A leitura crítica da poesia e das crônicas de Ana Paula Tavares é conduzida nesta tese a partir das relações entre literatura e história, com especial atenção para a resposta expressiva da autora angolana às perspectivas e às vozes das mulheres situadas social, histórica e culturalmente. Nas crônicas e nos poemas analisados, esses pontos de articulação com a história se revelam pela forma como os signos da cultura, da vida, da sexualidade, da maternidade, da resistência e dos desafios impostos às mulheres pela matriz de dominação masculina, pelas guerras e pelas crises sociais são codificados em linguagem poética a partir da visão organizadora de uma autoracriadora inscrita nos textos. A trajetória desse olhar que se desenha na produção da autora e se reflete na forma como são expressas as vozes das mulheres é traçada por meio da leitura atenta dos livros de poemas Ritos de Passagem, O lago da lua, Dizes-me coisas amargas como frutos e Ex-votos, assim como das crônicas publicadas em A cabeça de Salomé. / This thesis conducts the critical reading of the poetry and the chronicles of Ana Paula Tavares using the relations between literature and history as a starting point, with a particular focus on the Angolan author\'s expressive response to women\'s points of view and voices situated in social, historical, and cultural contexts. In the chronicles and poems analyzed these articulation points with history reveal themselves by the way symbols of culture, life, sexuality, maternity, resistance, and challenges imposed to women through the matrix of male domination, wars, and social crisis are coded in poetic language from the organizing view of an author-creator inscribed in her own texts. The trajectory of this gaze that is drawn in the author\'s work and that reflects itself in the way that women\'s voices are expressed was traced by the close reading of the books of poems Ritos de Passagem, O lago da lua, Dizes-me coisas amargas como frutos and Ex-votos, as well as the chronicles published in A cabeça de Salomé.

This dissertation considers how the artistic output of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was related to his poetic development and associations with different communities in Florence and Rome. The author of more than 300 poems, Michelangelo was arguably the most prolific artist-poet of the Renaissance. Still, no study has scrutinized the dynamic relationship between his work across media in relation to contemporary shifts in Italian literary culture. Centered on the decades surrounding Michelangelo's permanent move to the Eternal City in 1534, this dissertation shows how he used his creative production to achieve stability in an era buffeted by war and political upheaval. The fortunes of Florence and Rome were inextricably bound, and this dissertation uses surviving visual and written evidence to reconstruct Michelangelo's links to dense intellectual and homosocial networks in these cities. Michelangelo wrote poems to build social ties at a time when the status of artists was in great flux, and this dissertation demonstrates why his poetry, drawing, painting, sculpture, and architecture cannot be and would not have been understood apart from one another.

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Así pues, este estudio trata de dos novelas del autor mexicano contemporáneo, Luis SPota. Las novelas llevan el título de Los sueños del insomnio, publicada en 1966, y Lo de antes, publicada en 1968. Los diversos temas socio-políticos, que Spota trat en estas dos novelas, serán examinados para ver si las condiciones que él describe verdaderamente existen en México. La intención de este estudio no es criticar la obra del autor.No se propone decir que el autor no ha creado fantasía en su obra, ni que solamente son novelas que narran hechos verídicos. El poder creativo del autor será en todo momento respetado. Interesa ver si existe una correlación entre los hechos que describe el autor en estas dos novelas,, y algunos acontecimientos en la sociedad actual de México. Estos hechos tal vez han servido como fuentes de inspiración para la obra del autor.

A whole class of people is largely missing in contemporary Anglophone literary studies: readers. This dissertation argues that readers matter to our understanding of literature and merit study as an independent object of analysis. I make the case for the value of studying readers through ethnographic analysis of reading communities across four contemporary organizations that claim to use literary reading and discussion for a particular social end. Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) is an alternative-sentencing program that claims to use literary reading and discussion to reform criminal offenders. Reflection Point is a professional training organization that claims to use literary reading and discussion to improve workplace productivity. The Reader is a charitable organization that claims to use literary reading and discussion to support people’s mental health. And Reese’s Book Club (RBC) is a media company that claims to use literary reading and discussion to empower women. By studying these communities of readers — by analyzing, as I call it, “literature in action” — we develop a clearer picture of literature as a social object. Neither, in absolute terms, autonomously resistant nor instrumentally reducible, literary texts are material forms with context-dependent yet medium-specific effects that are activated in particular contexts of reception. Literature is not simply whatever people do with it. However, at a time when literary scholars are making claims for the social value of literary forms even as “serious” literary reading seems to be becoming ever-more socially marginal, it is important to develop an understanding of how literature has effects and how literature is valued by readers now, if we are to make more substantiated claims about its social status and function. Through ethnographic research of these four reading communities, I show how readers — engaging with an aesthetically and generically broad range of literary texts — put literature to use in ways that diverge from the stated aims of their organizations and that complicate common assumptions about literature’s social value.

Marie Corelli was arguably the most popular British novelist of the early 1900s, yet few today even know her name. Though she is not the only author to lose popularity, her enormous influence during her lifetime deserves consideration. What people liked about Marie Corelli can shed light on why the rise of modernism is seen as such a break from the popular in literature. This paper examines two of her bestsellers, A Romance of Two Worlds and The Sorrows of Satan, in light of the fin de siáecle, as well as the critical response to her work from both modernist and postmodern perspectives. Corelli is of interest today because her popular female characters are women who affirm traditional femininity yet also pursue and wield great power. The question I raise is whether Corelli's work is best seen as illustrative of theories about popular literature or as contradictory to them. / by Doris Moss. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

While literary critics acknowledge Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret and Wilkie Collins's No Name as sensation novels that were considered popular literature during the 1860s, many critics often fail to recognize the social and political implications embedded within these texts. In No Name, for instance, Collins's use of a heroine that is disinherited and deemed illegitimate by the law emphasizes the overpowering force of patriarchy. In response to patriarchal law, therefore, the heroines of Lady Audley's Secret and No Name attempt to improve their social positions in a society that is economically dependent upon men. Braddon's Lady Audley and Collins's Magdalen Vanstone are fictional representations of women who internalize the inequality of patriarchy and strive to contest male domination. By centering their novels on heroines who endeavor to defy Victorian social norms, Braddon and Collins highlight the problem of the female in a male-dominated society. / by Rebecca Ann Smith. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Afro-Puerto Rican Mayra Santos-Febres's novel Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000) demonstrates the intrinsic social relationship that exists between generations in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. The historical similarity between these regions permits a comparison in life stories of marginalized peoples. Puerto Rican godmothers and transvestites Martha Divine and Valentina Frenesâi prepare goddaughter, quinceänera and bolerista Sirena Selena in her performance in order to launch a career and conquer the strategies of survival. Meanwhile, Dominican millionaire Hugo Graubel manages his life publicly as a heterosexual husband and privately as a gay man and strongly attempts to capture enigmatic Sirena Selena. Whereas the Dominican, pre-adolescent, poor, and mulatto Leocadio discovers the veiled world of tourism that offers alternate possibilities of economic survival. The previous generations' transgression of society's binary definitions created alternate spaces that continue to pave the way for future generations that will refuse and resist conforming to static patriarchal and heterosexual mainstream classifications. / by Ariana Heydi Magdaleno. / Abstract in English. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.