This dissertation focuses on the impact of Caribbean mothers on the identity negotiation of daughters in works by three Latina writers: Julia Alvarez from the Dominican Republic, Cristina Garcia from Cuba, and Esmeralda Santiago from Puerto Rico. In order to show the power of mothers to influence daughters' evolving sense of self, object-relations theory (a reformulation of Freudian psychoanalytic theory) is utilized. This school of thought is particularly relevant in the context of this study because of the emphasis that it places upon interpersonal relationships and socialization practices in the psychological development of individuals. Object-relations theorists suggest that the mother's role as the primary caretaker of children is of pivotal importance to children's identity formation, in part because mothers raise children in a manner that contributes to the perpetuation of specific cultural codes. In this way maternal authority is inextricably linked to national authority because the preservation of a national narrative is traditionally understood as the mother's responsibility In the novels studied in this investigation, however, the authority of the mother, and consequently of the nation, is placed in jeopardy by a new nation and culture. Both the authors and protagonists of these works are immigrants from the Caribbean living in the United States. They are also daughters that find themselves the targets of two different sources of authority, the mother (who represents the Caribbean motherland) and the new homeland (the U.S.). This investigation is a careful analysis of how these Latina writers and their protagonists negotiate national and cultural binary systems (including gender, racial, social, and idiomatic binaries) in an effort to create a space of cultural coexistence. In their search for this space, Alvarez, Garcia and Santiago reject a standard of mutual exclusivity and negotiate a hybrid identity / acase@tulane.edu

This study focuses on the parallel development of Antonio Buero Vallejo and Alfonso Sastre, two of Spain's most important contemporary dramatists. It is our purpose to compare the social and philosophical orientation of Buero and Sastre as well as their mutual interest in tragedy, its function in their theater, and the influence Bertolt Brecht has had on their plays. We begin by dividing their works into three chronological periods Chapter I deals with the plays of the first period which are characterized by a realistic approach in writing contemporary tragedies and are based upon the Aristotelian principles of unity of time, place, and action as well as the positive effect of catharsis Chapter II discusses the redirection evident in the plays of the second period. This new orientation is the result of the adaptation of various Brechtian alienation devices intended to provoke a critical attitude in the audience Chapter III centers on the participatory plays which fuse reality and illusion/reason and emotion. In these drama our perception of truth is obscured, yet the dramatists challenge us to find it by making us participants in a world of hallucinations Chapter IV concerns the development of each dramatist's theory of tragedy. Even when they acknowledge the influence of Brecht's anti-tragedies, their use of alienation devices is limited to heightening the rational perception of the themes, while they continue to use the identificaton devices of tragedy in order to increase the emotional impact of catharsis Chapter V treats the social themes found in each of the three chronological periods. As the plays evolve in the second and third periods, Buero becomes more daring, and his works begin to merge with Sastre's in their call for social and political reforms Chapter VI demonstrates that the position Buero and Sastre take regarding any compromise they may have to make in order to have their plays produced is reflected in the philosophical attitude of their protagonists. Both dramatists concur in emphasizing that the struggle for change must continue even when the goal is impossible to achieve / acase@tulane.edu

This study elucidates the nature of evil as manifested in three selected works of twentieth century French literature: La Condition humaine of Andre Malraux; Le Journal d'un cure de campagne of Georges Bernanos; and La Peste of Albert Camus. Since such manifestations suppose a theoretical perspective as well as a symbolic expression of an existential experience, a methodology that allowed a two-directional focus involving both an historical survey of prominent conceptualizations of evil and the application of those symbolic terms, themes and myths to the literary expression of evil was employed. The historical survey demonstrates a dramatic shift in the theoretical perception of evil: from a naturalistic interpre- tation to a traditional theodicy to a modern anthropodicy. The three selections studied demonstrate the strong influence of the shift in theodicy that interprets man's human condition in terms of Pascalian anguish of man without God. The portion of the study analyzing the symbolic manifestations of evil according to such diverse theological perspectives as atheism, theism, and humanism concludes that evil as portrayed in twentieth century French literature reflects a similar contextual framework as well as related symbolic expressions of evil. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-08, Section: A, page: 2291. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

This dissertation investigates meaning in postmodern culture through the interpretive lenses provided by Friedreich Nietzsche and Jean Baudrillard. It consists of two parts: The beginning section sets up the theoretical scaffolding by which to analyze works of contemporary literature in the second, including writings by Kathy Acker, Reese Williams, Clarence Major, and Jean Baudrillard. My readings of these texts concern the disappearance of, among other categories of meaning, "reality," "subjectivity," "identity," and the "body" into simulation models, TV images, and other forms of technological simulacra often constructed by the commercial coding systems of late-capitalism. While Baudrillard offers up the game of "seduction" to the surface play of signs and appearances without depth that define the postmodern moment, other possibilities emerge (and submerge) through reading Nietzsche, such as a Deleuzian (hence "rhizomatic") subject, maneuvering in social, institutional, and technological lines of flight (or "becoming") that recover desire from its (re)production and (re)territorialization within the simulation industries. Here, we confront two methods imbued with Nietzschean philosophy for reading the simulacra of postmodernity: one, as an "implosion"--stressing uncertainty and seduction--as do Baudrillard and Kroker, or its apparent opposite, as "rupture"--stressing multiple desires and rhizomatic becomings--as do Deleuze and Guattari. I do not intend to favor one method for interpreting our present moment over another, but to implement, in Nietzschean fashion, those methods that best contextually serve this important endeavor amidst the seemingly overwhelming postmodern condition of having to interpret simulacra. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1351. / Major Professor: S. E. Gontarski. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Related but not limited to French studies, my work seeks to understand the variety and complexity of religion and religious experience today. With the rise of modernity, Western societies came first to doubt the foundations of religion in the name of reason, then to subject reason itself to critique. The result has been our now familiar circumstance in which we find ourselves wholly without grounds or foundations in any domain at all, and in which, since the nineteenth century, religion itself has become just one thing among others, one more institution among other institutions. Accordingly, the first step in my work is to describe, both as a philosophical project and as a practical necessity of social reality, the implications of this historical trajectory winch has culminated in what we today call a "pluralist society." The second part of my inquiry concerns the problematic status of religious experience in an environment dominated by individualism. The question arises: do we live in an entirely "disenchanted" world, or is religious experience still a real and significant phenomenon? Assuredly, the decline of religion as a social institution does not imply the utter destruction or impossibility of religious experience. It involves, rather, a major change in social relations, moral values and authority in general. I address these matters with reference to the works of Georges Bataille, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Mircea Eliade, or Friedrich Nietzsche. Naturally, my investigation includes historical references to philosophers and writers from the seventeenth century to our days (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, on one hand and romanticism on the other). As a conclusion to my research I demonstrate that secularization is not a completed phenomenon but rather a partial process that guarantees neither the end of religion nor the retreat of religious experience. It does, however, require a reconfiguration of the traditional ways of conceiving modernity.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment base their ideas on reason while attracting public attention on the futility of religion. The concept of the universe inherited from Antiquity is rejuvenated by contemporary sciences and, at first sight, we would think that nature governs the supernatural. A number of philosophical works, which would today be considered anthropological, deal with the customs and manners of different countries of the world, inevitably describing the religious cults and ceremonies practiced throughout the centuries. To what extent are these rituals kept, neglected or transformed in the century of Enlightenment? What is the connection between the ceremonies of Antiquity and the rituals practiced in the confined space of modern secret societies? Speculative Freemasonry, introduced to France at the beginning of the 18 th century, counts among its members a number of well-known philosophers. Do these enlightened minds, most of whom are adversaries of religion, practice the rituals based on sacred and incommunicable mysteries? These are some of the questions which this dissertation tries to answer in analyzing the philosophers' (i.e. Voltaire, Dupuis, Boulanger, Demeunier) anthropological views; the origins of Freemasonry and the ancient sacred tradition; the founding murder and the sacrificial ritual; freemasonic and initiatory symbols in Ramsay's Voyages of Cyrus (1727); Ramsay's quest and the mysteries in his Discourse (1736); Casanova's Icosameron (1788), a freemasonic utopia, hermetic allegory and symbolic fable. This dissertation attempts to demonstrate that the denial of the mystery and the supposed domination of the world by reason are only the well-known and visible aspect of the 18 th century.

Una de las claves importantes para entender el exito de la obra narrativa de Sara Sefchovich y Luis Spota (1925--1985) es el uso de otros textos que ellos emplean en su narrativa, o sea, de la intertextualidad y en particular, La divina comedia de Dante. En esta disertacion realizamos un estudio de intertextualidad en la novelistica de los escritores mexicanos Sara Sefchovich y Luis Spota. Nos concentramos especificamente en dos obras de Sefchovich y tres de Spota. Las novelas analizadas de Sefchovich son: Demasiado amor (1990) y La senora de los suenos (1993). Los textos analizados de Spota son: Murieron a mitad del rio (1949), Casi el paraiso (1956) y Paraiso 25 (1983). En el presente estudio analizamos los textos ya mencionados bajo la optica de la intertextualidad. Identificando primeramente sus paratextos y posteriormente nos concentramos a estudiar los elementos intertextuales que aparecen implicita y explicitamente en las novelas de Sefchovich y Spota. Este estudio no se realizado aun, al menos no en lo que se refiere a las ya mencionadas novelas de Sefchovich y Spota y constituye justamente la empresa en que se inscribe el presente estudio, no con la pretension de identificar la presencia de textos diversos solamente ni comentar que estos son los unicos y definitivos elementos intertextuales, sino con el modesto proposito de ver la presencia y las intenciones de esos textos y contribuir en su exploracion.

Relatively little is known of Gomez Manrique (c. 1415-1490), warrior, statesman and author of a significant corpus of cancionero poetry. His poetic and dramatic works were first published by Antonio Paz y Melia, Cancionero de Gomez Manrique (1885-6) in an edition that is at variance with current established norms and includes only a brief, thirty-two-page biography. In the 116 years since Paz y Melia's study, a significant amount of new historical material has been published on fifteenth-century Spain, much of which bears directly on the life and times of Gomez Manrique. Despite Manfque's close alliance with Isabel I and Fernando V and his extensive involvement in the political events of the day, we do not find him mentioned as frequently as we might expect. This dissertation analyzes the historical evidence that exists in order to construct Gomez Manrique's biography and incorporates Manrique's poetry as testimony to the influence that he had on many of the eminent poets and politicians of his day. Manrique's verse dedicated to many of the statesmen and troubadours of the fifteenth century links him to the historical context in which he functioned as author, statesman and soldier. Part One details the formative years of Manrique. The many events and issues that occurred during this turbulent period of Castilian history are presented to show how they affected Manrique's development as a poet and knight. Part Two portrays Gomez Manrique's adulthood and development from an obscure soldier to a chief defender of the Catholic Monarchs. His poetry and his actions as documented in the chronicles reveal his important contributions to Isabel's and Fernando's successful accession to the throne of Castile. Part Three offers a profile of the knights, prelates, family members and royalty to whom Manrique dedicated poetry, many of whom are significant historical figures despite their relative obscurity. Finally, the Appendix offers an annotated selection of Gomez Manrique's poetry, newly transcribed to conform to current norms.

La intencion de esta disertacion titulada, "El Papa y la Princesa: Eneas Silvio Piccolomini e Isabel La Catolica en la evolucion de la literatura sentimental espanola durante el siglo XV," es ofrecer una nueva interpretacion en cuanto al genesis del genero sentimental. Varios eruditos han tratado de redefinir el genero pero han fallado en poner enfasis en la importancia que tuvo la obra de Piccolomini, Historia de duobus amantibus (1444), para el desarrollo del novel genero en Espana que comienza con la obra de Juan Rodriguez del Padron, Siervo libre de amor, composicion que segun mis investigaciones fue compuesta hacia 1444, es decir, posterior a la obra de Piccolomini. Dado que Piccolomini es de suma importancia para el desarrollo del genero sentimental, he reservado el primer capitulo de mi disertacion para un estudio biografico de este hombre renacentista. En el transcurso de esta exploracion de su vida, puntualizo en el capitulo segundo las importantes huellas clasicas que se encuentran en su Historia de duobus amantibus. El tercer capitulo esta consagrado al estudio de diez premisas paralelas que encontramos en la Historia de duobus amantibus y las siguientes siete obras sentimentales: (1) Siervo libre de amor, (2) Triste deleytacion , (3) Arnalte y Lucenda, (4) Carcel de amor, (5) Grisel y Mirabella, (6) Grimalte y Gradisa, (7) Coronacion de la senora Gracisla. El cuarto y ultimo capitulo, abarca los acontecimientos historicos durante el siglo XV que ocasionan la aparicion del genero sentimental: (1) el debil reinado de Juan II (1406-1454); (2) el surgimiento de una nueva clase docta con una percepcion mas benigna de la mujer; (3) tres reinas que abogaron por los derechos de las mujeres, Maria de Aragon (1419-1445), Isabel de Portugal (1447-1454), e Isabel de Castilla (1474-1504); (4) la publicacion del Corvacho (1438) por el Arcipreste de Talavera, provocando la ira de la reina Maria y una decisiva reaccion literaria de parte de sus defensores; (5) la enorme popularidad de la Historia de duobus amantibus, obra que serviria de modelo para la primera novela sentimental espanola.

This dissertation presents a critical edition of the Entremes de Melisendra. This entremes has been attributed to two talented writers of the Golden Age theater: Lope de Vega Carpio and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The first part of this work is an introduction to the important role that the entremes , as a sub-genre, played during the period. The work then provides a structural analysis of the Entremes in detail, including versification and vocabulary. Bakhtin's fundamental work on carnaval, complemented by that of other critics, provides the framework for the analysis of the bawdy, at times grotesque, humor of the play. Chapter III explores the influence of the Romance de don Gaiferos , whose plot derives from the Emperor Charlemagne's era. Through a detailed comparison, it becomes clear that the Romance de don Gaiferos strongly influenced the creation of the Entremes de Melisendra. Moreover, examples of parody abound. Instead of calling the play Entremes de don Gaiferos, the author parodies the title and changes it to Entremes de Melisendra, indicative of the carnavalesque inversion found throughout the text. Chapter IV then analyses the complex intertextuality between the Entremes de Melisendra and Cervantes's "Retablo de maese Pedro." The theoretical background employed for the consideration of this extensive parody draws from Linda Hutcheon's work A Theory of Parody as well as that of others theorists. The edition that comprises the fifth chapter has been modernized using the rules suggested for editing comedias by Frank P. Casa and Michael D. McGaha in Editing the Comedia. It has been annotated to help readers understand some of the more complex passages. The brief conclusion then underscores the significance of this piece for understanding the artistic evolution of a Medieval romance. The transformations in plot and presentation from romance, to entremes and then to a prose recreation of a theatrical "retablo" reflect the ever-changing relationships between art and society. A series of appendices offers additional information that supports the analysis presented.