El proposito de esta tesis es de examinar la intertextualidad que aparece en la novela Tunisima, de Elena Poniatowska y analizar hasta que punto ella ha usado diferentes voces. Elena Poniatowska durante diez anos recopilo material para su obra. En ella relata la vida de la fotografa y revolucionaria, Tina Modotti, durante los anos 1929 a 1942. La novela Tinisima tiene treinta y siete secciones a lo que la he divido en tres partes. Cada una de esas partes tiene que ver con la vida de los companeros de Modotti que toman mas importancia en el desarrollo de la obra. En la primera parte Julio Antonio Mella es presentado, ahi vemos una intertextualidad historica no solo de Mexico sino de otros paises. La segunda parte introduce a Edward Weston y por ella desf ilan un gran numero de personas de la sociedad mexicana de esa epoca. Poniatowska hace esto usando como palimpsesto el The Daybooks of Edward Weston. En la ultima parte hace una intertextualidad tanto oral como historica porque ahi refine varias entrevistas de gente que conocio a Tina, especialmente la de Vittorio Vidali. Cada parte tambien trata de los problemas politicos que habian en diferentes paises tanto americanos como europeos. Poniatowska ha tornado en cuenta cuidadosamente todos los detalles de la vida de Tina Modotti y los ha traspasado a su novela con una reunion de voces que no han salido exclusivamente de su pluma pero si ha usado su imaginacion para unir todas esas voces.

The subject of this thesis is Leonora written by Elena Poniatowska. The aim of the study is to analyze the literary technique and strategy used in constructing this book which depicts the life of a famous painter, Leonora Carrington. The analysis concentrates on two aspects: the extent of its feminist character and whether it can be classified as a fictional biography or a biographic fiction. In order to arrive at a conclusion on these issues a brief summary of literary and feminist theory is presented as well as a short description of relevant aspects of the surrealist movement. According to the author Leonora does not pretend to be a biography but rather a tribute to a great woman and artist. This esay however sustains that the book is a feminist fictional biography. In fact it builds upon books written by Carrington herself with a highly autobiographical content as well as on biographical texts. Both the author and her protoganist are well-known for their feminist stand and the analysis shows how feminist theory or thinking is reflected both on behalf on the writer as well as in the construction of the hero and certain aspects of her life that build up this biographical fiction.

The novel Leonora by Elena Poniatowska is about Leonora Carrington who was born into a wealthy family and challenged family traditions, and those expectations imposed by her social background and her gender. It will be shown that the main character acts according to a self-construction process free of social impositions. Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known phrase “one is not born a woman, one becomes one”, is one of the feminist positions that contributes to this analysis, as well as the literary techniques explained by Gérard Genette, Oscar Tacca, Mieke Bal and the narratology theories of focalization, direct speech, indirect speech and free indirect speech. The aim of this essay is to analyze the literary techniques that present the self-construction of the main character, and their effects on the reader. The hypotheses of this essay are that in order to present the self-construction of the character, the literary techniques create an effect of alternately zooming the reader in to the main character’s experience, and zooming out to a more objective view. In addition, the literary techniques used to present Carrington’s self-construction seek to show her feminist stance and her transgressions in both private and public spheres. Poniatowska’s literary techniques deliver the message that when a woman is released from social and cultural constraints she has the power to modify spheres.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Spanish and Portguese, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-71).

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This dissertation asserts that the tortuous relationship Spanish American literature had with cosmopolitanism since the Wars of Independence reached a turning point towards the end of the second half of the twentieth century. While the literary production of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century was centred on the Spanish American nation and the continent, contemporary literature has become increasingly deterritorialized, and has begun to present narrative worlds and discuss issues that transcend this circumscribed universe. The discerning of this articulation of global issues in contemporary literature – which I contend is predicated on the concept of cosmopolitanism – is the primary objective of this investigation. The five novels examined here are Elena Poniatowska’s La “Flor de Lis” (1988), Mario Vargas Llosa’s El Paraíso en la otra esquina (2003) and El sueño del celta (2010), and Jorge Volpi’s El fin de la locura (2003) and No será la Tierra (2006). This study aims to describe and assess an evolving perspective on the treatment of cosmopolitanism in Spanish America. I trace the shift from the previous generations’ main preoccupation with aesthetic cosmopolitanism, which sought to engage Latin American literary discourse with the Western canon, to what I identify as the current political implication of the concept. To this end, I show that whereas mid-twentieth century authors displaced cosmopolitanism in favour of more politically expedient concepts, authors now plot it in their novels as a means of discussing issues of identity and citizenship in an increasingly globalized world.

This doctoral thesis studies the relationship between journalism and literature in contexts in which freedom of speech is at risk. It takes as primary sources a variety of nonfiction, crónicas, literary journalism and testimonial novels published by Latin American authors in Spanish, from the 1950s to the 2000s. I propose the concept ‘documentary narratives’ to refer to all literary modes of discourse which are related, in diverse degrees, to a journalistic representation of reality. My corpus covers a wide range of topics such as social protests, dictatorships, civil wars, natural disaster, crime and migration. While scholars have focused on the rhetoric and history of this kind of narratives, my reading considers the real, face-to-face encounter between the journalist and others. I argue that the representation of these encounters influences the pact with the reader and challenges the notion of truthfulness. I contend that documentary narratives can serve as a tool for the transmission of knowledge and the production of public debate in societies marked by political and social instability. In a world overwhelmed by data production and immersed in violent acts against those to be considered ‘Others’, I argue that storytelling is still an essential form of communication among individuals, classes and cultures. Contrary to the authors’s intentions of documenting others’ lives, I conclude that these stories offer an (interrupted) account of oneself, that is, the account of a contemporary storyteller pursuing a rarely fulfilled desire of getting to know the Other truly. The thesis has two appendices. Appendix 1 showcases archival material that support some of my arguments. Appendix 2 includes the transcripts of the interviews that I conducted with eight Latin American authors: Elena Poniatowska, Leila Guerriero, Cristian Alarcón, Arturo Fontaine, Santiago Roncagliolo, Francisco Goldman, Martín Caparrós, and Juan Villoro.