This project explores the mechanisms of appropriation and re-elaboration of the metropolitan Baroque discourse by educated criollos in Colonial Peruvian society. Examining Juan de Espinosa Medranos works (which include a drama, sermons and the Apologético en favor de Góngora) under the concept of imitatio, I have adopted an original theoretical approach to explain the ambivalent relationship between Spanish models and the cultural production of the New World. Espinosa Medrano writes an ensemble of texts that show his capacity to master the metropolitan literary code, while simultaneously undermining the natural preeminence of Spanish intellectuals over the colonized.

This study examines the tensions and variations of the surrealist aesthetic in Spain, specifically in the late poetic, dramatic, and graphic works of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. While many intellectuals recognize that the application of surrealist precepts in Spain is problematic on many levels, my research investigates what contemporary art critics have called dissident, ethnographic, or undercover surrealismvariations of surrealism rooted in the theories of the renegade French intellectual Georges Bataille. In the Spanish context, Batailles early writings (which appeared in the dissident surrealist review Documents), including his exposition on formlessness, base matter, putrefaction, and mutilation, offer a de-sublimated reading of surrealism and succinctly capture the emptiness and anguish that are evident in many strands of Spanish poetic expression in the second and third decades of the twentieth century. <p> Initially, I focus on the performative nature of Bataillean formlessness [informe] and the manner in which aesthetic, thematic, and structural manifestations of the formless in Lorcas work critique and undermine social, cultural, and artistic conventions. Reading Lorcas surrealist texts (including Poeta en Nueva York, Viaje a la luna, El público, and others) through the Bataillean lens offers an innovative and relevant approach to surrealist variations in Spain which focus on the base and more primal drives that, in addition to the sublimatory goals of Bretonian surrealism, were also evident in the Spanish avant-garde. As such, the reworking of the surreal which I propose rethinks the avant-garde in Spain and reconsiders Lorcas involvement therein. Additionally, my reading of Lorca and Bataille focuses on the ethical implications that are recognized in their interest in poetry and in their use of spaces of informe. In essence, the poetic utterance is treated as a site open to otherness and to the expression of concerns both social and aesthetic.

SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE DIMENSIONES DE LA TEMPORALIDAD DE LA MODERNIDAD ESTÉTICA EN AMÉRICA LATINA FÁTIMA REGINA NOGUEIRA Dissertation under the direction of Professor Cathy Login Jrade This dissertation explores the portrayal of time in Latin American Literature starting at the end of the nineteenth century and concluding with works published in the 1970s. Latin Americas distinctive realization of modernity, which allowed for the coexistence of various temporalities within the context of socio-cultural life, impinged upon the formulation and representation of time in the literary texts of this period. My dissertation explores the concept of an imagined modernity and shows how it allowed Latin American writers to present themselves and their countries on an equal footing with Europe, reaching a state of cultural synchronicity. They achieve this synchronicity despite the survival of elements from the colonial and neocolonial past which tended to alter the nature of Latin America modernity, creating a sui generis mode of artistic expression. The mixed temporalities that surface in Latin American literature appear as a struggle between a personal, subjective time and a more traditional, linear, and historical time that points to an improved future through progress. They also appear in the coexistence of the persistent critique of rationalistic thought and the formulation of a new concept of history in which discontinuity and randomness play decisive roles. These recurring perspectives are related to political concerns, most notably issues of globalization and neocolonialism. The most significant contribution of my study to the field is to elucidate how the tensions between modernity as a new, transformational, socio-cultural force and History as a measure of progress played a crucial role in the artistic constitution of the multidimensional depiction of temporality in Brazilian and Spanish American prose and poetry of the period. From Dario to Carpentier and from Machado de Assis to Oswald de Andrade, I examine how the dialectics of time in a constantly evolving society reflected the awareness of an uneven modernity that originated in the fissure between its aesthetical and social goals.

This study examines the cultural cross-pollination occurring between Spain and Portugal during the early modern period. More specifically, it argues that a number of Portuguese authorsincluding Manuel de Faria e Sousa, Ângela de Azevedo, Jacinto Cordeiro, and António de Sousa de Macedoused their proficiency in Spanish to articulate and spread a collective sense of national identity throughout the Castilianized peninsula and Europe. Despite emerging from an ambiguous state of social, political, and cultural hybridity, these Portuguese writers clearly identified with and claimed allegiance to their native land. Overall, this investigation attempts to situate Portuguese literature written in Spanish within the greater literary production of the time and reappraise a body of works that uniquely addresses the intersection of language, literature, and politics on the early modern Iberian landscape.

In this study, I analyze Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas and Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis, La amortajada and The Shrouded Woman by María Luisa Bombal, Juan Rulfos Pedro Páramo, and João Guimarães Rosas Grande Sertão: Veredas. The common theme of death and the solitary narrator/protagonist strengthens the links between Brazilian and Spanish American narrative traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study examines the way in which death functions as a literary trope that destroys the concept of the traditional reader and reconstructs him/her as an integral participant in the creation of the narrative. Relying on Barthess concept of writerly texts, I apply Wolfgang Isers theory of aesthetic response and Roberto González Echevarrías theory of the Archive to explore the ways in which death appears in primarily first-person narratives in which the narrator/protagonist has either died and speaks/writes from the grave, or remains the only living character of the narrative. In each work, the reader is expected to abandon the conventions of literary realism by engaging the narrator/protagonist in a metafictional space within the narrative itself. As the reader enters the texts, s/he is encouraged to reevaluate the society represented in the narrative, as it is filtered through the narrators lens of death. This lens strips away the conventional wisdom and hegemonic discourse of the society portrayed in the novels. Each of the novels in this study presents its social order from a different perspective, but the common element of each work is the awakening that the narrator experiences through his or her association with death. In each of the works, the reader must fill in missing pieces of the text or decipher the speech acts of marginalized characters in order to understand the position and perspective of the narrator/protagonist. By doing so, the traditional reader dies as a newly constructed, more engaged reader is created.

My dissertation is concerned with womens travel writing and its connections to the discursive construction of gender and nation in the 19th-century. I examine in detail four insightful accounts by four prominent female writers who traveled to and from Latin America in the 19th-century: Flora Tristan (1803-1844), Juana Manuela Gorriti (1819-1892), Eduarda Mansilla (1838-1892), and Clorinda Matto de Turner (1852-1909). Organized in order of publication, the accounts range chronologically from the period of independence to the beginning of the 20th-century. I provide an original approach to this corpus of travelogues considering it as relevant for rethinking 19th-century culture and society in South America. My in-depth study of womens travel narrative allows us to recover the relevant role of women within the national debate of the period at the same time it makes possible the revision of the literary canon, opening it up to new inquiries and critical approaches.

In my dissertation I rethink the relationship between the nation and literature of nineteenth century Mexico by establishing an imaginary dialogue among the Mexican writers Servando Teresa de Mier (1765-1827) and Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (1834-1893). My general goal is to better understand the evolution of the great literary movements of this period: romanticismo, costumbrismo, and modernismo. The development of the Mexican literature and nation can be observed in its great complexity in the works written by criollo and mestizo intellectuals during the nineteenth century. Mier and Altamirano disseminated liberal political, cultural, and economic ideals in their texts, which I understand as political national programs or utopias. The uniqueness of their lives and writings; however, is that they experienced an exile that forced them to think the nation from a twofold political and historical standpoint. The effect of this perspective changed Miers and Altamiranos literary styles, and in so doing, it also prepared the ground for the literature written after them. Mier moved from an enlightened way of writing, characteristic of his early works, to a Romantic narrative that he developed in his "Memoirs" (1817-21). Altamirano evolved from the creation of typical Romantic narratives, which prevailed in almost all of his novels, to the exploration of new literary strategies in "Atenea" (1889) an autobiographical novel that I have placed on the Latin American modernista movement. In the conclusion, I argue that the literary-ideological turn that Altamirano developed in "Atenea" influenced the writers of the Ateneo de México. I mainly refer to Mariano Azuela (1873-1952), José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), and Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)intellectuals that continued the tradition of writing from exile and urged the understanding of Mexico as part of an interrelated world.

This study examines the role of translation in the reception and influence of three canonical authors of Latin American literature in the United States: Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Pablo Neruda (Chile), and Machado de Assis (Brazil). I establish a sliding scale of translation quality that considers both literary and extraliterary factors in their US receptions. I also explore the concept of translation failure, arguing that a translation truly fails when it consistently misinterprets and misrepresents the source text. A failed translation hinders the reception of Latin American literature in the United States because it offers a distorted, and therefore unreliable, version of the original text to the American reader. In the case of Brazil, these failed translations have seriously compromised the reputation of Brazilian letters in the United States and in the developing field of inter-American literature.

In the early modern period, theater thrived in convents across Spain and Portugal. This dissertation takes a closer look at the phenomenon through the lens of spatial theory and theorists such as Henri LeFebvre, Michel de Certeau, and Edward Soja, who insist that space is both place and practice. The space of the convent, then, informed the works that the nuns wrote and performed within its walls. It also allowed feminist elements and subtle resistance to patriarchal norms to thrive in the works of Sor Marcela de San Félix, Sor Cecilia del Nacimiento, Sor María de San Alberto, Sor Maria do Ceo, and Sor Violante do Ceo. In their works, we find new versions of classic theatrical forms, the presence of a tradition of women writers combatting the anxiety of authorship, strong Marian figures who deflect the male gaze, and groundbreaking roles for women not found extramuros. Although the dramatic works of these women do not generally figure in the canon of Golden Age Iberian literature, they point to a unique and rich theatrical tradition that paralleled the enormously popular secular theater of the day, the comedia nueva of Lope de Vega and of his followers and successors. The convent space, both protective and restrictive, guaranteed that early modern Iberian nuns could defy societal expectations and control. Within the walls of the convent, religious women enjoyed experiences that they would not have had in the secular world. In the cloister, they freely wrote, acted, and directed, and the theater that they produced evidences a unique and distinctive dramatic tradition that deserves a place in the classical literary canon of Spain and Portugal.

Documents and illustrations show that the premier ship in Portugal's India trade during the 16th century was the nau, a beamy, three-masted ship, known in northern Europe as a “Carrack.” For decades these vessels carried passengers and cargo between Portugal and Asia. Despite the number of vessels involved, relatively little archaeological evidence of these ships exists. While 16th century shipbuilding documents predate the development of ships plans, they include theoretical treatises and scantling lists. From these documents it is possible to reconstruct the construction of a nau timber by timber, employing the mathematical relations and formulas used by the Portuguese shipwrights in conjunction with the timber specifications from a scantling list, creating a 3D computer model of the ship with Rhinoceros 3 modeling software. The result is an annotated and illustrated construction sequence that shows the placement of every timber in the vessel.