This doctoral thesis analyses the depiction of the historical topics of Conquest and Revolution across the literary writings of Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) and Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012). These historical tropes constitute core topics of reflection throughout their literary and critical works, stressing the interplay between literature and history. I propose the concept of literary historicism to analyse their portrayal of historical topics and characterise the role of history in their poetics. This concept denotes the historical awareness that underpins the authors’ literary reinterpretations of historical events; their use of a historicist writing methodology; and the critical relationship established to historiographical sources and narratives. I argue that the authors’ deliberate historicism characterises their narratives, challenges disciplinary boundaries and posits literature as an alternative medium for the production of historical interpretation. This comparative study focuses on a corpus of fifteen fictional works from both authors that depict Conquest and Revolution. The first section analyses the authors’ literary portrayal of the Conquest of Mexico (1521) and stresses the relationship established to the historical sources consulted and their literary reinterpretation of this historical event. An assessment of the reflections and symbolisms embodied by their literary-historical figures elucidates the authors’ understanding of the Conquest. Thus, this section demonstrates the defining character of these authors’ literary historicism in their writing methodology and semantic interpretation when addressing historical tropes. The second section explores Fuentes’s and Carpentier’s depiction of historical Revolutions including the French, Mexican, Haitian and Cuban Revolutions. This section comprises a transversal and diachronic analysis of their Revolution cycles to demonstrate recurrent narrative, thematic and stylistic patterns in Fuentes’s and Carpentier’s literary portrayals of this historical phenomenon. I highlight the further meaning that these patterns acquire in their works, articulating a critical assessment of these historical revolutions. This thesis adds to the scholarship on these authors from an interdisciplinary perspective that re-centres attention on History. Through the concept of Literary Historicism, I demonstrate the existence of a central concern in their oeuvres to critically reassess the Latin American past and its historical interpretations from literary discourse. This study contributes to the understanding of history and literature in Latin America, for it analyses the interactions between these branches of written culture.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the theme of literature in Rayuela (Julio Cortázar, 1963) and Tres tristes tigres (Guillermo Cabrera Infante, 1967), taking into account the importance of this theme within the socio-historical and intellectual context of 1960's Latin America, an era characterized not only by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in the political field, but also the height of poststructuralist literary theory, which arrives in Latin America via Europe. As we will see, the convergence of these two historical and literary moments implies the co-existence in Latin America of a call for a politicized literature that supports revolutionary efforts, and a crisis in terms of our ideas about language and its possibilities of representation with great implications for any critical debate regarding literature and its relation to extra-literary "reality". We will first present an overview of the critical debates regarding the "role" of literature and its relationship with extra-literary "reality" in the context of revolutionary Latin America, focusing on specific criticism of Rayuela and Tres tristes tigres. We will see that in spite of the fact that some revolutionary criticism has accused these texts of nihilism and escapism due to their playful, open structures, a reconsideration of Rayuela and Tres tristes tigres in light of the Poststructuralist theories of Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes--which maintain that language does not "reflect" a pre-existing reality, but rather "signifies" or "creates" the "reality" that we perceive as real within the discourse of our society--demonstrates that the true ethical value of these texts resides in their challenge of the discursive violence that dominates in our extra-literary space, and their constant deconstruction and "re-writing" of "reality" in order to suggest new ways to see and live. Subsequently, we will examine the use of literary parody in these texts to highlight the historicity of all language, and consider how these texts define literature as a vital, existential attitude: we should live as literature, treating our reality like a "text" that can constantly be deconstructed and re-written so that no lie can gain status as an irrefutable truth.

This dissertation examines various texts that were published in Mexican newspapers during the Revolution (1910-1917) and attempts to determine to what extent the authors of those texts combined journalism with literary creativity as they wrote about the Revolution. The main argument is that many of the texts that appeared in newspapers during the 1910s and covered topics related to the Revolution displayed language, style, and structural elements similar to those found in the official literary narratives of the Mexican Revolution that emerged in the 1920s. The argument is founded on the understanding that sociopolitical and ideological changes in Mexican society, as well as the desire for a new national literature, led intellectuals to re-classify some of the texts that appeared in newspapers in the 1910s from journalism to literary works and adopted their stylistic and thematic elements for the new literature. This is evident in Mariano Azuela’s novel, Los de Abajo and Ricardo Flores Magón’s well-known short stories “Dos revolucionarios” and “El apóstol.” The theoretical framework of this study is informed by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Tzvetan Todorov, and Juan Carlos Parazuelos that contend that the value of a narrative changes continuously in response to changes in the society that creates it. Furthermore, the study utilizes Anibal Gonzalez’ notion that there is a gray area between literary narrative and journalism and, therefore, narratives that fall inside the borders of journalism and literature can be classified as one or another or both depending how they interact with social elites, governments, and political affiliations. Finally, this study maintains that journalism, in combination with artistic expression, provided the foundations upon which the later narrative of the Revolution began its development. It was in the realm of journalism that the authors first applied the elements of brevity, direct speech, expressive, yet concise language, episodic narration, and emphasis on action over description and characterization that characterize the literature of the Mexican Revolution.

A presente Tese apresenta uma reflexão acerca do papel do intelectual de Angola e da Guiné-Bissau diante da retomada da memória coletiva dos seus países. Ao discutir marcas do passado literário e cultural de seus países, procura definir perspectivas de afirmação histórica e política, através de atitudes individuais e dos movimentos culturais que impulsionaram a revolução da independência. Tornou-se necessária, nessa perspectiva, uma abordagem multidisciplinar, para caraterizar a figura do intelectual como construção literária do imaginário que, simultaneamente, constrói no fluxo da fruição textual, o caudal histórico da vitoriosa conquista revolucionária, tal como essa imagem aparece em dois escritores paradigmáticos das literaturas angolana e guineense: Pepetela e Filinto de Barros. Pepetela e Filinto de Barros, onde se associam o ficcionista e o cidadão, favorecem a discussão do papel do intelectual em seus países e das estratégias do discurso artístico de que se valeram, tendo como matéria histórica a luta de libertação nacional de seus países e as vicissitudes do período pós-independência. Nesse sentido, são problematizadas na tese o sentido da práxis literária desses escritores, diante desses dois momentos históricos, como também a relação que esta práxis estabelece com as sociedades africanas atuais, sempre pondo em relevo os jogos de representações do intelectual. / The present thesis introduces a reflection around the intellectual role of Angola and Guinea-Bissau before the collective memory recovery of these countries. When discussing marks from the literary and cultural past of these countries, it tries to define perspectives of historical and political affirmation, through individual attitudes and cultural movements that pushed the independence revolution. It has became necessary, under this perspective, a multi disciplinary approach in order to characterize the figure of the intellect as literary construction of the imaginary that, simultaneously, builds in the flow of the textual fruition the historic caudal of the victorious revolutionary achievement. As well as this image is present in two paradigmatic writers of the Angolan and Guinean literature: Pepetela and Filinto de Barros, where we find associated the fictionist and the citizen, they favor the discussion of the intellects role in their countries and of the artistic discourse strategies they took advantage from, having as historic subject the fight for national emancipation of their countries and the ups and downs of the after independence period. Therefore, in the thesis it is problematized the literary praxis sense of these writers, before these two historical moments, as well as the relation that this praxis establishes with the todays African societies, always emphasizing the intellects representation games.

A presente Tese apresenta uma reflexão acerca do papel do intelectual de Angola e da Guiné-Bissau diante da retomada da memória coletiva dos seus países. Ao discutir marcas do passado literário e cultural de seus países, procura definir perspectivas de afirmação histórica e política, através de atitudes individuais e dos movimentos culturais que impulsionaram a revolução da independência. Tornou-se necessária, nessa perspectiva, uma abordagem multidisciplinar, para caraterizar a figura do intelectual como construção literária do imaginário que, simultaneamente, constrói no fluxo da fruição textual, o caudal histórico da vitoriosa conquista revolucionária, tal como essa imagem aparece em dois escritores paradigmáticos das literaturas angolana e guineense: Pepetela e Filinto de Barros. Pepetela e Filinto de Barros, onde se associam o ficcionista e o cidadão, favorecem a discussão do papel do intelectual em seus países e das estratégias do discurso artístico de que se valeram, tendo como matéria histórica a luta de libertação nacional de seus países e as vicissitudes do período pós-independência. Nesse sentido, são problematizadas na tese o sentido da práxis literária desses escritores, diante desses dois momentos históricos, como também a relação que esta práxis estabelece com as sociedades africanas atuais, sempre pondo em relevo os jogos de representações do intelectual. / The present thesis introduces a reflection around the intellectual role of Angola and Guinea-Bissau before the collective memory recovery of these countries. When discussing marks from the literary and cultural past of these countries, it tries to define perspectives of historical and political affirmation, through individual attitudes and cultural movements that pushed the independence revolution. It has became necessary, under this perspective, a multi disciplinary approach in order to characterize the figure of the intellect as literary construction of the imaginary that, simultaneously, builds in the flow of the textual fruition the historic caudal of the victorious revolutionary achievement. As well as this image is present in two paradigmatic writers of the Angolan and Guinean literature: Pepetela and Filinto de Barros, where we find associated the fictionist and the citizen, they favor the discussion of the intellects role in their countries and of the artistic discourse strategies they took advantage from, having as historic subject the fight for national emancipation of their countries and the ups and downs of the after independence period. Therefore, in the thesis it is problematized the literary praxis sense of these writers, before these two historical moments, as well as the relation that this praxis establishes with the todays African societies, always emphasizing the intellects representation games.

[pt] Esta dissertação tem como eixo central uma análise comparativa entre dois romances: A geração da utopia, do angolano Pepetela (1941-), publicado em 2000, e Kikia Matcho: o desalento do combatente, do guineense Filinto de Barros (1942-), lançado em 1999. Neste trabalho, apresenta-se uma reflexão acerca de algumas linhas de força presentes nesses dois romances e analisa-se as relações de ruptura e de continuidade entre o sistema colonial e o pós-independência em Angola e em Guiné-Bissau, por meio do exame das duas obras. Ao discutirem marcas do passado literário nesses países, as escritas de Filinto de Barros e de Pepetela procuram denunciar o abandono dos ex-combatentes, que foram excluídos de um projeto de nação após as guerras anticoloniais (de 1961 a 1975 em Angola e de 1963 a 1973 em Guiné-Bissau). As obras selecionadas representam o modo de viver das sociedades africanas em face do crescimento da corrupção e encenam os problemas da guerrilha, a desilusão, a miséria, os conflitos sociais internos e as inúmeras decepções que surgiram depois das independências angolana e guineense. Assim, questiona-se a relação que se estabelece entre a práxis literária e as sociedades africanas, tendo como enfoque a representação das elites políticas locais. / [en] This master s thesis has as its central axis a comparative analysis between two novels: A geração da utopia, by the Angolan author Pepetela (1941-), published in 2000, and Kikia Matcho: o desalento do combatente, by the Guinean writer Filinto de Barros (1942-), released in 1999. In this work, we present a reflection on some important themes present in these two novels, and we analyze the relations of rupture and continuity between the colonial and post-independence systems in Angola and Guinea-Bissau through the examination of the two novels. By discussing marks of the literary past in these countries, the writings of Filinto de Barros and Pepetela seek to denounce the abandonment of ex-combatants, who were excluded from a project of nationhood after the anti-colonial wars (from 1961 to 1975 in Angola and from 1963 to 1973 in Guinea-Bissau). The selected works represent the way of life of African societies in the face of growing corruption and stage the problems of the guerrilla war; the disillusionment and misery; the internal social conflicts; and the countless deceptions that arose after the Angolan and Guinean independences. Thus, the relationship between literary praxis and African societies is questioned, focusing on the representation of local political elites.