The Sibyl's importance as an authorizing figure in Christine de Pizan's oeuvre is widely acknowledged but universally under-estimated. Scholars have focused almost exclusively on Christine's use of the detached and serenely wise Cumaean Sibyl, notably in the Chemin de lonc estude and the Epistre Othea, and on close allegorized equivalents. This is to overlook the protean, cross-pollinating diversity of Christine's sibylline sources, and the variety and scope of their influence upon her writings. Here Christine's use of sibylline characters, themes, and authority will be scrutinized in texts that exemplify radical departures from the tropes generally recognized by scholars. They show selective reshapings of polymorphous classical and medieval tradition to meet the shifting contingencies of Christine's career as a writer. Explicitly, Sibyls are invoked as authorizing precedents for her self-fashioning as a woman of wisdom and foresight in political, social, moral, and theological matters; but implicitly, sibylline attributes are also incorporated in other characters and authorial voices. Furthermore, Christine draws from the full panorama of source traditions, embodying not only wisdom and foresight but also recklessness and regret; not only serenity but also frenzy and tears; not only detachment but also polemical engagement in national destiny. In her attack on courtly love, the Livre du duc des vrais amans , sibylline typologies underlie not only the unimpeachable Dame Sebille but also the transgressive Lady, whose fate evokes that of entrapped, shamed, or regretful Sibyls seen in Ovidian and later traditions. In the Epistre a la reine and the Lamentation sur les maux de la France, Christine evokes classical sibylline frenzy; calls upon the example of famous prophets who were ignored but ultimately vindicated; and she links foresight and maternal tears in an appeal to the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, to intercede as France's mother. In the Queen's Manuscript Epistre Othea, Christine pursues similar goals as sibylline tutor to Isabel and the dauphin. In the Ditie de Jehanne d'Arc , Christine addresses national crisis by inscribing Charles VII, Jehanne, and herself in a millennial prophecy of the End of Days, assuming the voice of an Apocalyptic Sibyl of judgment and divine revelation.

The three autobiographies I study in this work, Sartre's The Words, Perec's W or The Memory of Childhood, and Sarraute's Childhood, are each at least partially devoid of chronological structure. Calendar-based order, traditionally associated with autobiography, fails to provide the coherence that the reader has come to expect. Hence, the reader must create a sense of coherence at a level other than chronological while bringing into play his conceptual resources. This work shows that in these literary texts coherence is maintained based on the exploitation of conventional metaphors taken from everyday language. The autobiographers transform them in a manner that is creative and yet familiar to their readers. I first stipulate that the autobiography as genre is built on the familiar metaphor "Life is a journey," for readers can generically understand the three autobiographies as three specific journeys, with a starting point in childhood and an ending point chosen by the writer. Thus, readers travel with the autobiographers on a road that the latter have already traveled (fictionally and/or factually) towards a destination unknown to the first at the outset of reading. In reading, they move to different stages of the book, and at the same time progress from location to location along the autobiographical path. Each time they pass a stage, they move away from the starting point and approach the final destination (the end of the book and the ultimate meaning it carries). The notion "Autobiography is a journey" is a conceptual resource autobiographers and their readers share as they metaphorically travel together along the autobiographical path, journeying from one mental stage to another, and remaining all the while co-located. This generic autobiographical journey is further structured by metaphors specific to each work, which are useful tools for both writers and readers. Sartre, Perec, and Sarraute use metaphors to capture their pasts and structure their autobiographical artifacts, while readers employ them to conceptualize others' life experiences. The autobiography is understood in each case through knowledge that is familiar to both writers and readers. These conventional patterns of thought are metaphorical bridges between the productive consciousness of the writers and the receptive mind of the readers that allow the first to organize their works and the latter to understand them.

Using the concepts of Being as described by Calvino and the evaluation of Velasquez's painting Las Meninas in Foucault's, The Order of Things, a series of analytic exercises is initiated. Calvino speaks about Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity; Foucault addresses the shortcomings of language. Interpreting the concepts inherent in these agenda, a methodology for re-seeing the spaces of a Salon and a Studio is proscribed. The results of these exercises provides a program for the construction of a vestibule: reconstructing the space of Las Meninas. This reveals the fundamental truth behind Calvino's writings: the vestibule serves as a tool for examining an environment. No one tool can embody the principles of Calvino; but only in the process of creating or viewing can the methodology for discovery be determined. Ultimately, the purest form of the vestibule lies in the phenomenal, the experiential and the language of the individual's imagination.

El presente trabajo es una investigacion de los elementos arabes en Reivindicacion del Conde don Julian de Juan Goytisolo, tomando como punto de partida la perspectiva critica de Americo Castro y Edward Said. El objeto principal es exponer los mitos nacionales espanoles y la perpetuacion de ciertas ideas estereotipadas con respecto al mundo oriental, para plantear el proceso de destruccion/construccion simbolica goytisoliana. La lucha contra el despotismo y la xenofobia nacional se hace indispensable en el proyecto de la liberacion intelectual y creativa de Espana. A traves de la destruccion de un lenguaje literario decadente y la aniquilacion de una moralidad reprimida y corrupta, el autor inicia su mision que aspira a la regeneracion y purificacion de la conciencia nacional. El resultado es una novela mudejar, o sea hibrida y renovadora.

Unconvinced of Emile Glenisson's theory that all Mauriac's characters are but one person with an emotionally arrested development, we took Mauriac's novel, La Pharisienne, and studied its ten principal characters, not only to see to what extent they were individualized, but also to understand them in greater depth. As guidelines in our consideration we used the concepts of Transactional Analysis. While this approach is particularly appropriate here, given the novel's subject matter and format, it is also relatively new in literary criticism. We therefore explained briefly its basic ideas, stressing strokes, ego states, existential positions and scripts. While discussing in depth the three young people in the book, we showed how the psychological make-up of each authority figure in their early lives had influenced the development of their personalities differently, leading in two instances to social disfunction. Under similar analysis the adult characters revealed equally differentiated personality structures.

This thesis studies the image of the sovereign in Racine through the three notions through which social power is gained: class, race and gender. Racine, torn between his duty to work for the glory of Louis XIV, and the influence of Jansenism; lends the sovereign two sides: the sunny side brings out his political power through the social givens of class, race and gender; the dark side shows him in his human nature as seen by the Jansenists: weak and powerless without God's grace, subject to errors, the toy of Destiny. His greatest weakness is his passion. Through it, from master he becomes slave. Although working under the control of the State, Racine cleverly manages to keep a relative autonomy by discreetly showing his faith in the value of the weak: the people, the "other" race, the woman; giving them an importance which Louis XIV's society denies.

El castellano antiguo que se encuentra en el Poema de Mio Cid es una variedad bastante distinta de la que existe hoy en dia. Ha habido cambios morfologicos, fonologicos y sintacticos en la evolucion de muchas palabras espanolas. Un estudio que sigue la versificacion del Poema de Mio Cid, mostrando estos cambios con respecto a los terminos de la obra, es una referencia util para las personas que estudian el Poema desde un punto de vista linguistico.

A comparison of Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes and La vida es sueno by Calderon de la Barca highlights a long tradition of social, religious, and political themes which preoccupied early 17th century Spain. Although one is a novel and the other a play, both works represent in their respective protagonists a gradual awareness, understanding and maturation of the human will in its quest to find meaning and freedom in life. Though one is replete with theological implications, both are essentially philosophical. Both protagonists begin with disadvantages: Don Quijote has a distorted view of reality while Segismundo has been isolated from the world since birth. Yet, as they confront reality, the protagonists overcome their circumstances and gradually unfold a deepened understanding and a meaningful fulfillment of the true human capacity to exert the will and thus determine a life's outcome.

El presente trabajo es el estudio de la falta de interlocutores y de como esta falta afecta a todos los personajes en Fragmentos de interior de Carmen Martin Gaite. Para llevar a cabo este estudio, se analizan los personajes, sus relaciones personales y la problematica que ocultan: desde la actitud rebelde, la frustracion sentimental y profesional, hasta los enganos amorosos. Mediante este analisis, vemos que la ausencia de comunicacion lleva consigo repercusiones serias y consecuencias tragicas. Prevalece una falta de interlocutores en Fragmentos de interior, ya que nos muestra no solo una familia, sino tambien una sociedad en crisis. Nos revela la actitud de los personajes ante una sociedad abulica y hostil cuyo sistema continua imponiendose sobre ellos. La ausencia de interlocutores lleva al individuo a un aislamiento personal, a una soledad sentimental, terminando por llegar hasta el colapso social.

Critics have appointed various genres to Maria Zambrano's Delirio y destino. I write that Delirio y destino creates a new genre. The most encompassing generic framework for Delirio y destino is auto-biography, or an autobiography written with the added intent of biography. I present Zambrano's life and times, the context of Delirio y destino, and the importance of generic definition. I review key critics' generic propositions, and supply Zambrano's definition of autobiography and confession. After showing the other genres as sub-genres to auto-biography, the thesis focuses on the text's confirmations. I catalog Zambrano's generic postulations and goals in writing. I show Zambrano's life-writing as representative of the life-writing of peers, and her version of Spain. I expound Zambrano's individual self-discovery, and the national self-revelation and self-creation. I relate Zambrano's narrative style to auto-biography. My thesis reveals Zambrano's dual purpose of writing her life and that of her Spain, creating the assignment of auto-biography.