Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-246). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-246). Also available on the Internet.

The Conservative party ruled Colombia from 1886 to 1930. During this period, a coterie of grammarians, poets, and theologians consolidated political power by appealing to literature as a form of rhetorical expertise. The Liberal party took power in 1930 and would hold it until 1946. Recent scholarship has argued that during this period Liberal intellectuals defended the political authority of literary expertise even as they endorsed a modernizing program. Although these charges of hypocrisy are well founded, they tell a limited version of the history of the so-called Liberal Republic, failing to take into full account the work of intellectuals at the edges of the Liberal party’s patronage network. This dissertation considers a series of writer-journalists—including Luis Vidales, Luis Tejada, José Antonio Osorio Lizarazo, José Joaquín Jiménez, and Arnoldo Palacios—who were active in Bogotá between 1920 and 1950. It examines their essays, chronicles, novels, and poems in newspapers and magazines, and less often in books, to argue that they elaborated a new function for literature in Colombia, appealing to the genres of urban journalism and the emerging discipline of urban sociology in order to transform literature into a form of social investigation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2009 May 31

L’écriture de l’auteure colombienne Marvel Moreno (Barranquilla, 1939-Paris 1995) a pour cadre une vision du monde féministe humaniste ; cependant, elle est composée d’un réseau de discours hétérogènes en conflit. Notre travail, depuis une perspective pluridisciplinaire intégrant principalement la théorie et la critique littéraires, la sociologie de la littérature et la théorie féministe, explore les représentations du féminin qui circulent dans l’œuvre à travers trois axes : les discours la parcourant, le système de personnages féminins et le positionnement des voix énonciatrices dans le champ littéraire. Nous affirmons que, sans sortir complètement d’une logique hétérocentrée masculiniste, l’œuvre morénienne s’éloigne de la féminité normative. Comme dans le cas d’une majorité d’auteures, son écriture ne trouve pas encore un lieu dans le canon officiel et patriarcal de la littérature colombienne, latino-américaine et « universel », ceci prouve qu’elle porte un discours subversif proposant d’autres possibilités dans le devenir femme. / The writing of the Colombian author Marvel Moreno (Barranquilla, 1939-Paris 1995) is framed in a feminist humanist world vision. Nonetheless, it is made of a network of heterogeneous conflictive speeches. In this current work and from a multidisciplinary perspective which integrates mainly literary theory and criticism, sociology of literature and feminist theory, our work explores the representations of the feminine which circulates in Moreno’s work thought three axes: the discourses that run through it, the feminine character’s system and the positioning of the enunciating voices in the literary field. We affirm that without entirely departing a hetero-centered masculinist logic, Moreno’s work moves away from the normative femininity. The ruptures it carries out make her writing, just as the majority of all women authors, unable to find a place in the official and patriarchal canon of literature.

This thesis analyzes the political essays of critically-acclaimed and best-selling Colombian author William Ospina (b. March 2, 1954) within the context of the contemporary political Spanish American essays published post 1989. Taking into account his original Romantic answer to the Spanish American left ideological crisis at the end of the 20th century, and the debate which arose among his commentators on the merits of his rhetorical and argumentative techniques used to justify his theses, I examine Ospina´s main political essays using Belgian philosopher Chaïm Perelman's argumentation theory. I claim that, despite his prominence as one of Colombia´s public opinion leaders and most politically engaged intellectuals, his originality within recent Spanish American essay and thought, and the relevance of his warnings against modern society's biggest problems and contradictions, the author’s controversial rhetoric and argumentation fell short of supporting his critique of Western civilization and promoting his Romantic alternatives to current problems. I also claim that Ospina's preference for certain argumentative devices results in literary texts which struggle between the essay and the pamphlet, and oversimplifies the Romantic ideas he tries to defend. Finally, my work has allowed me to point out the lack of academic studies and concrete textual analysis on Ospina´s essays and literary works, the recent Spanish American essay after 1989, and the study of the Spanish American essay’s argumentative purpose, structure and techniques, making this study a first step in the further development of these fields.

No description available.

No description available.

This doctoral dissertation examines the social representation of masculinities in the contemporary Colombian cultural industry. The corpus of the study is composed by the novels of four Colombian writers (Santiago Gamboa, Alonso Sánchez Baute, John Better, and Efraím Medina) and their contributions to SoHo, a magazine for heterosexual men that is considered the Colombian version of Playboy. The research proves that gay and trans male bodies and subjectivities are commodified, spectacularized, and appropriated in order to include them in the late-capitalist logic that Colombia adopted at the beginning of the 90s. This dissertation relies on an interdisciplinary approach that combines Literary, Cultural and Gender Studies, and Queer Linguistics. In the first chapter, I argue that SoHo is a site of hybridization where local, regional, global, as well as hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses about male Colombian sexuality concur. The second chapter focuses on the representation of gay and trans masculinities in Locas de felicidad (2009) by John Better and Al diablo la maldita primavera (2007) by Alonso Sánchez Baute, and shows how these Colombian authors question the neoliberal policies implemented in their country by constructing the male gay body as a commodity. Such construction reveals that LGBTQ subjects can only be fully considered citizens if they are useful to the imperatives of a liberal market economy. In chapter three, I explore the connection between Colombia's armed conflict, neoliberal policies, and masculinities in the novel Plegarias nocturnas (2012) by Santiago Gamboa. In this analysis I demonstrate that a violent, protectionist, and liberal masculine figure was erected in Colombia's national discourse as one of the means to cope with the longstanding military conflict in the country. Plegarias nocturnas contests this figure by emphasizing queer ways of living. The final chapter deals with Sexualidad de la Pantera Rosa (2004) by Efraím Medina and shows that although the subaltern protagonist of the novel presents himself as a critic of patriarchy, the power of his criticism is concealed through the use of an ironic and ambiguous discourse that, in the end, leads to the conservation of his heterosexual dominance. This research project is the first to analyze contemporary Colombian masculinities. The study of the rhetorical strategies employed by several writers to portray late capitalist masculinities enriches our knowledge of 20th and 21st-century Latin American literature demonstrating how it reflects the sociopolitical and economic changes of this period. In addition, by looking at how Colombian masculinities intertwine with regional and global gender politics, this research contributes to the current debates about sexual minorities and their role in maintaining neoliberal normative ways of living. Therefore, this study proposes innovative discussions regarding how the South reproduces and/or contests hegemonic discourses.

Dans le panorama de la littérature colombienne contemporaine, Jorge Franco (Medellín, 1962) et Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Bogota, 1973) sont deux écrivains dont l’œuvre, aussi riche que variée, leur a valu une reconnaissance indéniable dans le champ de l’écriture littéraire en castillan. Les univers fictionnels de leurs romans étant cadencés par le mouvement et le croisement d’itinéraires, cette thèse explore les principales caractéristiques de différentes dynamiques du déplacement dans leur prose, notamment dans les romans Paraíso Travel (2001) et Melodrama (2006), de Jorge Franco et Los informantes (2004) et El ruido de las cosas al caer (2011), de Juan Gabriel Vásquez.Ce déplacement, choisi ou contraint, planifié ou spontané, se présente dans l’œuvre de chaque écrivain sous la forme du voyage, de la déambulation, de l’évasion, de la fuite ou de l’exil. Ainsi, ce travail mobilise les concepts de centre et périphérie, de nation, d’immigration, de langue première et seconde, le croisement de cultures et l’ouverture d’horizons étant au cœur de la réflexion.Dans quelle mesure le drame de l’histoire colombienne représente-t-il un déclencheur d’évasion majeur dans les romans de Jorge Franco et de Juan Gabriel Vásquez ? Comment le voyage dans le passé constitue-t-il un outil de travail collectif au service d’une tentative d’identification générationnelle ? Pourquoi et comment la translation de l’individu d’un espace à l’autre peut-elle être à l’origine de sa transformation ? Enfin, dans quelle mesure s’agit-il d’itinéraires textuels clés dans la création artistique ? Cette thèse observe de près la démultiplication de l’espace et du temps : une superposition de chemins qui dynamise le parcours de l’écriture.Le travail s’ouvre sur une étude de la mort en tant que déclencheur discursif et fictionnel, en ce qu’elle lance à la fois le départ de la quête littéraire et la création de l’espace par l’acte même de la déambulation. L’errance et la fuite, métaphores de ce grand voyage vers la mort qu’est la vie, sont indissociables de la dynamique de l’écriture. De même, l’analyse porte sur la relation entre la fictionnalisation de la mort et le spectre de l’effacement de l’instance auctoriale. Ainsi les notions d’origine, de point de départ, de destination et de point d’arrivée se conjuguent-elles avec les notions de transit, de passage, de prolongement et de continuité.La seconde partie étudie comment le déplacement combine l’exploration et la création de l’espace urbain dans une dynamique qui cherche à éclairer les espaces obscurs de villes comme Bogota, New York et Paris au cours du XXe siècle. Il s’agit d’analyser l’approche littéraire de l’histoire récente, procédé où la mémoire, la peur et le déplacement seront les pistes mêmes de la compréhension des secrets de ces villes.Enfin, ce travail s’intéresse à l’entreprise des voyages extra-urbain et transfrontalier, motifs qui supposent le questionnement des notions d’idéalisation et d’exotisme, conditionnées par le déplacement physique à travers le territoire, la nation et leurs limites. Ce chapitre porte également un regard sur le voyage temporel, la convocation subjective et « désordonnée » du passé et les différents degrés de temporalité, deux aspects liés à la construction filmique et à la dynamique chronotopique du récit. Ce voyage temporel s’avère en effet nécessaire à l’identification générationnel d’un je et à la compréhension de soi. Ainsi, l’écriture à distance et l’écriture de la distance permettent une ouverture vers de nouveaux horizons qui facilitent la compréhension des épisodes traumatiques de l’histoire.En somme, à travers les dynamiques du déplacement, cette thèse s’interroge sur la place que Jorge Franco et Juan Gabriel Vásquez accordent au sujet déambulateur dans un monde en mouvement. / In the panorama of contemporary Colombian literature, Jorge Franco (Medellin, 1962) and Juan Gabriel Vásquez (1973) are two writers whose works, as rich as varied, have granted them an undeniable acknowledgement within the field of literature written in Castilian. Since movement and the cross between different itineraries set the cadence of the fictional universes of their novels, this thesis explores the principal characteristics of diverse types of dynamics of displacement in their works, particularly in Jorge Franco’s novels Paraíso Travel (2001) and Melodrama (2006), and in Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s Los informantes (2004) and El ruido de las cosas al caer (2011).This displacement, whether chosen or under duress, whether planned or spontaneous, appears in the works of each writer in the form of travel, wander, evasion, escape or exile. This work mobilises thereby the concepts of centre and periphery, nation, immigration, first and second language, placing the crossroad of culture and the opening of horizons at the heart of reflection.To what extent the drama of Colombian history represents a major trigger for evasion in the novels of Jorge Franco and Juan Gabriel Vásquez? How travelling to the past constitutes a tool of collective work in order to find a generational identification? Why and how the transposition from one space to another can be the origin of the transformation of the individual? Finally, to what extent these textual itineraries are the key to artistic creation? This thesis closely observes the dispersal of space and time: a superposition of paths that galvanises the writing’s route.The work opens with a study of death as a discursive and fictional trigger, since it launches the start of literary quest as well as the creation of space by the act of walking. Wandering and escaping, both understood as metaphors of that great journey towards death that defines life, are inseparable from the dynamic of writing. Likewise, the analysis takes a look at the relation between the fictionalisation of death and the spectrum of the erasure of the auctorial stage. Therefore, different notions such as origin, starting point, destination and point of arrival are combined with other notions such as transit, passing, prolongation and continuity.Displacement also combines the exploration and the creation of urban space, within a dynamic that endeavours to enlighten both the dark spaces of cities like Bogota, New York, Paris or Medellin, and the most obscure zones of their history, during 20th and 21st centuries. By analysing the literary approach of recent history, this part studies how memory, fear and displacement are the clues to understand history. Furthermore, this chapter takes an interest in temporal travelling; a subjective and “disordered” convocation of the past and different degrees of temporality: two aspects that are connected to a filmic construction and a chronotopic dynamic of the tale. This temporal journey proves to be necessary for both the generational identification and the comprehension of the self.Finally, this work analyses the undertaking of a cross-border journey, a motif that implies questioning notions such as idealisation and exoticism, which are conditioned by the physical displacement throughout territory, nation and their limits. Therefore, both writing from the distance and writing the distance lead to the study of the figure of the writer as a traveller. Trespassing boundaries resonates with the universality of wandering and facing history at the dawn of 21st century: an opening to new horizons that facilitates the comprehension of traumatic episodes of history.By studying the dynamics of displacement in the works of Jorge Franco and Juan Gabriel Vásquez, this thesis actually wonders about the place that both writers accord to the wanderer subject within a moving world.