The Cuban antislavery novel of the 19th century will provide the focus for this study. The cultural metamorphosis undergone by the black slave is revealed in this subdivision of colonial literature. From their colonial role as slaves, blacks went on to become an integral part of the cultural mosaic of the region. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how blacks were incorporated into the society that enslaved them, how they claimed a presence in that society and how they fought to establish their own identity. The concluding remarks will demonstrate that it was the Cuban antislavery novel which granted blacks a voice, a presence. This is the modest contribution offered by this investigation. / A testimonial narrative, the antislavery novel, flourished in Cuba during the colonial period, specifically during the 19th century, and it can very well be considered as a prelude to the black search for a space, for a presence, in society. This investigation begins with an introductory chapter which deals not only with the testimonial narrative to be discussed, but also with the accounts which detail the manner in which the black presence became a reality in the region. The three subsequent chapters analyze the following Cuban novels: Francisco by Anselmo Suarez y Romero, Sab by Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, and Cecilia Valdes by Cirilo Villaverde. The emphasis in each of these works is on the search for black identity: the transculturation and integration of blacks in colonial Cuba. These three novels reflect the social context of the Cuban colonial period; therefore, other antislavery novels which portrait the same subject will not be included since their theme is best represented by the aforementioned. / This investigation will conclude with a chapter reaffirming the ideological conceptions that allowed for the emergence of this type of narrative. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1350. / Major Professor: Roberto G. Fernandez. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Cecilio Arrastia is an author who has written many contemporary Christian works in Spanish. This investigation will explain the themes, analogies, and historical and contemporary references that the author mentions from the Bible and from present and past society. / Chapter 1 will examine the book A pesar de todo ... Dios sigue siendo amor. This chapter will look at the theme of depression and despair. The second book that will be studied and Chapter 2 is Dialogo desde una cruz. This book investigates the seven words of Jesus from the cross. The third work and Chapter 3 is Itinerario de la pasion. The focus of this study will be to discuss the author's analysis of the last week of the life of Christ before and after His crucifixion. The last chapter, chapter 4, examines Tentacion y mision. This central theme of this chapter is the role of the church. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: A, page: 1639. / Major Professor: Roberto G. Fernandez. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.

El proposito de este estudio es establecer la iconicidad entre la hablante lirica que aparece en la obra de Julia de Burgos con la nueva mujer puertorriquena. Para efecto de esta investigacion se utiliza la definicion dada por Jeanne Martinet al icono, el cual define como un tipo de signo que designa un objeto que mantiene con otro una relacion de parecido tal que se le puede identificar enseguida. Para Martinet el icono no se refiere a la imagen de tipo sagrado, sino a la obra de arte estudiada, desde el punto de vista de los asuntos, temas, simbolos y atributos identificados y descritos. / Para lograr este proposito primero se presenta el contexto historico-social de la mujer de la epoca y los logros alcanzados por la mujer puertorriquena. Tambien se ofrecen los datos biograficos de Julia de Burgos. / En el segundo capitulo se caracteriza a la hablante lirica que aparece en el libro Poema en veinte surcos y se destacan aquellas cualidades que la apartan de la norma establecida para la mujer de la epoca, especialmente las normas sociales. / En el tercer capitulo se caracteriza la hablante lirica del libro Cancion de la verdad sencilla. Se destaca en este capitulo el disfrute por parte de la hablante lirica al amor. / En el cuarto capitulo se caracteriza a la hablante lirica que aparece en el libro El mar y tu. En el mismo se hace enfasis en la actitud de la hablante lirica hacia la muerte. / En las conclusiones se deja establecida la iconicidad entre la hablante lirica y la nueva mujer puertorriquena, como tambien las diferencias que existen entre Julia de Burgos y el personaje ficticio que ella creo. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 0934. / Major Professor: Ardis Nelson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

This dissertation analyzes the Cuban intellectual discourse by way of the cultural policies (and politics) of the Revolution. It outlines its development not only through its historical dimension but also through the different stages towards the creation of the poetic canon during the 20th century and its subsequent interpretations in the light of the historical events after 1959. Above all, it addresses how the debate over the function of art and the political engagement of intellectuals has been paramount to the definition of an ethics and, even of a style. We have chosen for our study Cintio Vitier (1921) and Reina Maria Rodriguez (1952), two renowned poets who also represent two poetic groups in conflict at the very beginnings of the Cuban Revolution: Origenistas and Coloquialistas respectively. Their poetry and public lives show divergent personal trajectories that go from an immersion in the public sphere to a retreat into private space / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation is a comparative literary and cultural study that frames expressions of Cuban nationalism during the twentieth-century. The thesis analyzes representations pertaining to textual aesthetics that feature Havana as a centerpiece of Cuban-oriented cultural production. It juxtaposes the social-political interpretations found in a grouping of texts by relating the city capital to revolutionary ideology. By first focusing on the Republican era and later on the Revolution era, the thesis offers to examine how the urban realm of Havana is utilized as a mode that expresses the cultural evolution of Cuba during the last century. With the use of multinational texts within the print, film, and popular cultural genres, the dissertation argues for an evaluation of the ideological implications that arise within these cultural productions, while correlating them to an emerging global interest pertaining to things Cuban / acase@tulane.edu

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This study examines the works of contemporary writers (such as Pedro Verges, Junot Diaz, Maria Olinda Beja, Luis Rafael Sanchez and Manuel Ferreira) whose works intersect on the levels of ideology, narrative, and construction within the insular imagination. Encompassing the Atlantic island nations of Cape Verde, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Sao Tome e Principe, it argues that the insular subject, a victim and agent of our modern world contemporary Diaspora, is in a perpetual voyage toward a shifting identity. The project maintains that transit and migrancy, in our (Post)-Modern/(Post)-Colonial moment, erase and eradicate the subject's original identity, and impose a new 'indefinable' identity that is shadowed by loss, in a betweenness of place and being. The conceptual voyage of the subject's identity in modern migrancy maps out the migrant cycle that the subject undergoes: the relationship the subject develops with the insular space, the dislocation from place, the relocation of culture and place, and the attempt of a homecoming Based on the ideas that Benitez Rojo proposes in La isla que se repite, the existence of a shared experience among the many island nations of the Caribbean, particularly the colonial legacy, aids in effectively legitimizing the Atlantic cultural bridge. The repeated experience of colonialism that Benitez Rojo proposes as a link among Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, allows the comparison with Portugal's colonial project while it ruled in Africa, and specifically in Cape Verde and Sao Tome e Principe. Thus, legitimizing the common experience of their transatlantic colonial past. Indeed, the Atlantic insular experience is based on repetition, and this project links the diasporic migration, represented in insular literature, to the present day status of these nations The conclusion argues in favor of a relationship among migrancy, (Post)Coloniality/(Post)Modernity and insular identity and creates a link between the repeating Atlantic colonial past and the current labor diasporas. It reiterates the creation of new hybrid identities, and the cultural role as a 'dangerous supplement' that migrancy plays in the modern proliferation of shifting identities / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation studies the newspaper articles written by Nemesio R. Canales (1878-1923), who published his work between 1908 and 1923. His literary oeuvre comprises different genres: novels, essays and poetry. Although Puerto Rican literary history establishes Canales within the Modernist movement, this study intends to demonstrate that even though his work shows ideological aspects which relate him to the Modernist's world-view and, moreover, to those that configured the Puerto Rican Modernist period, his discourse anticipates the avant-garde movement The first chapter focuses on the Puerto Rican Modernist movement which ran parallel to the most important event in Puerto Rican reality: the U.S. invasion of 1898. The Puerto Rican writers of the turn of the century brought to literature their preoccupation with the historical and political development of Puerto Rico. The 1898 invasion meant the loss of political hegemony and the imposition of a foreign language: English. Furthermore, it made this generation realize the necessity of configuring a national identity which gave the movement its nationalistic tinge. As a result, the movement was removed from the preciosity and escapism which characterized the Modernist movements of Spanish America The second chapter summarizes the most relevant criticism on Canales' work. We also analyze more carefully and/or reject some of these critics' opinions The last three chapters study in detail the characteristics of Canales' Modernist ideology as well as the options that Modernism itself offered. But these traits show an avant-garde sensibility. We study the discursive strategies that transform the popular and the daily into literary phenomena by the use of such techniques as simile, metaphor and anecdotes of popular tradition, as well as colloquial lexicon. These strategies reflect a profound questioning of the traditional social interpretations that are particular to certain social classes Through his articles, Canales projects himself as a writer that transformed the popular to the realm of literary ideas. Moreover, Canales is the forerunner of the Puerto Rican contemporary writers who have given literary status to the street talk, the language of the folk / acase@tulane.edu

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Virgilio Pinera is one of the most important Cuban writers. Although he is the author of a large collection of poems, short stories, novels, plays, and essays, his works are barely known in Latin America During the 1940's, when the Caribbean writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Jose Lezama Lima, and Luis Pales Matos were elaborating the aesthetics of magic realism, the neo-baroque and negritude, Pinera's tendency was opposite to that of the aforementioned writers Some of Pinera's books have as titles Cuentos frios (Cold Stories), Aire frio (Cold Air), and Helada zona (Frozen Zone). For Pinera coldness, as a poetic principle that governs not only his narrative but also his poetry and plays, consists of the 'exposition of the pure facts'. This 'exposition of the pure facts' reveals Pinera's obsessive concern on style Coldness, in Pinera's writing, is a privileged image about the society and the epoch where he lives. At times, coldness refers to masochism. Coldness and cruelty function as the denial of sensuality, as a condition for masochistic pleasure. Coldness is also an image about culture and its discontents in postmodern society / acase@tulane.edu