This dissertation studies the Gauche divine, a progressive upper class elite from Barcelona during the 1960's, and its reflection in five novels by leading contemporary Spanish authors. The Gauche divine performed their ideological agenda through a cosmopolitan, ironic stance defying the Franco regime and its traditional morality. Moreover, these intellectuals and professionals---architects, publishers, movie directors, designers, writers, poets---connected to the newest trends in critical thinking, arts and literature in Europe and updated Spanish culture. On the other hand, this intellectual group offered an alternative discourse to orthodox Marxism. In order to frame this intelligentsia in its historical and social context, we review the concept of the committed intellectual, according to the texts of Antonio Gramsci and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, in the 1960's---with arising counter-cultural movements, along with the sexual revolution---the committed intellectual becomes spectacular, in a cultural milieu ruled by mass media. Since their cultural production in literature and visual arts shows a narcissistic attitude, the Gauche divine cannot only be considered spectacular, but specular as well. Once the group dissapeared, their narcissism turned into a self indulgent nostalgia, as we can see in the remarkable number of their autobiographies up to date. However, we can find a critical counterpart in fiction by authors in the margins of the group. Our analysis of Ultimas tardes con Teresa (1966), by Juan Marse, and Los alegres muchachos de Atzavara (1987), by Manuel Vazquez Montalban focuses on the frustrated relationship between the committed intellectual and the Southern immigrant in Catalonia or charnego, whose body is seen as a political and a sexual fetish. Therefore, we propose a poscolonial approach to the representation of the charnego, as a racialized character. Luis Goytisolo's Recuento (1973) illustrates the process of political commitment of the middle-upper class intellectual in Franco's Spain, from ideological conversion to disenchantment. Through Michel Foucault's discourse analysis, we discuss the position of the critical intellectual within the Communist Party. Finally, we explore historical memory, nostalgia and the conflict between ethics and aesthetics in Felix de Azua's Historia de un idiota contada por el mismo (1986) and Momentos decisivos (2000).

This thesis studies five pieces of Spanish postmodern literature, written by the Spanish author Lourdes Ortiz between 1982 and 2001: two historical novels (Urraca and La liberta), two short stories ("Eva" and "Salome", included in the collection Los motivos de Circe), and a play (Aguiles y Pentesilea ). Departing from the notion "intertextuality" and playing with the concepts of "History" and "Truth", these works establish a dialogue with fundamental canonical texts such as the Old and New Testaments, Platonism, Stoicism, and Greco-Roman Mythology. Based on a "metaphysics of essence", Occidental patriarchy has always counted on some extra-textual entity (i.e. God, the Law) that possesses the power of creation, that is, the Word. This misogynist ideology also believes in words' inherent masculine sexuality/textuality, therefore subjugating "feminine" constructs to an insignificant position under the presupposed "masculine" hegemony. This duality has served to maintain a symbolic order that makes a radical distinction between body/soul, "Other"/"I", a distinction which also refers to the opposition between passive women and active men. In these alienating circumstances, Ortiz's works use an ancient figure and tradition labeled as heresy by hegemonic voices: the myth of the androgyne, whose two components are considered equivalents. It is worth noting that despite all violent attempts to suppress this "undesirable counter-narrative", the encounter and transcendence of opposites embodied in this symbol recurs through History in texts such as the Hebrew myth of Lilith, the first chapter of Genesis, the discourse of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, and the alchemical notion of the "Purified Androgyne". Confronting orthodox and ex-centric discourses, the works by Lourdes Ortiz reveal, sometimes ironically, some subtle strategies hegemonic discourses employ to appear as a self-sufficient construction. In order to demystify logocentric Master Narratives and vindicate the anti-essentialist nature of the word, the fictions analyzed empower traditionally silenced female voices (Eva, Salome, Acte, Urraca, Pentesilea). These biblical, historical, and mythological women are considered by Ortiz as doers of their own deeds, women that fight to activate their right to negotiate significant and signifying places within the web of texts all individuals are embedded in.

Notre thèse porte sur la "métapoésie" chez trois poètes majeurs du XXe siècle: Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), Rene Char (1907-1988) et Yves Bonnefoy (1923). Nous entendons par le terme "metapoesie" tout poeme (qu'il soit en vers ou en prose; qu'il s'agisse de calligramme, de métagramme ou d'aphorisme) qui porte sur la poésie dans la poésie meme. Ce néologisme est un dérivé de "métatexte", "un texte qui parle lui-même d'un texte" (Henri Benac et Brigitte Reaute). Notre choix d'analyser l'oeuvre de Guillaume Apollinaire se fonde sur deux critères: il est le premier à faire entrer la poésie française de plain-pied dans le XXe siècle; il est aussi l'un des premiers à écrire ce que nous considérons comme des métapoemes. Dans le cas de René Char, disons, à la suite de Maurice Blanchot, que sa poésie "est révélation de la poésie, poésie de la poésie [...], poème de l'essence du poème". Des lors, son oeuvre, dans la perspective métapoétique, s'est imposée d'emblée à nous. Enfin, faisant de la poésie une quête de la présence, les poèmes d'Yves Bonnefoy deviennent également une quête de la poésie. Comme le notait Jean-Marie Gleize, "si le mot "poésie" est synonyme de "vrai lieu", d'accession ou de retour à la présence authentique [...], alors poésie est synonyme de recherche de la poésie". Au XXe siècle, la poésie a tendu de plus en plus vers une conscience aigue de sa propre existence qu'elle révèle à l'intérieur d'elle-meme. Dans cette perspective, il n'est pas exagéré de dire que le XXe siècle est, en poésie française, résolument métapoétique.

The purpose of the present study is to offer a faithful and readable text of El Tuzani de la Alpujarra o Amor despues de la muerte [The man named Tuzani of the Alpujarras mountains or Love after death], a play by Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600--1681). This is an eclectic edition based on the editio princeps, the Quinta parte de comedias ('Barcelona' 1677), and corrected, when necessary, with the help of other early textual witnesses. The introduction includes a study of the alternate titles of the play, its probable date of composition, its early textual transmission, its staging in the 17th century, its polymetrical structure and the dramatic role of geography and toponymy. Included at the end of the edited text are a comprehensive set of explanatory notes as well as the textual variants of the fifteen early witnesses that were collated.

One of the most prolific writers in contemporary Portuguese literature, Jorge de Sena is the author of extensive epistolographic writings. Seven books of correspondence have been published, while ten others are in press. This dissertation focuses on the place of epistolography in Jorge de Sena's literary corpus. The author believes that no literary form is less important than another. Every single text plays a role in the author's creative universe. The letters, as products of Sena's creativity as a writer, might be thought of as representing leitmotivs of his poetry and fiction. The act of writing resonates with the poet's mission of actively witnessing the pilgrimage of humankind. A prominent modern humanist among contemporary writers, Jorge de Sena authored an epistolographic oeuvre whose classic structure and form connote the ultimate purpose of the written text—one that signifies the struggle of humanity in its metamorphic journey towards a “paradise” lost and regained in and by each and every human being. The first chapter of the dissertation describes and explains the main topics of the correspondence of Jorge de Sena. This introductory part of the study constitutes a justification and explanation of the maps and charts contained in the appendices. The second chapter constitutes a critical approach to the aesthetics of the letters written by the author. The issues herein discussed bring us to the conclusion that Jorge de Sena, following the traditional model of letter writing, draws from its classic meanings into a contemporary significance of epistolography: the letter serves as a vehicle to a more in-depth reading of a writer's other literary works. The third chapter studies the letter as an important element of the author's humanistic poetics. A letter is primarily a carrier of a specific message to an individualized reader. In a broader literary context, however, the letter expands its meaning, and becomes a component, with the other written works, of the very own purpose of poetry, that is, to be an active witness of the human journey in this earthly reality. The chapter concludes with the analysis of the letters between Jorge de Sena and his wife, Mécia de Sena. This particular book of correspondence, bearing the meaningful subtitle “(Cartas de Amor)”, illustrates the author's fundamental beliefs that love and happiness are the utmost goals of humankind; and that art—and more specifically poetry (in verse and prose)—is a testament to our struggle to reach those goals. The fourth chapter discusses the role played by the correspondence in the emergence of the theme of exile in most of the author's works of fiction and poetry. The letters of Jorge de Sena, who considers himself to be an emigrant in a “voluntary exile”, are to be considered a key element of the metaphor of exile inherent in the very act of writing. The correspondence of Jorge de Sena belongs by nature to his literary corpus for it amplifies the meaning and the message of his other works. By expanding meaning and message, the epistolography becomes one more privileged space constantly “infected” by the humanistic nature of Jorge de Sena's poetics.

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This dissertation analyzes the treatment of memory by four authors of the same generation—all born in the 1950's—in four novels of the late 1980's and 1990's: El jinete polaco by Antonio Muñoz Molina, El lápiz del carpintero by Manuel Rivas, Todas las almas by Javier Marías, and La lluvia amarilla by Julio Llamazares. Using Walter Benjamin's dialectics of melancholia as a framework, the first chapter studies how contemporary Spanish historiography and literature recreate recent Spanish history. The study focuses on the representation of the change from a rural country with an oral and collective memory to a society that undergoes a fast process of modernization and, almost simultaneously, postmodernization. The subsequent chapters analyze the novels using the principles of the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida and post-deconstructivist theories, which postulate a new understanding of the subject based on an ethical relationship with the Other. These chapters further observe a melancholic relationship with the past. This sensation of loss leads the narrators to search for their past in a series of objects which materialize the loss of meaning and the presence of the past in the present. Their narratives are a work of mourning which simultaneously recreates and listens to the voices of the dead informing the narrator's self. The dissertation points out the difference between the sense of melancholia present in the novels of Muñoz Molina, Rivas and Llamazares, which is caused by a historical trauma, and the sense of melancholia created in Marias' work, this one the effect of a transhistorical or structural trauma. Likewise, while in El jinete polaco, El lápiz del carpintero and La lluvia amarilla the work of memory is based on an ethical relationship with the past, in Todas las almas the constructive work of memory adopts a more ludic tone.

Mi disertación se ocupa de la narrativa de ficción del escritor argentino Enrique Anderson Imbert porque es una parte fundamental de su obra que no ha sido suficientemente difundida y mucho menos estudiada. La temática de los relatos de Anderson Imbert se basa en un deseo único: rechazar la realidad cotidiana y sustituirla por un mundo propio, proceso durante el cual surgen los hechos fantásticos. Opino que su técnica ofrece otra aproximación a la literatura fantástica, ya que los elementos extraordinarios incorporados al relato nacen de sus ideas, son un reflejo de sus bases filosóficas, un solipsismo arraigado en el que el sujeto aparece como un ser universal que se repite en el tiempo. Esta noción se corresponde con lo inconsciente colectivo de Carl Jung quien sostiene que sus contenidos y modos de comportamiento son iguales en todos los individuos. Así, selecciono un grupo de cuentos y minicuentos donde lo fantástico ocurre debido a desfasajes temporales que afectan la temporalidad del narrador y de los personajes creando un mundo caótico sin posibilidad de salida. Para analizar los cuentos me apoyo en un marco teórico que abarca, en principio, diferentes postulados sobre las teorías de lo fantástico, aunque el núcleo de mi estudio se basa en los postulados de Tsvetan Todorov v Rosalba Campra. En segundo lugar, y como resultado de la inverosimilitud de los hechos, me apoyo en las teorías de Wolfgang Iser y de Umberto Eco quienes estudian, desde diferentes ángulos, la respuesta del lector ante los silencios del texto. En tercer lugar, incluyo los estudios de Carl Jung sobre lo inconsciente colectivo y sobre la relación entre literatura y psicología para examinar el proceso de creación de los cuentos de Anderson Imbert, su funcionamiento y posterior explicación de los hechos sobrenaturales que amenazan y alteran la temporalidad del ser.