Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 38-06, Section: A, page: 3537. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1977.

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Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, in their recently published Postcolonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, highlight the significance of metatheatrical tendencies in the resistance drama of Anglophone arenas of decolonization, particularly those of the Anglophone Caribbean. Insisting on such metatheater as more than simply postmodern play, Gilbert and Tompkins crucially note the emergence of a critically conscious theater that explores and explodes notions of subjectivity, ideologies of difference and monologies of mastery. My studies in postcolonial drama and theory have led me toward similar sites and modes of struggle, culminating in a project that focuses upon this act of metatheater in the Caribbean and seeks to interpret its socio-ideological/cultural implications in light of recent postcolonial, feminist, discursive critique. Generated out of nationalist Theaters of Dissimulation that enact an unmasking of the discourses of race and mastery so crucial to the dissemblances of colonial master-scripts, I argue that Caribbean theater in the West Indies, Puerto Rico, and the Antilles translates these early nationalist revolutions into an involutionary act, one that avoids the reinscription of patriarchal, racialist, essentializing notions of identity and attempts instead to deconstruct what Stuart Hall has termed the "politics of representation." Through this spotlighting of image and image systems rather than identity politics, 80s playwrights make Edouard Glissant's concept of theatralization--the very act of cultural ontology--the main actor on the stage, creating a Theater of Dissimilation that, like Kamau Brathwaite's idea of "nation language," represents a cultural process of critical creolization.

<p> This dissertation proposes that West Indian contemporary male writers develop literary authority, or a voice that represents the nation, via a process of individuation. This process enables the contemporary male writer to unite the disparities of the matriarchal and patriarchal authorial traditions that inform his development of a distinctive creative identity. I outline three stages of authorial individuation that are inspired by Jung&rsquo;s theory of individuation. The first is the contemporary male writer&rsquo;s <i> return</i> to his nationalist forebears&rsquo; tradition to dissolve his persona, or identification with patriarchal authority; Fred D&rsquo;Aguiar&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Last Essay About Slavery&rdquo; and <i>Feeding the Ghosts </i> illustrate this stage. The second is his <i>reconciliation </i> of matriarchal (present) and patriarchal (past) traditions of literary authority via his encounter with his forebears&rsquo; feminized, raced shadow; Robert Antoni&rsquo;s <i>Blessed Is the Fruit</i> evidences this process. The third is the contemporary male writer&rsquo;s <i>renunciation </i> of authority defined by masculinity, which emerges as his incorporation of the anima, or unconscious feminine; Marlon James&rsquo;s <i>The Book of Night Women</i> exemplifies this final phase of his individuation. </p>

In her first and third novels How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and &iexcl;Yo!, Julia Alvarez writes about the Dominican-American experience through the lives of an immigrant family. Her personal understanding of the context results in a complex and believable set of hybrid characterizations. In her second novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, there is a purely Dominican context. In translating this history of the Mirabal sisters, Alvarez is unable to avoid the influence of her Dominican-American experience. Therefore, these characterizations are less believable, stereotypical and not reasonably justified given their context. Unconvincing and sudden moments of conversion are a further consequence of Alvarez's failure to correctly reflect Dominican culture in her translation of the story.

This dissertation examines literary renderings of postcolonial American space through close readings of novels by four contemporary American writers: Thomas Pynchon's Vineland and Mason & Dixon, Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, the Timeless People, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, and Alfredo Vea, Jr.'s La Maravilla. My study is grounded in environmental criticism's emphasis on the relationships between humans and non-human nature, particularly the interactions between peoples and places. I explore questions of domination and subjugation, possession, dispossession, and repossession, home and homelessness in the world we think we know, and the worlds we can only imagine. The novelists in this study raise difficult questions about America as a philosophical ideal and as a political entity. Where does this nation fit, historically and currently, within global affairs? To what extent does America have the moral authority it assumes over itself or anyone else? At times, these questions are posed through comparisons, both subtle and overt, between the United States and other regimes more recognizable for their egregious human rights records, such as Spanish Mexico, Nazi Germany, and Dutch South Africa. The authors then locate oppression at home by addressing the enduring effects of the genocide of indigenous peoples, the slave trade and the Middle Passage, and the creation of a racially diverse American underclass. In each case, human oppression is depicted within the highly-contested social space of the physical landscape and is shown to go hand in hand with environmental destruction.

In the context of American imperialism, what role does the interracial/interethnic literary romance play? Do these romances offer the possibility of integrating politically disparate elements, or do these literary unions reveal the conflicts of nation-building at a time of territorial expansion? Drawing upon Doris Sommer's work on heterosexual romances and Robert McKee Irwin's work on homosocial bonds and both authors studies on nation-formation in Latin America, I explore interethnic/interracial unions in works by American and Latino writers and analyze the role these fictional romances and unions serve in representing the inclusion of new peoples and the formation of American national identity at the time of territorial expansion. The texts examined include Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don, Elizabeth Van Deusen's collection short story readers, Stories of Porto Rico and Tropical Tales (Porto Rico) and Manuel Zeno Gandía's Redentores. Through their use of the interracial/interethnic romance and unions, I argue that these writers reveal the complications of the larger geopolitical unions being constructed by the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century. These texts show the potentially subversive power that love, the romance trope, and related themes and homosocial bonds may have in a genre that traditionally emphasizes unions; in addition these works demonstrate that in unions—whether romantic or political—tensions will always persist. Lastly, these texts also demonstrate the frailty of using the nation-as-lovers as the emblematic trope of a nation that will hold within it multiple unions. Issues discussed include how romance is constructed, including the allusions, metaphors, plot devices, and motifs incorporated to tell the story of that romance; representation of these unions in light of United States' anti-miscegenation laws; the construction of consent; education and the lessons of domesticity.

An examination of postcolonial writings from the Caribbean disrupts the notion that postcolonial discourse is locked in a mode of constant reply to the colonizer and keeps the colonial powers at the center. Many Caribbean writers focus their discourse primarily on the ways their own communities internalize received ideas, and use them as the basis of social organization and interpersonal relationships. This study examines the use of Caribbean orature as the narrative strategy in selected Anglophone Caribbean fiction. I use a performance studies-centered approach to read prose fiction by Merle Collins, Earl Lovelace and Olive Senior that exemplifies the "inward turn" of Caribbean postcolonial criticism. I argue that these writers use specific oral forms to critique and challenge their communities, while affirming their local resources. In The Colour of Forgetting Merle Collins interrogates her community's rejection of its indigenous stories, in favor of a Euro-centric written history that privileges the outsiders' perspectives. Colour performs and presents an inclusive history, inspired formally and substantially by Grenadian oral tradition. I enter the conversation about Earl Lovelace's well-known nationalist discourse and validation of Caribbean orature by reading the gender ideologies that his choice of narrative strategy and treatment of female characters trouble. My central argument is that this writer's works reflect the lived experience of gender relationships in the Caribbean, rather than the dominant culture's colonially-derived patriarchal structure. My reading of Olive Senior's stories explores her use of gossip and other oral forms associated primarily with women to highlight how differences in race that informed life in colonial and early postcolonial Jamaica remain a central part of life in contemporary Jamaican society. I conclude that, in writing texts that straddle European literary traditions and Caribbean orature, these writers demonstrate the inevitable merging of and tensions among cultures and knowledge systems that characterize life in colonial/modern societies. However, more importantly, reading their fictions in the ways I have read them directs attention to the "inward turn" of postcolonial criticism that is sometimes elided in postcolonial discussions.

In this dissertation love and death in the novels of Alejo Carpentier are analyzed. The following novels are studied: (INV!)Ecue-Yamba-O!, El reino de este mundo, Los pasos perdidos, El siglo de las luces, El acoso, El recurso del metodo and Concierto barroco. / This author presents love in diverse aspects, from the most tender, charming and spiritual expression of feeling to the savage effect of lustful passion. Passion and instinctive love are predominant in his novels. / The characters of Carpentier's novels try to escape the torment of their lives by devoting themselves to materialistic and passionate love; unfortunately neither the heroes nor the heroines ever find the happiness they desire. / A very important element presented by Carpentier is death. It is seen in many different ways, such as: sudden death, suicides, executions, poisonings, old age and finally, wars. / There are several links between the themes of love and death. Carpentier uses techniques such as manipulation of time, mysticism of history and magic realism. Music is used specifically in the themes of love and death. In the scenes of death and agony, passionate love is always present, playing an important role. / Finally, the themes of love and death in Carpentier's novels reveal the agonistic state of man as the mythological figure of Sisyphus who is unable to find happiness at all. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-10, Section: A, page: 4467. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 39-06, Section: A, page: 3614. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1978.