Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1940. / Bibliography: p. 57-58.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-251).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas, 1964. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-254).

Thesis--University of Texas. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-254).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 469-507).

My dissertation addresses the legal, philosophical, theological, social, intellectual, and literary framework around Mateo Alemánâs Guzmán de Alfarache (1599, 1604), which heavily influenced a large number of writers in and out of Spain. I demonstrate that political events caused a series of extreme governmental measures that impacted Spanish society and questioned everyday conceptions of the role of the individual in society. The ontological and legal conflicts that Mateo Aleman recreated in Guzmán de Alfarache are the driving force of the narrative action. Mateo Alemán´s recreation of the topic of Fortune launches the protagonist through a series of adventures that thrust him into a life sentence in the galleys. The whims of fortune set in motion the constant social and economic turmoil represented in the novel. This chaos creates the social imbalance that surrounds and consequently marginalizes Guzmán and numerous other characters. A persistent questioning of legitimacy of state power is in dialog with the fragile standing of the individual in premodern Spanish society. A scenery of fear, persecution, and punishment emerges from the conflict between the picaro and the malfunctioning society. I reconstruct the legal and judicial landscape that prevailed during the last years of the sixteenth century in Spain. I emphasize the parallel between the sociopolitical turbulence during the reign of Philip II and that in Mateo Alemán's masterpiece.

In Don Quixote, Cervantes captivates the reader with an unattainable Dulcinea, and he also presents to the reader a parade of female characters from a broad range of social, cultural, and economic backgrounds to portray real women, not an imagined lady. He establishes a poetic balance by mixing the imagined lady with a variety of other women: Muslim ladies, a duchess, farm girls, shepherdesses, warriors, ladies and prostitutes, victims and executioners, the submissive and the rebellious, the server and the served, the aristocrat and the plebeian, all of them under the same narrative mantle. In Don Quixote, women play a key position, from an esthetic and artistic point of view, which contributes to the different levels of rhetoric within the discourse. It is precisely the fiction of the text, which makes the reader rediscover the imminent reality. The inverisimilitude (the unlikely) locates the reader in the field of verisimilitude (the likely). The universe of women in this text provide us with an extensive selection: Aldonza Lorenzo, Marcela, Maritornes, Luscinda, Dorotea, Micomicona, Camila, Zoraida, Clara de Viedma, Leandra, Teresa Panza, Quiteria, Altisidora, Doña Rodríguez, the women of Barataria, Sanchica, Claudia Jerónima, Ana Félix, and many others. I have fashioned four chapters based on the following characters: Marcela, Zoraida, Dorotea, and the duchess. I have analyzed their voices in this text according to their narrative position, the level of fiction and its function within its discursive frame, and the rhetorical direction within the work. Also, the study of the female first names and/or surnames will show that the author took time and effort to select them as a part of his construction of body of the work.

The validity of development in Latin America as a cultural force has not been thoroughly questioned either by those from the industrialized world or by Latin American politicians, technicians, and military personnel. Within the Latin American cultural world, although the ideological effects of development have been considered, yet critics have neglected literary discourses. Recognizing the specific nature of development as a discursive construction and the adolescent character as a representation of the future of Latin American nations, this dissertation attempts to recognize the cultural discussion on the power of development, a key aspect of its modernity. The study shows the limits of development practices in Octavio Pazs 1950 essay El laberinto de la soledad, Mario Vargas Llosas 1963 novel La ciudad y los perros, Clarice Lispectors short stories and chronicles, José Lezama Limas 1966 novel Paradiso, and Elena Poniatowskas 1971 testimony La noche de Tlatelolco. These narratives exemplify the interplay between the rhetoric of development and the ensuing literary responses: texts and contexts feeding each other through characters and plots. Additionally, the traditions of the Bildungsroman and picaresque give insightful commentaries on the society, subject development, and integration with the nation, relating in different ways education and survival in preparation for the adolescents tasks for the future. All these aspects together conjugate to examine critically this chapter of the modernity. In this perspective, the incorporation of a social category such as "development" in the narrative creates a different registry within the Latin American literary tradition. The relationship between this symbolic representation of an adolescent group the Latin American nations future and the goal to mold them into industrious good citizens or new men exposes the interpellation of the development ideology inherent in Latin American literature and culture. Hence, this study reveals both the continuity and disruption of development discourse during Post War Latin America culture, using examples exemplary of the period.

The theater of Gabriel Téllez, better known as Tirso de Molina, frequently contains elements of female disguise and cross-dressing. In this study, the author examines four plays by Tirso de Molina in which female disguise is central to the plot. (La celosa de sí misma, El celoso prudente, Don Gil de las calzas verdes and El amor médico) In these texts, the use of female disguise is a means by which the female character is able to circumvent the conventions of society and gain a freedom to act that would otherwise be impossible. The danger that arises from this use of disguise is twofold. The first is the possibility of the premature revelation of the disguise. The second is that the character may lose herself in the disguise and act against her own interests. Both are examined here. Despite the potential dangers of disguise, in each play Tirso de Molina creates a strong female character who is able to manipulate events to achieve her goals. The author makes use of Jungian terminology and Foucauldian concepts of power and observation to examine the use of female disguise and cross-dressing as a power strategy, rather than in terms of sexuality, as is common in Lacanian approaches. Disguise in these plays is revealed to be a means to correct injustices and to achieve results that would otherwise be unobtainable.

In this dissertation I utilize Toni Morrisons Sula (1973), Helena Parente Cunhas Mulher no Espelho (1983), Rosario Ferrés Vecindarios excéntricos (1999), and Carmen de Montefloress Singing Softly / Cantando bajito (1989) to examine the representation of the mother-daughter relationship in works by women from the United States, Brazil and Puerto Rico. I aim to demonstrate that the protagonists of these novels are each interacting with archetypal images of mother. The novels serve as accounts of each protagonists journey toward a sense of balance and wholeness. The accomplishment of this course can be determined by how each central character interacts first with her mother as well as other maternal figures and then, with other entities that I argue carry the resonances of the archetypal mother. Successful individuation, in the Jungian sense, leads to a realization of balance, whereas the refutation of this process amounts to the metaphorical and literal death of the character.