This study is a critical edition with an introduction and notes of Hado y divisa de Leonido y de Marfisa, the last creation of one of the most influential playwrights of all time, D. Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681). This is an eclectic edition based on a manuscript with signature MS. 8314 from L'Arsenal Library in Paris, corrected and modified when deemed necessary with the help of other existing textual witnesses. The introduction includes an analysis of the political, social and economic context of this comedia and the circumstances of its production; the literary context and characteristics that it shares with the byzantine and chivalry novels; its textual transmission; its musical tradition; its staging and its polymetrical structure. At the end of this study are included the explanatory notes as well as the textual variants of all witnesses analyzed.

This dissertation is a critical edition with preliminary study of a religious comedia by Jose de Valdivielso: El angel de la guarda. While his autos have been edited and have been the subject of critical study, his theater, although transcribed has not been examined critically. Critics seem to agree that Valdivielso's comedias do not compare to his autos, and that very little if any work has been done in depth The objective of this dissertation is dual: to make an accurate and annotated edition of the play, and to present a critical study of Valdivielso's style through his imagery and its usage as a tool to teach a theological lesson to the vulgo Doze autos sacramentales y dos comedias divinas, Toledo, 1622, forms the basis of this critical edition of El angel de la guarda. A copy of the text was obtained from the Hispanic Society in New York and collated with the Braga, 1624 edition in the Harvard University Library and Manuscript #15277 in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid. The variants of the edition of 1624 and the manuscript are included in the notes to the text The importance of El angel de la guarda, however, is not so much due to its ideological and literary merits as a play, but to Valdivielso's unique method of using imagery as a teaching tool. Through the visual magic of the stage, this imagery explains the relationship between God and man Valdivielso's strikingly unorthodox attitude toward the honor code is implicit through this comedia and has been dealt with to a certain extent by Professor Wardropper / acase@tulane.edu

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The metafictional novel is a novel that draws attention to its own form or construction and systematically flaunts its own condition of artifice, and by so doing poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. In other words, the metafictional novel is such that--explicitly or implicitly, and making use of a variety of strategies and techniques--deliberately exposes the fictiveness and artifice of the literary creation. As a tendency, the metafictional novel has been part of the history of literature since the very beginnings of the novelistic genre with the publication of Cervantes' Don Quijote de la Mancha. In the present Dissertation five Spanish novels belonging to four different periods of Spanish Literature have been selected: Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quijote de la Mancha, Benito Perez Galdos' El amigo Manso, Miguel de Unamuno's Niebla, and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's Fragmentos de Apocalipsis and La Isla de los Jacintos Cortados. The first chapter is an introduction which refers to the most relevant theories as well as individual contributions to the study of metafiction, establishing the theoretical foundation for the individual and comparative analysis of each of the selected novels studied in the following chapters. These analyses identify the main characteristics of metafiction: its anti-realism, self-consciousness, self-referentiality or self-critical reflexion, the literary theorization within the novel, its playful nature, and the particular importance given to the role of the reader. Departing from the initial question regarding the emergence of a tendency from within the novelistic genre that includes, as part of the novel itself, the preoccupation about the essence of literature, the conclusion is that metafiction can be considered an answer to the "mystery" of literary creation and, therefore, to the interaction between reality and fiction, life and art. On the other hand, all the metafictional novels analyzed here claim, in one way or another, in a lesser or greater degree, a wide and dynamic conception of the novelistic genre and the freedom of creation and imagination.

Mário Henrique Leiria is mostly known for his short stories--- Contos do gin tonic and Novos contos do gin---published in the 1970's upon his return to Portugal from a "self-exile" in Brazil that lasted nine years. Little is known of his work composed earlier than 1973. Only some of his poems and drawings were published in anthologies of the Portuguese surrealist movement, together with other short stories. One can say "little is known" of his work in light of the considerable corpus on which the present study is based: poems, plays and short stories, but mostly poems written between 1938 and 1972. It is of utmost importance to mention that the poetic side of this author remains practically unknown to the general public. The objectives of the present dissertation are to bring to light and analyze the dated manuscripts found in the author's archives at the National Library in Lisbon. Due to the fact that Leiria contributed to the surrealist movement in Portugal, and that his surrealist period is his most prolific and aesthetically the most important in his career, this study will be divided into three parts, each of them accounting for one of the poet's three phases, with special emphasis on the second phase: "Leiria's pre-Surrealism", "Leiria's Surrealism", and "Leiria's post-Surrealism". The analysis of the poems comprising each of these phases will demonstrate that the author may be viewed as one of the representatives of literary modernity in Portugal or, more specifically, of the Portuguese vanguard.

The current study is a proposal that heads towards the vision of a polyphonic accompaniment of the evolution of allegory, journeying from a cavern, to the soul and out into the spheres of knowledge and representation. It examines the evolution of allegory from antiquity and goes deep into the study proposed by Walter Benjamin in his The Origin of German Tragic Drama, allowing for the analysis that allegory falls into two fields of interpretation: first that of representation, and second that of the articulation. With its articulatory power of expression of a convention, allegory transgresses limits and spaces, becoming a tool of expression and verification of the past through the process of investigation and of research. So being, allegory, a discursive material for the laying out of the past, redirects the reader’s view towards a forgotten, ruined and decadent past that awaits its redemption and incorporation within the historicist discourse. With this in mind, I would argue that allegory in the works of Carpentier and Saramago, far from being a stylistic device seen by critics as a way of escaping censorship, is a poetics resulting from repositioning history through the displacement of what is already signified, bringing forth, as a crucial component of History the decadent, the displaced, the ruins and the marginalized. Allegory is a way of disrupting, transforming and subverting—through the very archival work carried out by both authors—, the temporal and territorial vocality of definitive histories and official languages, mythologies and the politics of inherited Manichean allegories that typify the rhetoric of nationhood and nationalism. Works such as El arpa y la sombra, Los pasos perdidos and “Viaje a la semilla” of Alejo Carpentier and Memorial do Convento, A Jangada de Pedra and A Caverna of José Saramago examine a circular vision of life and history and its discontinuities, the decadent phases of history that beg to be exposed in the decadent ruins of its reality. Allegory, in my analysis, is the means through which man and history are only saved by exposing the past, failures, and decadence from the time of the lost Paradise.

<p>In my dissertation, <i>De la pen&iacute;nsula Ib&eacute;rica a Italia: concepci&oacute;n y pr&aacute;ctica teatral de las primeras comedias castellanas </i>, I analyze the formation of early modern Spanish comedia, in the context of Italo-Iberian cultural exchanges. My aim is to incorporate the most popular Spanish plays of the first half of the sixteenth century into the larger scenario in which they belong: one that we could name the "formation of the genre of comedy". Works such as Juan del Encina's<i> Eclogues </i>, <i>La Celestina</i> (<i>The Spanish Bawd</i>), and Torres Naharro's <i>Tinellaria</i> and <i>Soldadesca</i> are seen in this light as milestones in a complex thread of contributions leading to the development in the seventeenth century of a Spanish Golden Age "national theater", and specifically in Lope de Vega comedia nueva, as well as to the Italian <i>commedia erudita</i>. Such a reconstruction has long been neglected due to the constitution of the Hispanic and the Italian literary studies, and the asymmetry between the Spanish and the Italian literary traditions, especially regarding the primacy of Italian "comedies" and "authors" in the constitution of a history of "western comedy". </p><p> The formation of the genre of comedy it is seen in a new light within a textual and bibliographical history, grounded in the relationships among authors, printers, and readers. Cultural and merchant networks established between the Iberian and Italian Peninsulas helped to widespread not only books as commodities, but ideas and forms (genres) contained within them that would appeal to new audiences and readers. In my second chapter, I have reconstructed the possible ways in which these plays could have been represented, in contexts such as Alba de Tormes and Rome, by means of the analysis of internal text evidence (prompts, or configuration of the different scenes) and the extant records, both about its actual performances, and other contemporary spectacles. In order to make sense of the scarce available data, I have delved into architectural treatises (Vitruvio, Alberti, Peruzzi, Serlio), woodcuts, and extant Roman documents on contemporary theatrical performances. As a result of this reconstruction, Encina's latest plays, as well as Naharro's <i>Soldadesca</i> and <i> Tinellaria</i>, appear as deeply rooted in the avant-garde conception of the urban Roman scene, they share both techniques, and scene conceptions with avant-garde Italian authors. In my third chapter, I studied the function that comedies, such as Naharro's <i>Tinellaria</i> and <i> Soldadesca</i>, had at the time, insisting on the religious and political denunciations contained in them, as well as in their relationship with some discourses originating in the Lateran council. As a result of that, I have been able to delimit the circles, critical with the papacy of Julius II, in which these ideas originated, together with the political interests of those that voiced them. </p>

<p> This study examines the representation of women in Emile Zola&rsquo;s famous series Les Rougon-Macquart. Critics have described Zola&rsquo;s novels and their presentation of women as misogynist, yet this judgment obscures many of the textual details establishing the female protagonists&rsquo; relationships to industrial capitalism and the rapidly changing social landscape in late nineteenth century France. This study reexamines the narrative synthesis between Zola&rsquo;s naturalist &ldquo;objective&rdquo; narrator and his female protagonists. It also highlights one particular pairing that of Adelaide Fouque and her opportunist daughter-in-law, Felicit&eacute; Puch: Whereas Adelaide, the biological matriarch of the family who figures in each of the twenty novels, does not have an active voice, Felicit&eacute; as maternal <i>protectrice</i> of the family speaks frankly, even aggressively. Zola uses this pairing to link one generation to the next, a key structural element of his naturalist project. Ultimately, Zola&rsquo;s representation of women is more complex than might otherwise be understood.</p>

Thesis advisor: John L. Mahoney / An exploration of the spirituality present in seleceted poems of William Wordsworth. Occasionally reference his personal relationship to and influence of the Anglican Church, but is a study of the way he developed his own spirituality, not an argument for or against his classification as a "Christian poet." / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This dissertation restores the validity of an interdisciplinary use of the term "Mannerism" to the student of the Humanities interested in Italian sixteenth-century visual arts, music, and literature. The concept is not advocated as a movement (an -ism), but as a necessary critical category, a definable style, and a rich cultural period. Mannerism as a period style is most polemical, and more recent critical approaches have discredited the study of "style" in general. Still, the awareness of--and desire for--radical departure from the the High Renaissance ideals among mid-to-later Cinquecento painters, writers, and musicians testifies to the existence of Mannerism. Powerful evidence to this effect is located in specific shared attributes of many paintings, poems, and madrigals--as well as theoretical writings--of the second half of the sixteenth century. A correct understanding of these art works is tied to establishing the historical and stylistic context, which is best described by the concept of Mannerism. / Specific and contrasting definitions of Mannerism are documented in the first part of the study, which also discusses the etymology of the concept, the language of interart studies, and the fall from grace of Zeitgeist within cultural history. A survey of modern criticism of the term/category reveals multiple problems of definition and approach, but none powerful enough to warrant a call to abandon the term. The analysis of criticism offered spotlights concepts which are intended to free art works from the traditional strictures of "Renaissance" and "Baroque." / These broad concepts are then tested for their usefulness in three chapters, and each art form addressed speaks in differing but clear ways of Mannerism. A focus on the fresco painting in Florence and Bologna in the 1580s by Bernardino Poccetti and Annibale Carracci serves to approach Mannerism through the "back door." The lesser-known Poccetti represents the fading stages of Mannerism in the visual arts, while Annibale is one of the first spokesmen for anti-Mannerism. Correspondences between the Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso and the Maniera then provide the avenue for a discussion of shared Mannerist aesthetics in painting and literature. Finally, significant similarities in the theory, language, and function of Cinquecento art and music point to the limited role, yet very real presence, of Mannerism in music. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-10, Section: A, page: 3621. / Major Professor: David Darst. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.