Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz wrote a musical treatise which she titled El caracol, reflecting her conclusion that musical harmony should be conceived as a spiral, instead of a circle, the popular metaphor of the time for the cyclical pattern of tones in the scale. Sor Juana's Romances 'Despues de estimar mi amor,' referred to here as the MP21, contain remnants of the treatise which had been abandoned and perhaps discarded. These romances and other works contain Sor Juana's theories of musical harmony and composition, as well as questions which she raises anticipatory of the polemic which was to arise in the early eighteenth century concerning mean tempering, just tempering and equal tempering, later resolved by Bach and his generation. This dissertation examines her works to discover her theories of musica practica (harmony and notation), musica poetica (composition), and musica speculativa (philosophy and cosmology), within the historical sphere in which they were produced / acase@tulane.edu

At the end of the XIX Century, contradictions caused by an unequal modernity in Latin America provoked a crisis of social and professional identity on writers. This crisis is accompanied by an erudite verification of a greater economic and political interference of United States on the area My thesis involves four Latin American essayists who challenged the traditional paradigm of opposing Latin America vs. United States through attributes such as spirituality, humanism, and aesthetic taste vs. materialism, egoism and vulgarity. Such paradigms served in securing the writer's social status---artificer of that redeemed Latin America---at the cost of stopping social democratization processes. The illiterate mass was then, the other menace of that canonic Latin Americanism The essayist referred in my thesis are Chilean Francisco Bilbao (1823-1865), Peruvian Manuel Gonzalez Prada (1844-1918), Argentinian Manuel Ugarte (1875-1951) and Brazilian Manoel Bomfin (1988-1932). From different historic moments, theses essayists attempted to visualize cultural heterogeneity of the continent, as well as economic asymmetries that fractured social tissues. That is, they put into evidence political divisions of social classes and educational importance that national projects established as result of independence movements were not able to resolve. Through professional practice relating them to social urban sectors originating from the poor and middle classes, these essayist managed to overcome the literate terror facing the growing processes of social democratization as well as to secure a professional identity that audaciously negotiate places of literary enunciation with the market. Through such strategies, these essayists moulded an anti-imperialist posture no longer depending on dichotomies derived from essentialism / acase@tulane.edu

'Imaging the Apocalypse: Dystopian Representation in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Uruguay,' critically analyzes cultural production in the River Plate during the 1990's, a period marked by neo-liberal economic policies and ongoing attempts to move beyond inward notions of national identity. The immediate post-dictatorship era, which was obsessed with exorcizing the demons of social repression unleashed during the military regimes, gave rise to particular genres, such as the metahistorical novel, that challenged official constructs of national identity built around the spectacle of a harmonious unity. The appearance of these alternative perspectives laid the foundation for the subsequent outward cultural shift of the 1990's, one in which writers, artists, and filmmakers sought to both integrate into, as well as offer a critique of, the incessant march toward globalization. The novels Los misterios de Rosario and La muerte como efecto secundario, the performance art of De la Guarda, the films El viaje and El chevrole , the television show 'Subterraneos,' and other texts taken from the region insert questions of local identity into the context of the global. Belittled by local media, and often classified as 'cultura light,' these texts alternatively construct what I term an 'apocalyptic aesthetic.' In order to leap into global markets these works embrace an aesthetic that is based on performing the superficial, an aesthetic in ruins. Curiously enough, none of these texts narrate an apocalypse, but through their aesthetic they allude to an apocalyptic event of an aftermath. Another feature of this aesthetic is its timelessness, all texts being set in a near future refer to both the dystopic past and the calamitous present. Through a process of apocalyptic unveiling, they expose the hollowness of the surface, even as they generate layers of subterranean meaning. These excursions in cultural cartography, while intentionally outward in orientation, do not necessarily negate the specific politics of the local; rather each text plots its politics on par with its aesthetic, thereby challenging current national critical trends, and encouraging the reader/spectator/citizen to lose him or herself in their constructed matrices / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation examines a corpus of novels written by three Guatemalan authors: Arturo Arias (1950), Marco Antonio Flores (1937), and Mario Roberto Morales (1947). These authors are very important figures in the Nueva Novela Guatemalteca because of their deliberate break with the Guatemalan literary tradition established by Miguel Angel Asturias and Mario Monteforte Toledo. Arias, Flores and Morales establish a new aesthetic through the creation of novels defined particularly by open-endedness and experimentation with language, especially profane, irreverent and scatological language. Through their particular style of narrative they represent the unspeakable atrocities suffered by Guatemalans during several dictatorial regimes. This study's objective is to make a socio-political and literary analysis of how these writers appropriate Ladino lower and middle class argot and scatological language as a means to declare and denounce important socio-political issues of their day Chapter one explains the socio-political, historical and cultural events that have marked the lives of Guatemalans during the last fifty years of conflict. Establishing this history is essential to the context from which the authors' ideologies are devised and narratives are constructed Chapter two examines the use of irreverent language, outrageous banter and twisted semantics as an expression of identity from, satirizing of, and rebellion against the hegemonic power structure Chapter three analyzes the use of irreverent and scatological language as a representation of the violence suffered upon victims by the state, and the subsequent reproduction of this same violence into the society, especially against women Chapter four explores the disappointment and despair in the failures of leftist movements, criticism of the behavior and lack of commitment of guerrilla members, and their loss of hope for a utopian dream through revolution / acase@tulane.edu

My dissertation is comprised of two sections, mater and filius, in which I study the spaces of motherhood and childhood respectively in the works of Silvina Ocampo. I begin my analysis with an examination of maternal figures that reflect Ocampo's concerns with paradigms of motherhood elicited from theoretical and popular narratives. All of the mothers I have selected represent some prescribed aspect of the maternal and all of them push the limits of those prescriptions. My purpose in providing an assortment is not to taxonomize; instead, I want to indicate certain key features that repeat themselves in Ocampo's works The second section investigates the articulation of childhood as a space. As in the case of motherhood, many of the basic concepts regarding childhood originate in theoretical and popular narratives. Ocampo's articulations of childhood display an intricate understanding of the child's relationship to space, his/her access to it and his/her attempts to transgress its boundaries. I have assembled a group of texts that illustrate this understanding in varying degrees and with different emphases on a host of issues. As in the section on motherhood, I attempt to trace particular recursive, though unpredictable, patterns in Ocampo Together, the spaces of motherhood and childhood in Ocampo's works battle against the discrepancies, contradictions, and restrictions that the many theoretical and popular discourses ignore in their articulations of 'normal' behavior. Specifically, disparities concerning age, gender, sexuality, knowledge, agency and voice conspicuously emerge in both spaces. These texts, however, do not provide a simple rebuttal of the limitations elaborated by their ideological foundations; rather, they smartly play the repressive aspects against the liberating aspects that shape each space and cause friction in and out of those spaces. In interpreting Ocampo's treatment of motherhood and childhood, ambiguity will become a key element. The tension between the said and the unsaid displays a consistent refusal to prioritize one space over another, to legitimize one voice over another. This pull in various directions is a theorization of subjectivities in flux, a concept that I examine in motherhood and childhood but that occurs in all the other spaces as well / acase@tulane.edu

In this dissertation, 'Modernity and Marginality: The Destruction and Renovation of the Latin American City and Writer in the Chronicles of Joao do Rio, Lima Barreto, and Roberto Arlt,' I will examine modernity and the changing role of the writer in the early twentieth century. I will argue that the Latin American chronicle, as a hybrid literary form, best represented the efforts and conditions of the socially engaged professionalized writer of the period in question Joao do Rio, Lima Barreto, and Roberto Arlt experienced different degrees of marginality due to racial and class-based origins. They were salaried journalists who depended on newspapers for their livelihood. Aware of their status as wage-earning specialists, they were nonetheless driven by a determination to use their artistic abilities to fight against the economic system and against bourgeois society. Refusing to accept the complete separation of writing from political radicalism, they fought to insert themselves in society as subjects rather than as mere objects, encouraging a cultural transformation through everyday experiences. The comparison of their works also lends itself to a comparison of the two largest South American cities of that time, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires Given the striking parallels between these three authors, I will argue that the chronicle was a particularly useful vehicle through which they could express themselves artistically and communicate with the common man in the universal context of a new, modern culture that cut across national, linguistic, and class-based lines / acase@tulane.edu

Fabian Dobles (1918) is Costa Rica's leading twentieth-century novelist. His works combine the country's most important literary tradition, comtumbrismo realista, with serious social themes and the psychological analysis that became popular with the Generation of 1940. Dobles stands out in this group because of the superior quality of his work Chapter one of this dissertation outlines the development of the Costa Rican novel, and also provides information about Dobles' life and works. Chapters two through seven examine Dobles' six novels from a critical perspective and make note of stylistic changes and variations. The most common themes and stylistic aspects of Dobles' works appear in Ese que Ilaman pueblo (1942). The dominant social protest themes of Costa Rica, latifundismo and workers' rights are examined here. The most popular character of Costa Rican literature, the good-natured but ignorant concho (campesino), appears here as the victim of loansharks, latifundistas, conditions in the banana zone, and the city The social problems of rural dwellers are again examined in Aguas turbias (1943) and El sitio de las abras (1950). The second of these novels shows the concho losing his land, but at least gaining some social consciousness. El sitio traces the latifundismo problem from its historical origins to present conditions. In this novel there is more social awareness among the masses, also leaders appear who realize the importance of the goals called for in the earlier works: those of unity, education, and a revision of traditional concho ideology Los lenos vivientes (1962) takes a stark look at Costa Rica's 1948 civil war, and En el San Juan hay tiburon (1967) shows the need for unity and better organization in the struggle against the Nicaraguan dictatorship Una burbuja en el limbo (1946) varies from the social thesis that usually predominates in Dobles' work. It explores the plight of the artist in a country that (according to Dobles) lacks artistic tradition and sensibility An overall look at Dobles' novels reveals a stylistic and thematic evolution that corresponds to Costa Rica's changing social situation between 1940 and 1948 and makes it clear that the author constantly improved his style and technique / acase@tulane.edu

Columbus's texts of discovery and exploration initiate the written articulation of a European colonizing experience and the supposedly 'foundational' nature of these documents has led to the canonization of Columbus as the origin of the corpus of Latin American literature. Even today, as a cultural icon, Columbus remains an unavoidable figure, an indispensable trope, in short, the ineradicable symbol with which any inquiry into Latin American historical identity must come to terms. However, while Columbus may be seen as the foundation of a tradition of fixing American reality in discourse, he also remains elusive and masked: the Admiral's documents and biography have been vigorously debated and rewritten---copied, edited, arranged and falsified---by other historical figures The broad aim of this work is to investigate how and why a figure like Columbus and his historical experiences are textually constructed, by himself in his own private and public documents, and then reexamined and reconfigured by others not only in the context of the early period of colonial expansionism in Latin America but also in the context of contemporary fiction. The first two chapters offer an exploration into Columbus's strategies of self-representation and an analysis of the re-writings of Columbus's image by his contemporaries against the background of political and historical events and agendas of imperial expansion. The later chapters seek to establish how the historical figure of Columbus has been reappropriated and reinterpreted in contemporary fiction and how Columbian texts have been rewritten with revisionist, satirical, and political intentions By considering their own historical context of production, I examine how today's re-writings manipulate and give new meaning to Columbus's texts. In other words, these analyses address the question of how and why Columbus---or, indeed, other colonial figures---need to be reconstructed in a contemporary, post-colonial cultural context. What is the political, historiographic or cultural purpose of keeping these colonial figures alive in a state of animated dialogue and debate? By means of textual analysis of a selection of novels, I consider the critical practice of re-writing (and thereby reinterpreting) Columbus as a historical figure and the necessity of recreating and reevaluating the cultural significance of his life and achievements. There is a particular focus on the textual practice of re-writing in its various forms of quotation and imitation, parody and carnivalization, i.e. the recontextualization of Columbus in dialogic, anachronistic or comic contexts. Notions of intertextuality, metafiction, postmodernity and palimpsest give theoretical support to this inquiry. Furthermore, as we examine the juxtaposition of 'fictional' and 'historical' texts, both of these terms will require a critical evaluation: how do they differ, how are they related, and has a hegemonic form of historical discourse always provided the paradigm upon which Latin American fiction has been founded? / acase@tulane.edu

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The year 1968 was marked by political turmoil throughout the world. In Brazil, 1968 was marked by the promulgation of Fifth Institutional Act, which signified the hard-line turn of the right-wing military regime that installed itself in 1964. The Act proscribed political opposition groups, suspended habeas corpus, established censorship, suspended Congress, and undermined civil liberties. As cadres of young, clandestine resistance groups took up arms against the regime, the military police meted out torture. At the same time, censorship of journalism, literature, theater, and popular music became widespread as the military government, haunted by the specter of an underground opposition among its youth, proscribed the brand of cultural production it associated with the left-leaning youth culture. It was at this time that a counterculture began to coalesce in Brazil. Described as the 'desbunde,' a Portuguese word roughly translated as 'drop-out,' the Brazilian counterculture reflected, on the one hand, an aestheticization of the kind of political organization that became untenable in the wake of the military government's hard-line turn in 1968. The counterculture did not represent, however, a simple proxy for proscribed political action, but rather also addressed political questions that were marginalized in traditional leftist praxis: personal and individual concerns surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and the body. This dissertation introduces the Brazilian counterculture, describing Cinema Marginal, Poesia Marginal, the alternative press, and the radical theater as important coordinates in its development. The work focuses principally, however, on popular music, and in particular the importance of rock-and-roll music as a privileged point of reference for the Brazilian counterculture. Locating counterculture and rock-and-roll as phenomena at once local and global, this dissertation examines the differences between these manifestations in Brazil and other developing Latin American nations. This study focuses specifically on Raul Seixas and the Novos Baianos, two of the most popular countercultural rock-and-roll outfits in Brazil in the 1970s. Their work is taken as emblematic of the way in which rock music encoded the central questions, polemics, ideals, and aesthetics around which the Brazilian counterculture coalesced / acase@tulane.edu