The thesis combines Fredric Jameson's ideas on cognitive mapping with Henri Lefebvre's theories on the production of space and Tom Conley's concept of "cartographic writings" to illustrate how the narrators of Lazarillo de Tormes, the Captive's tale in the Quijote and Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion establish a relationship to the circumstances around them by means of cognitive maps. The created discursive spaces hide an ideology that is not explicit in the text and therefore the decoding of cognitive maps in symbols is the only way to have access to the multiple spaces through which the narrators' journeys take place, and to know the link that narrators have with their present space. The narrations of the picaro Lazaro de Tormes, the soldier Ruy Perez de Viedma and the Conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca are all examples of the accumulation of lived experiences and the superposition of their own cognitive maps in order to later manipulate and enrich their own story. There is, then, a causal relationship between each narration and the space in which the actions play out that is eventually subverted and manipulated for personal gain.

Eighteenth century colonial Mexico hosted a wide number of religious women who put quill to parchment and wrote spiritual letters to their confessors. These texts display impressive subversive rhetorical strategies, five of which are the focal point of this dissertation. The three nuns studied in this dissertation are Sor Maria Coleta de San Jose (?-1775), Sor Sebastiana de la Santisima Trinidad (1709-1757) and Sor Maria Anna de San Ignacio (1695-1756). Chapter one examines the spiritual and literary European foremothers of eighteenth century colonial religious women. This chapter examines the life and letters of Radegund (518-587), Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Catherine of Siena (1347?-1380), and Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). Their writings all demonstrate early signs of subversive rhetoric that can be detected centuries later in the nuns' letters examined in this study. The second chapter is divided into two sections. The first part provides an overview of colonial Mexico with a particular emphasis on Mexican nuns and their letters. The second half of the chapter carves out a viable discursive space for nuns' spiritual letters. This section revises and reinterprets the colonial literary canon from a variety of theoretical perspectives including feminist theory and cultural studies. The last three chapters are each dedicated to one of the three Mexican nuns mentioned above. Their letters are analyzed according to the following rhetorical strategies: (1) the rhetoric of humility, (2) the description of penance, (3) the description of fasting, (4) the retelling of visions with Christ, and (5) the retelling of visions with Saint Teresa or the Virgin Mary. In conclusion, due to their precarious situation as religious women under the ever vigilant eye of a patriarchal and misogynist society, these nuns opted to incorporate these strategies within their spiritual letters. Sor Coleta, Sor Sebastiana and Sor Maria Anna deliberately placed subversive rhetorical strategies within their letters in order to express otherwise controversial or questionable ideas.

This dissertation is a close thematic and theoretical study of the function and effect of multifaceted silence as manifested by a chorus of female voices in several poems by the contemporary Chilean-American writer Marjorie Agosin. The investigation, which focuses on five collections of her poetry published between 1984 and 1994, explores the power of silence by considering the development of imposed and self-imposed silence that reflects on stereotypes, taboos and censorship. In turn, this process reveals how women in traditional representations have been silenced by social, cultural and/or political constraints. This study traces the evolution of various and diverse female voices who speak freely and openly of their personal existential situations which, in turn, reflect, encarnate, and finally create the collective female experience as women learn to shatter silence and be heard in their own way and with their own voices. Chapter one examines female representations from fairy tales and folklore in Brujas y algo mas (1984). Agosin revises these female characters and their actions and language so that all break with the traditional roles assigned to them thereby assuming their own identity and voice. The critical ideas of Alicia Ostricker form the theoretical foundation used to illustrate how revising myths may serve as an instrument to dismantle old female stereotypes and instead create new and authentic female representations. The testimonial voices from dictatorships in Chile and Argentina depicted in Las zonas del dolor (1988) and Circulos de locura: Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (1992) are studied in chapter two. The analysis focuses on how these female voices speak to the silence of their forgotten existence as victims of death, disappearances, torture and sexual terrorism and express personal and collective loss. The theoretical works of Elaine Scarry and Ximena Bunster help demonstrate the physical and psychological effects suffered by silenced political prisoners and the mothers who search for them. Female erotic self-expression in Hogueras (1990) is the focus of chapter three. Employing the theoretical concepts of Helene Cixous and Alicia Ostricker, the study shows the manner in which Agosin's intensely provocative and impassioned language gives voice to silences stemming from socio-cultural taboos and self-imposed censorship. Thus, by taking control of their sexuality these voices take control of female expression as each freely explores female as self. In the fourth and final chapter of this dissertation, imposed and self-imposed silence in Dear Anne Frank (1994) is studied. Here Agosin's female voices enter into an epistolary dialogue with the young girl in order to reconstruct Jewish memory and the Holocaust. The critical ideas of Rachel Feldhay Brenner, Andrew Vogel Ettin, Dori Laub and Andre Neher inform the discussion. In sum, Agosin's poetry uses the symbolic geography of zones, circles, bodies, photographs and diaries to break the limits of female silence. By revising the representation of woman, the poet gives her a new and powerful voice. This in turn allows a collaborative effort between Agosin and her readers to participate fully in the personal and collective female expression and experience.

Esta tesis analiza la identidad y la estructura narrativa en las obras de dos escritores hispanos, Reinaldo Arenas y Esther Tusquets, quienes escriben al borde de la transicion entre una vision del mundo moderna a la postmoderna. Arguyo que las obras de estos dos autores cuestionan los procesos de la construccion de la identidad desde la perspectiva de los que son marginalizados por este proceso. Para hacer este analisis, estudio el debate entre el modernismo/postmodernismo dentro del mundo hispano y como este dialogo puede iluminar nuestra interpretacion de las complejidades y los constantes tematicos que presentan estos dos autores. De la misma manera, analizo como estos autores incluyen este debate dentro de su presentacion de la dinamica del desarrollo humano. Para tales propositos, analizare El amor es un juego solitario (1978), El mismo mar de todos los veranos (1979), Varada tras el ultimo naufragio (1980) de Esther Tusquets y El mundo alucinante (1968) de Reinaldo Arenas. En este analisis se consideraran las relaciones tanto socio-historicas como artisticas que existen entre Modernidad y Postmodernidad y la forma en que estas caracteristicas se presentan en los textos analizados. Se plantea que la verdadera relacion entre la modernidad y la postmodernidad no es una de superacion sino de dialogo, la postmodernidad es la problematizacion de la modernizacion. Los conceptos modernos de la Ilustracion son cuestionados por ser inadecuados para describir las situaciones actuales. Es este escepticismo profundo hacia todos los aspectos de la vida lo que define al postmodernismo. Se cree que la modernidad no ha alcanzado sus metas por ser imposibles. La narrativa de Esther Tusquets y la de Reinaldo Arenas presentan este escepticismo profundo con un estilo en que predominan las figuras repetitivas, el erotismo, el retorno, el tiempo circular, el mar y la muerte, tanto como los pre-textos literarios, los cuales se deconstruyen para despues reconstruirse dentro de la re-creacion de una identidad propia a traves de las relaciones sexuales y la muerte. Asi se cuestionan las fronteras entre el sexo y el genero en el establecimiento de la identidad, reinterpretando y reescribiendo el pasado.

The Dramatic Feminine Discourse of Cristina Escofet interrogates this author's use of language as a way to unravel her feminist discourse. In her writings on theater, her public pronouncements and her theater workshops Escofet employs the term "kaleidoscope" to describe her approach to language: colorful, changing and composed of many components. Therefore, my search to describe Escofet's feminine discourse uses a definition of discourse that embraces its kaleidoscopic nature. My approach is grounded in the theoretical insights of Helene Cixous, first and primary disseminator of the theory of feminine discourse, who maintains that feminine writing is elusive and must be approached from different angles. Consequently, my thesis also encompasses a study of the images of women, and their sexuality, and the effects of simulacra on feminine identity. In Cristina Escofet's search for a contemporary image of women her feminine discourse reevaluates, destabalizes or reinvents the image of women that has been perpetuated through Hollywood and through the telling and retelling of fairy and folk tales. The image of or reference to heroines like Little Red Ridding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or Snow White and of actresses such as Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, and the character Annie Hall are integrated into almost every one of Escofet plays. These images of Hollywood actresses and fairy and folk tale heroines stem from their performative gender roles. As Judith Butler explains, gender is an act created by society that has been mistaken for reality. To mistake the act for the real is a direct consequence of simulacra as explained by Jean Baudrillard. Escofet, conscious of the nature of signs in today's society, presents and explores the problems that arise out of the performative nature of gender, or rather, out of simulacra in relation to female's identity in her plays. The exploration of the image of women and the effects of simulacra on feminine identity continue in Escofet's characters' exploration of sexuality. Escofet adequately represents women's sexual beliefs, attitudes and experiences.

In this dissertation I study three novels written by Latin American and Chicana female authors: Arrancame la vida by Mexican writer Angeles Mastretta; Hija de la fortuna by Chilean writer Isabel Allende; and Delia's Song by Chicana writer Lucha Corpi. These novels have been chosen because of one common characteristic they share: the development of the female protagonist and her quest for a non-patriarchal conscribed identity and her ultimate emancipation. In other words, these novels portray protagonists in search of autonomy and create fictional women who escape entrapment in the traditional female plot expectations. These three novels deal with the development of the protagonist. Though these novels do not fit nicely into the classic male model of the Bildungsroman, they are representative of a feminist version of the Bildungsroman, which is said to begin to emerge in the decade of the seventies among American, Latin American and Latina women writers. In the novels analyzed, the authors have attempted to subvert patriarchal power in an effort to liberate the repressed protagonist and also to deconstruct male constructed female myths. Thus, these contemporary feminist Bildungsromans aggressively challenge the falsely imposed dichotomies of gender codes while simultaneously creating alternative definitions of female identity, ones that are more ample and multi-faceted. The Bildungsroman becomes an apt genre for contemporary Latin American and Chicana women writers because it allows them to explore the complexity and multiple subjectivity of female identity. These three contemporary Bildungsromans subvert the traditional female and male genre because these protagonists are not halted in their development, rather they attain their goals and are able to construct their own identities. These novels present alternative destinies for the Latin American and Chicana protagonist.

This dissertation investigates the roles of color, class, and gender discourses in the lives of adolescent and post-adolescent girls in Brazil. Specifically, it examines girls' multiple perspectives, embedded in diverse social locations, and the ways in which girls interpret and deploy participular elements of color and class discourses in their projects of self-making. The results of the study provide insight into the diverse ways in which identity discourses may be experienced and a range of perspectives to contribute to qualitative analyses of color identity and relations in contemporary Brazil. Disaggregating the data according to the participants' color and class reveals distinct views on color classification, perceptions of racism, and the role of color in partner preferences. Whereas the lighter/wealthier girls (re)produce discourses of systematic racism, the darker/poorer girls (re)produced discourses of color equality and individualism. A holistic approach to their ideological systems reveals that each group selects discursive elements that grant dignity, self-worth, and personal integrity to their particular social location. The manner in which girls interpret and deploy color images is also variable. For example, the lighter/wealthier girls tended to dismiss the national image of the sexy mulata (female of both African and European heritage) as a product for export, whereas darker/poorer girls appropriated the mulata as a positive model of attractiveness and self-worth in their daily constructions of self. Furthermore, this research discusses how partner expectations and career aspirations are mutually constructive and lead to an ideal life trajectory culminating in financial independence. Although the ideal shared by all young girls, their ability to pursue the trajectory varies, patterned by color and class. The fact that poorer and darker girls cling to high professional goals in an unsupportive environment, bolstered by the ideology of individual willpower, is interpreted as a specifically adolescent discourse of hope. In summary, this dissertation illustrates multiple ways in which discourses of identity may be experienced, interpreted, and deployed in daily life and self-making. Investigating how color discourses are invoked by these adolescent girls representing particular social locations contributes to a more complex, heterogeneous understanding of color identities and relations in contemporary Brazil.

<p> This dissertation explores the work of Colombian writer Evelio Rosero (1958), whose work-like many of his nation's generation, but with a radically new aesthetic and ethic proposal&mdash;focuses on violence and on the disappearance of people in the context of the armed conflict that has ravaged Colombia for the last thirty years. </p><p> Despite having a long and consistent literary career that started in the early eighties and having received prestigious awards, Rosero continues to be almost unknown both nationally and internationally. My dissertation contends that such lack of recognition is serious and that current conversations about Colombian literature and the representation of violence more broadly cannot be done without taking into account his disruptive work. Through a careful analysis of Rosero's most representative novels&mdash;<i>Se&ntilde;or que no conoce la luna, En el lejero and Los Ej&eacute;rcitos</i>&mdash;I examine the literary techniques the author uses to produce a space&mdash;both literary and political&mdash;that neither justifies nor exacerbates violence. </p><p> Based primarily on the concept of the spectral put forth by Jacques Derrida in <i>Specters of Marx,</i> on Mieke Bal's position on political art and on Jean-Luc Nancy's construction of rebellion in <i>Noli me tangere, </i> I demonstrate how Rosero's novels highlight the discourses and mechanisms that put into place and even sanction the violence they supposedly lament. </p><p> The dissertation is divided in three chapters. Chronologically organized, each one examines one of Rosero's most representative novels. </p><p> In the introduction I contextualize Rosero's literary work within the larger efforts to represent Colombia's violent situation. I argue that by focusing on disappearance, ambiguity and spectrality Rosero avoids the most common and problematic pitfalls of such texts. I take the position that by doing so Rosero gives visibility to the many ways in which a state of violence is (re)produced and represented -both aesthetically and politically&mdash;signalling a complicity (not necessarily deliberate) between the two. </p><p> The first chapter analyzes <i>Se&ntilde;or que no conoce la luna. </i> I argue that by focusing in the way los vestidos enslave and torture los desnudos due to their dual genitalia, Rosero shows the artificiality and arbitrariness of our social constructions and highlights how they are used to infringe extreme violence to a particular group of people. I contend that in the unregulated circulation of erotic desire Rosero finds a way out of this structure of abjection. </p><p> The second chapter deals with the radical "spectralization" that takes place in <i>En el lejero.</i> I take the position that Rosero's emphasis on the difficulty of identifying people and spaces, and his refusal to stabilize meaning are effective tools in dismantling a system of oppression and violence while opening a space for agency and solidarity. </p><p> The third and last chapter studies Rosero's most famous novel, <i> Los Ej&eacute;rcitos.</i> I read the novel's contrast between moments of intense visibility and instances of extreme obscurity and confusion as a way to underscore the violent nature of certain ways of looking at things and people. Rosero's insistence in our bonds with, and responsibility towards, what can no longer, not yet, be seen or heard is key to create a space for the political that is not based on violence and exclusion. </p><p> To conclude, I argue that through Jacques Derrida's "impure impure history of ghosts" Rosero develops an aesthetically astonishing and politically crucial way of re-counting and accounting for the violence that a prolonged state of warfare continues to (re)produce in Latin America.</p>

<p> Esta disertaci&ocirc;n conecta la teorfa de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa de &acute;Angel Rama con la tradici&ocirc;n intelectual latinoamericana que aport&ocirc; sus caracterfsticas m&acirc;s distintivas. Las teorfas de Rama fueron influidas por dos tradiciones latinoamericanas. Una es de car&acirc;cter polftico y tiene su origen en la Reforma de C&ocirc;rdoba de 1918. La otra, de car&acirc;cter epistemol&ocirc;gico y se remonta a la d&eacute;cada de 1930, cuando comienza el culturalismo en Latinoam&eacute;rica. Mi investigaci&ocirc;n se ocupa de un grupo de intelectuales uruguayos que trabajaron en torno al semanario <i>Marcha</i> [1939-1974]: Carlos Quijano [1900-1984], Julio Castro [1908 -desaparecido en 1977] y Arturo Ardao [1912-2003]. Tambi&eacute;n me ocupo de dos intelectuales brasile&tilde;nos, Antonio C&acirc;ndido [1918] y Darcy Ribeiro [1922-1997], quienes continuaron con la tradici&ocirc;n culturalista que inauguraron en Latinoam&eacute;rica autores como Gilberto Freyre [1900-1987] y Fernando Ortiz [1881-1969]. Recuperar las redes intelectuales que acompa&tilde;naron el proceso de articulaci&ocirc;n de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa nos permite comprender mejor las tesis de Rama por dos razones. Primero, porque enmarca esta teorfa dentro de algunos de los debates polfticos y culturales m&acirc;s importantes de la Guerra Frfa. Y segundo, porque se aproxima a la manera como Rama comprendi&ocirc; la historia latinoamericana y su coyuntura polftica y socio-cultural durante las d&eacute;cadas de 1960 y 1970. </p><p> El objetivo de la teorfa de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa es describir el proceso por el cual las manifestaciones literarias latinoamericanas pasan de la dependencia a la autonomia cultural. Como el proceso descrito se despliega dentro de la estructura social, para comprenderlo es necesario analizar la interacci&ocirc;n entre las obras literarias y la sociedad que las rodea, de esta forma las ciencias sociales &ndash;antropologia, sociologia, economia&ndash; son instrumentos de an&acirc;lisis indispensables para comprender una obra o tradici&ocirc;n literaria. Este marco general de an&acirc;lisis es descrito por Rama como el culturalismo. </p><p> En el caso de Rama, una lectura desde los estudios literarios puede dar por sentado que el culturalismo fue tan s&ocirc;lo un m&eacute;todo de an&acirc;lisis alternativo al estructuralismo franc&eacute;s. Aunque esta perspectiva sea en parte correcta, no es del todo precisa. El culturalismo al que se refiere Rama es el mismo que practicaron los cientistas sociales en Latinoam&eacute;rica desde la d&eacute;cada de 1930. Recuperar la historicidad de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa no solo nos permite comprender la genealogia de esta teoria sino recuperar y hacer visibles algunas tradiciones intelectuales contra-hegem&ocirc;nicas que desarticul&ocirc; la Guerra Fria en Latinoam&eacute;rica.</p>

<p> This dissertation explores the question of indigenous development and its literary representation through an investigation of depictions of growth in novels from the United States and Peru where boys mature, perhaps, into men. I find that texts with adolescent characters intimately connected to indigenous communities challenge western concepts of maturity and development as presented in the traditional <i>Bildungsroman</i>. Specifically, I read Jos&eacute; Mar&iacute;a Arguedas&rsquo;s <i>Los r&iacute;os profundo </i>s (1958) and Sherman Alexie&rsquo;s <i>Flight</i> (2007) as parodies of the genre that call into question the allegory of a western civilizing mission with its lineal trajectory of growth in which the indigenous is relegated to an uncivilized time before modernity. I describe the protagonists of these novels as inconceivable saviors; inconceivable in that the West cannot imagine them, as indigenous, to be the saviors of the nation (i.e., its protectors and reproducers). They are border-thinkers who live in-between epistemological spaces and the stories of their lives serve as kinds of border-<i> Bildungsromane</i>, narratives of growth that arise in the blurred time/space of a border culture, or Bil(<i>dung</i>)sroman, stories of the abject or expelled. Arguedas&rsquo;s and Alexie&rsquo;s narratives confront the issue of race, a problem that allegories of the consolidation and development of the nation (e.g., <i>Bildungsroman</i> and foundational fictions) evade through magical means by turning the form into a fetish and presenting fetishized fetal origins that offer reassurances of legitimacy for the western narrative of modernity and the nation-state. That is, the traditional form acts like a talisman that magically disappears the fragmentation of coloniality by providing a history to hold on to, creating an origin that does not really exist. Instead of conforming to the model of the genre or rejecting it, Arguedas&rsquo;s and Alexie&rsquo;s texts yield to the power of the original form, appearing to tell the familiar story while carrying a subversive message. Their power derives from the uncertainty inherent in this mimesis. In this way, these novels encourage readers to question the maturation process as conceived and represented in the west and in western literature and to consider alternative paths and formations of self.</p>