posteriormente, contemplamos a novela Constancia e investigamos de que maneira ocorre a construção do insólito nesse texto tendo em vista os resultados obtidos anteriormente e as teorias postuladas por estudiosos do gênero fantástico e da obra de Carlos Fuentes. Esperamos com isso iluminar novas perspectivas interpretativas sobre essa narrativa, ao produzir uma análise que reflete sobre os procedimentos do fantástico nessa obra (revelações) e sobre a presença de elementos que a inscrevem como parte de uma tradição de outros textos fantásticos do autor mexicano (continuidades).

This doctoral thesis analyses the depiction of the historical topics of Conquest and Revolution across the literary writings of Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) and Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012). These historical tropes constitute core topics of reflection throughout their literary and critical works, stressing the interplay between literature and history. I propose the concept of literary historicism to analyse their portrayal of historical topics and characterise the role of history in their poetics. This concept denotes the historical awareness that underpins the authors’ literary reinterpretations of historical events; their use of a historicist writing methodology; and the critical relationship established to historiographical sources and narratives. I argue that the authors’ deliberate historicism characterises their narratives, challenges disciplinary boundaries and posits literature as an alternative medium for the production of historical interpretation. This comparative study focuses on a corpus of fifteen fictional works from both authors that depict Conquest and Revolution. The first section analyses the authors’ literary portrayal of the Conquest of Mexico (1521) and stresses the relationship established to the historical sources consulted and their literary reinterpretation of this historical event. An assessment of the reflections and symbolisms embodied by their literary-historical figures elucidates the authors’ understanding of the Conquest. Thus, this section demonstrates the defining character of these authors’ literary historicism in their writing methodology and semantic interpretation when addressing historical tropes. The second section explores Fuentes’s and Carpentier’s depiction of historical Revolutions including the French, Mexican, Haitian and Cuban Revolutions. This section comprises a transversal and diachronic analysis of their Revolution cycles to demonstrate recurrent narrative, thematic and stylistic patterns in Fuentes’s and Carpentier’s literary portrayals of this historical phenomenon. I highlight the further meaning that these patterns acquire in their works, articulating a critical assessment of these historical revolutions. This thesis adds to the scholarship on these authors from an interdisciplinary perspective that re-centres attention on History. Through the concept of Literary Historicism, I demonstrate the existence of a central concern in their oeuvres to critically reassess the Latin American past and its historical interpretations from literary discourse. This study contributes to the understanding of history and literature in Latin America, for it analyses the interactions between these branches of written culture.

The works of Carlos Fuentes are well known for their thematics of History, how the past continues to influence the present despite mechanisms of historical omission, oblivion, or repression. This dissertation offers a spectral reading of a selection of Fuentes’ works—La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), Cambio de piel (1967), Terra nostra (1975), and Una familia lejana (1980)—that represents his vision of Mexican, Latin American, and Transatlantic history. A spectral reading refers to the hidden or indirect ways that the past continues to manifest in the present as specters, ghosts—unconscious and unwitting remembrances of repressed or unknown material that elude conscious recollection but continue nonetheless to linger and impede healthy progress. Concepts from trauma theory and psychoanalysis thus provide a framework for this critical approach. Fuentes’ representations of history often comprise violent events that resonate as ghostly presences haunting contemporary society. Our reading makes use of concepts such as Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s “crypt” and “phantom” as well as Marianne Hirsch’s “postmemory” in order to show how historical traumas and violent events are transmitted across generations as a spectral inheritance. Through this theoretical lens, a spectral reading sheds new light upon Carlos Fuentes’ use of cyclical time, doubling, narrative experimentation, and intertextuality that function together to represent the effects of violent history as a spectral legacy on individual, family, national, regional, and global scales. The works studied in this dissertation’s six chapters represent distinct moments of Fuentes’ narrative production. Despite the works’ various forms of representation—realist, Gothic, modern, postmodern—, their common thread is the timeless burden of historical violence and trauma. Fuentes presents a pessimistic vision of the ways in which contemporary society ineffectively bears or disavows this burden. The works thus show a possibility for embracing the Other and engaging in the task of working through trauma, although this potential reconciliation remains constantly thwarted. History, according to Fuentes, remains trapped in a purgatory of violence. Yet the hope can be gleaned, however, that the reader may take up this healing labor. While full reconciliation continues to elude us, engagement with the ghosts of the past is a healthy first step.

This dissertation examines the presence of postmodern episteme in the Spanish American narrative discourse at the threshold of the 21st century with an emphasis on three writers: Carlos Fuentes Macias, Mario Vargas Llosa and Leonardo Padura Fuentes. Those authors are representative figures of this literary period in different regions, and they have written novels considered by the critique as postmodern. In their novels, this episteme is present in particular characteristics from this aesthetic and literary period, mostly the theoretical principles of Jean Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Michael Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, Brian McHale, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon, Raymond Williams and Seymour Menton. All of these postmodern theories are reflected in the strategies and mechanisms used by these leading Latin American narrators and in the meaning that is conveyed through the novelistic discourse and how they point to the philosophical, aesthetical, and pragmatic cosmovision from this period. Chapter I functions as a theoretical approach to characteristics of Modernity, Postmodernity and their literary implications. Therefore, this study offers an outlook about what Postmodernity is from the sociological and anthropological points of view; what their key characteristics are; who the fundamental theorists are both in the international and Spanish American context; how Postmodernist‘s influence on art postulates a new aesthetic paradigm: the postmodern; and what formal, thematic and hermeneutic changes it has generated in the narrative genre. Finally, a critique and a personal stance in this polemic are offered. Chapters II, III and IV examine specifically the strategies and mechanisms used by these authors -Carlos Fuentes Macias, Mario Vargas Llosa and Leonardo Padura- to construct the postmodern narrative discourse in their respective novels -La silla del Águila, for Fuentes; La fiesta del chivo, for Vargas Llosa; and La novela de mi vida, for Padura-. These chapters disclose the presence of this episteme in the above mentioned works. The epilog concludes this study by pointing out the common characteristics of postmodernity present in each novel, and, in more general terms, the characteristics of this major Spanish American literary period in the narrative.

A partir des années 1960, la fiction hispano-américaine connaît un essor sans précédent, auquel la critique littéraire internationale a donné le nom très contesté de boom. Le principal problème de ce terme est qu’il renvoie à un phénomène touchant à la fois la production et la diffusion de la littérature hispano-américaine.Notre travail prose une relecture du phénomène à travers l’étude de la traduction et de la réception de Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez et Mario Vargas Llosa en France et aux Pays-Bas entre 1960 et 1973.En retraçant l’historique des premières traductions et en analysant le contexte éditorial dans lequel elles sont arrivées, nous montrons l’existence d’écarts profonds séparant les deux pays dans la traduction des quatre auteurs, n’illustrant pas toujours leur position théorique au sein de l’espace mondial de la traduction, et le rôle importants joués par certains intermédiaires culturels. Par le biais d’une étude de traduction et de réception, nous mettons aussi en évidence le rôle de médiation joué par les traducteurs et la critique littéraire entre les œuvres originales et le lecteur final dans les deux pays de référence. / Spanish-American fiction has been developing unprecedented from the 1960’s, what has been given the highly contested name of boom by international literary critics. The main problem of that term is that it refers to a phenomenon affecting both the production and distribution of Spanish-American literature.Our work is a reading of the phenomenon through the study of translation and reception of Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa in France and in the Netherlands between 1960 and 1973.In tracing the history of the early translations and analysis of the editorial context in which they arrived, we show the existence of profound differences between the two countries in the translation of the four authors, which do not illustrate their theoretical position in the world space of translation, and the important role played by certain cultural intermediaries. Through a study of translation and reception, we also highlight the mediating role played by translators and literary criticism between the original texts and the final reader in the two reference countries.

[pt] Esta dissertação de mestrado analisa a obra Todas as famílias felizes (2009), do escritor mexicano Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012), dentro da perspectiva micropolítica dos afetos circulantes. O livro é composto por dezesseis histórias, que narram acontecimentos em diferentes famílias, intercaladas por igual número de coros, todos independentes entre si. Não encontramos personagens repetidos, nem um desfecho onde finalmente tudo se articule e ganhe uma conclusão. Também não existem capítulos, nem partes. As histórias familiares são narradas de forma tradicional - com início, meio e fim - enquanto os coros são textos mais curtos e narrados livremente. O maior deles toma seis páginas e o mais curto, apenas uma linha. A partir de um ponto de vista literário, esta dissertação buscará refletir sobre as relações em jogo no ambiente íntimo e familiar como também no espaço comunitário dos coros. A gramática dos afetos, bem como sua materialização na distribuição dos corpos no espaço social, se tornou oportuna para a reflexão sobre as zonas de contato entre os diferentes corpos: individuais e coletivos. Em particular, aponto a relevância da violência, do medo e do rancor nos processos afetivos presentes na obra, assim como proponho a leitura dos coros como elemento trágico e, ao mesmo tempo, estranho e distante. Sendo Fuentes um escritor marcado pelo boom literário das décadas de 1960 e 1970, reviso as principais características e argumentações críticas acerca do período. Por se tratar de uma obra da fase final e menos prestigiada, observo como a aposta dos autores do boom na recriação de uma comunidade parece não mais possível para Carlos Fuentes. / [en] This research analyzes Happy Families (2009) by the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012), prioritizing the micropolitical perspective of circulating affections. The book consists of sixteen stories, which narrate events in different families, interspersed with an equal number of choirs, all independent of each other. We find no repeating characters, nor an outcome where everything finally articulates and gains a conclusion. There are no chapters or parts either. Family stories are narrated in a traditional way - beginning, middle and end - while choirs are shorter texts and narrated freely. The largest of them takes six pages and the shortest, just one line. From a literary point of view, this dissertation will seek to reflect on the relationships at stake in the intimate and family environment as well as in the community space of choirs, prioritizing the micropolitical perspective of circulating affections. The grammar of affections, as well as their materialization in the distribution of bodies in the social space, became opportune for reflection on the zones of contact among different bodies: individual and collective. Furthermore, it examines the relevance of violence, fear and resentment in the affective processes found in the book, as well as the role of the choirs as a tragic and, at the same time, as a strange and distant element. Knowing that Fuentes is a writer marked by the literary boom of the 1960s and 1970s, it reviews the main characteristics and critical arguments about the period. Because it is a work of his final and less prestigious phase, I observe how the bet of the authors of the boom in the recreation of a community seems no longer possible for Carlos Fuentes.