Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-03, Section: A, page: 0951. Adviser: Luis Davila. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed March 21, 2007)."

This dissertation is a historical and a sociopolitical approach to Bertalicia Peralta's poetic and narrative discourse. Our analysis includes selections from her poetic collections Dos poemas, Himno a la alegria, Libro de las fabulas, Casa flotante, Piel de gallina, Invasion U.S.A., 1989: Cronicas de una memoria and three short stories from her book Puros cuentos. The particular contribution of this study is to recognize and introduce Peralta as an outstanding writer, poet, journalist and educator. In chapter one, we approach this study with the help of a personal interview, direct correspondence with the author and studies on revolutionary philosophies. Chapter two centers its attention on Panamanian history and how it's reflected in Peralta's work. The third chapter focuses on Panamanian sociopolitical issues. It shows the strategies and conventions employed by the author. Among the critical references used to support Peralta's commitment to humanity in general are the ideas of James Iffland, Louis Althusser, Goran Therborn, Terry Eagleton, John Beverley, Marc Zimmerman and others. Finally, in the fourth chapter the works of Mariblanca Staff Wilson, CODEHUCA's research on human rights and literary feminist criticism are used in order to illustrate and represent the role of women in Peralta's work. This dissertation concludes accepting her written discourse as a literary expression that promotes an understanding of our society. For the above reasons, her work is a true literary contribution, worthy of scholarly attention.

La literatura cubanoamericana a pesar de ser un fenomeno aparentemente muy reciente es uno de los mejores testimonios de este inmigrante en Norteamerica. Sin embargo, no ha sido posible hasta los anos noventa encontrar algunos de los exponentes literarios que mejor han sabido representar esa experiencia en la narrativa. Tomando en consideracion la hibridez contemporanea de "teoria cultural" y su manifestacion sociohistorica asi como los estudios de varios sociologos e historiadores de la experiencia sociocultural cubana, el proposito de este trabajo es examinar como la hipotesis cultural de Michael Ryan se manifiesta en la produccion de varios narradores cubanoamericanos que han intentado exponer la realidad cultural de este inmigrante en la literatura. Los escritores que consideraremos en este estudio son los novelistas Oscar Hijuelos, Cristina Garcia y Elias Miguel Munoz quienes mejor constancia han dejado de sus experiencias y han sabido reflejar el dilema de temas como la transculturacion del inmigrante cubano, la busqueda de la identidad de sus descendientes y la realidad del exilio y la revolucion que ha marcado la condicion ideologica de muchos cubanos en Norteamerica.

Pos/modernidad y (multi)forma en la obra de dos poetas mexicanos contemporaneos: Alberto Blanco y Coral Bracho studies the effects of modernity in Contemporary Mexican poetry. According to literary critics such as Evodio Escalante and Christopher Dominguez, Blanco and Bracho in their radical experimentation of poetic language create a multiform that concedes diverse possibilities of expression. This dissertation is theoretically backed by the works of Nestor Garcia Canclini and Edward O. Wilson, which allow me to underscore the importance and influence of politics, economics, and culture in these Mexican poets. Chapter Two analyzes twenty-two poetic anthologies with the intention of demonstrating the effects of posmodernity in poetic production and diffusion as well as to create a historiographic approach to the generation of poets from the 50s. Chapters Three and Four observe the poetic multiform in the works of Blanco and Bracho respectively. This analysis in grounded in the theoretical insights of Edward O. Wilson that explain how Consilience is the unity of knowledge through science and humanities. Consequently, Blanco explores the various theories of Physics, specifically the fractals and the hologram, while Bracho follows the discourse of Deleuze and Guattari about Rhizomes.

This dissertation identifies and analyzes the characteristics of postmodern literary discourses written by Argentinean writer Manuel Puig. As part of this analysis, I identify and correlate the sociohistorical circumstances which shaped and influenced Puig's writings and the postmodern subject embedded in his progressive narratives. As part of the objectives of this research, I have included a critical theoretical perspective of the development of modern Eurocentric subject and its effects on Latin American societies. Four literary texts are analyzed to specifically identify and point out how Manuel Puig created a complex postmodern narrative, in which the author problematized issues of gender, power, authority and sexual orientation: La traicion de Rita Hayworth, Pubis Angelical, Sangre de amor correspondido and El beso de la mujer arana. In chapter one, the critical foundation of the European modern subject is layed out in order to understand the effects of Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum upon the establishment and legitimation of the rational subject. The diffusion, incorporation and imposition of Cartesian rationalism in Latin American societies are also analyzed to further understand how Latin America's elite looked towards European and the United States of America in an effort to emulate and import new advances in technology, science and education. This chapter also includes an analysis of the failures of eurocentric postulations, methods and philosophies in Latin American societies during the second half of the twentieth century as the metropolitan centers faced the first manifestation of postmodernity. Chapter two focuses on the "transgressive" elements of Puig's first novel, as the author offers a dystopian view of an Argentinean family and its community. The author departs from traditional narrative models and creates an innovative literary text, in which the characters speak and narrate directly, their experiences and events in their lives. In this postmodern literary text, the author disrupts the hegemonic central order to reconfigure a new hierarchy, these disruptive themes will continue in his other works, as the postmodern subject reconfigures his/her strategic place in a new social hierarchy. The third chapter concentrates on Puig's feminist discourse: the application of feminist theoretical postulations provides an understanding of how this type of Latin American feminist discourse incorporate the experiences of an Argentinean woman as she struggles in a patriarchal system that in the past silenced her both as a woman and as a subject. In chapter four, a deconstructive theoretical framework proves useful during this analysis of El beso de la mujer arana, in this text Manuel Puig addresses issues of sexual orientation, concepts of masculinity and issues of power, control and authority in Latin America. Additionally, this chapter incorporates a critical view of the contestatory voices during the postmodern era, specifically when the diverse of Latin American subaltern voices, previously silenced, come forward to affirm their presence in Argentinean and other Latin American societies, as well as in the official literary cannon.

The academic interest of this study is to establish the relevance and pertinence of Juan Rulfo's novel, Pedro Paramo, in the literary canon of western tradition. To accomplish our goal we will consider Rulfo's text in light of Carl Gustav Jung's analytical psychology, in particular the concepts of the archetypes and the collective unconscious, to demonstrate that the types and world presented in Rulfo's novel adhere to classical literary types of western tradition. We will use Jung's theory of the collective unconscious to show that what has been considered purely Mexican represents an extension of the themes and topics of interest in western tradition. To prove our point we will consider texts that are part of the literary canon of western tradition, such as: La epica de Gilgamesh; John Keats poem, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"; Rainer Maria Rilke's poems, "Sonnets to Orpheus" and "Orpheus, Euridice, Hermes"; Ovidio's, La metamorfosis ; and Virgilio's Georgicas; as well as biblical selections in comparison and contrast to Rulfo's text. This study will establish that Juan Rulfo's work is an expression of the communal experience that concerns western literary tradition.

In Chile during the first twenty years of the XX century, multiple dynamics of social, political, and economical nature affect the various subjects' cultural products, and their relationship to the concept of nation. I discuss three collections of stories published by Wilfrida Buxton (Viditas, 1911), Clarisa Polanco de Hoffman (Hojas al viento, 1917), and Ines Echeverria de Larrain (La hora de Queda , 1918). These were women whose different politics of representation demonstrate an appropriation of the written word as a means for gender representation, and increasing awareness of class and gender power relations. I adopt a cultural studies approach to pose a re-reading of this historical juncture as one of contact zones. Here the female subjects are forced to re-position themselves in relation to modernity, and the fragmentary effect it has on previously fixed-gender and class constructions. I expand the concept of contact zones by highlighting that these encompass a process of integration which can be delineated by the nature of the texts produced within these spaces. I study each text in light of the authors' politics of representation and its placement in the process of integration. Wilfrida Buxton's stories belong in the first sub-zone. The text represents a group of subjects marginalized due to a prediscursive notion of an individual's valid contribution to the construction of nation. Polanco de Hoffman's, on the other hand, demonstrates a lack of class consciousness coupled with an acute awareness of women's unequal representation under the law. Her pro-divorce argument places her in the second sub-zone, where texts may propose alternatives to deficient social structures. EcheverrIa de Certain's text straddles the second and third sub-zone by displacing the traditional notion of "woman". Her representation of multiple female subjectivities underline this writer's sensitivity to class and gender relations. Her text re-defines gender relations, as well as provides an alternative female subject who is free of the tensions of gender relations. With the study of these texts and the process of integration, I aim to contribute to the understanding of women's participation in the relationship between text, subject and nation.

Argentina was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1976-1983, and underwent a period of intense political repression. This dissertation examines how three Argentine women writers--Edna Pozzi, Martha Gavensky, and Matilde Sanchez--approach the problem of reconstructing history in the aftermath of the military dictatorship from both a feminine and feminist perspective. Three novels published after the return to democratic rule are analyzed: El lento rostro de la inocencia (1983) by Edna Pozzi, Martin o el Juego de la Oca (1986) by Martha Gavensky, and El Dock (1993) by Matilde Sanchez. The purpose of this research is to show how these works, framed as investigative narratives constructed around female absence, constitute gendered histories of the Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional (Proceso) and the "Dirty War". The conspicuous absence of the central female subject in these novels evokes multiple levels of silence and absenting of the feminine in patriarchal society and the authoritarian state. It is suggested that these endeavor to reinscribe a multiplicity of female experiences into national history, writing against the masculinist historical tradition that has systematically "disappeared" the feminine.

This dissertation deals with the theme of violence in four works by Elena Poniatowska: Tinisima, La noche de Tlatelolco, Fuerte es el silencio, and Hasta no verte Jesus mio . It consists of an analysis on the way in which violence is to be found in the four narratives by Poniatowska, as applies the theory of effect of Hans Robert Jauss in the principal area of analysis. The method of analysis is carried out in pairs: Hasta no verte Jesus mio and Tinisima, due to the fact that both of these works are novels in which the protagonists are of female gender, as opposed to: La noche de Tlatelolco and Fuerte es el silencio which are testimonial works in which the theme of violence is of an intensive political nature throughout the whole book. Because of the magnitude and complexity of violence, the nature of violence is explained with an interdisciplinary approach in order to cover its multidimensional framework within the four works. There is an emphasis on the way that violence perpetrates the lives of the female characters, even though the study includes the presence of violence in the lives of the male characters with whom they interact, as well as in the political environment in which they exist. The major contribution of this dissertation is the fact that it is the first so far, to study violence as the main theme in four works by Elena Poniatowska, and which with an interdisciplinary approach to the explanation of violence, promotes the interaction of literature with other areas of study to bring about a more complete analysis and understanding of social issues in literature, such as the study of violence. In the four works by Poniatowska studied in this dissertation we may also take into consideration the fact that the author deals with violence in historical events, and that the main characters are real life characters whose lives are written in the midst of a hostile and volatile environments.

Junto con romperse el sistema realista de representacion (alrededor de 1930) tambien en la novela latinoamericana contemporanea se transforma el narrador omnisciente y aparecen otras perspectivas de las relaciones del narrador con su obra. En un acercamiento literatura-historia, esta tesis estudia la posibilidad de una relacion entre la figura del dictador y la del narrador. Este ultimo--al relacionarse con la figura de poder a traves de un discurso contemporaneo--incide sobre la representacion de este dictador 'historico'. Se sospecha que este se ve 'despojado' de su poder a traves del tratamiento narrativo que recibe en algunos textos latinoamericanos contemporaneos. Se cree que esto llevara a una representacion aun mas profunda de la realidad latinoamericana contemporanea.