Extract of the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Universidad de Zaragoza, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [413]-418).

Les nombreux récits courts publiés par la comtesse de Pardo Bazán offrent un vivant témoignage des préoccupations littéraires et sociétales d’un auteur toujours soucieux de connaître les courants littéraires européens. La cruauté est au centre de ce travail : le constat d’une insistance pour les descriptions de corps meurtris et ensanglantés, la prédilection de doña Emilia pour les tonalités dramatiques et tragiques engagent une réflexion autour du pouvoir tout à la fois réformateur et fascinant de l’écriture de la souffrance. Le premier temps de cette étude vise à situer l’écrivain au sein des lettres cruelles : le naturalisme, le roman russe, le genre policier, la tradition du conte fantastique et des faits-divers constituent un terreau littéraire cruel dont s’est nourri l’auteur. Notre intérêt se portera ensuite sur la poétique de la cruauté dans les récits courts : les recensements lexicaux, la mise en évidence de répétitions et d’invariants mettront en lumière la création d’un « effet cruel » au pouvoir parfois prophylactique. C’est enfin par le prisme d’une étude psychanalytique que nous étudierons notre corpus : le sang et les souffrances sont le témoignage d’images obsédantes et de fantasmes révélateurs d’un matériel psychique enfoui d’une grande éloquence pour appréhender une écriture de l’excès. et fascinant de l’écriture de la souffrance. Le premier temps de cette étude vise à situer l’écrivain au sein des lettres cruelles : le naturalisme, le roman russe, le genre policier, la tradition du conte fantastique et des faits-divers constituent un terreau littéraire cruel dont s’est nourri l’auteur. Notre intérêt se portera ensuite sur la poétique de la cruauté dans les récits courts : les recensements lexicaux, la mise en évidence de répétitions et d’invariants mettront en lumière la création d’un « effet cruel » au pouvoir parfois prophylactique. C’est enfin par le prisme d’une étude psychanalytique que nous étudierons notre corpus : le sang et les souffrances sont le témoignage d’images obsédantes et de fantasmes révélateurs d’un matériel psychique enfoui d’une grande éloquence pour appréhender une écriture de l’excès. / The numerous short narratives published by Countess Pardo Bazán present us with a vivid testimony of the literary and societal considerations of an author who took great care at being aware of the European literary trends. Cruelty lies at the core of this work, with an emphasis laid on the description of bruised and bloody bodies and Doña Emilia’s partiality for dramatic and tragic tones. This triggers a reflection revolving around the writing of suffering, with both its reformative and mesmerizing power. The first part of this study aims at positioning the writer amidst cruel humanities- id est, naturalism, the Russian novel, the detective genre, the tradition of fantasy tales and of new-items. They constitute the literary roots on which the author drew.The focus will then be laid on the poetic devices of cruelty in short narratives. The semantic fields, the unraveling of repetitions and permanent features will highlight the creation of “a cruel effect”, the apex of which sometimes ends up being prophylactic. Last but not least, the corpus will be studied through the spectrum of psychoanalysis. Blood and suffering indeed testify to the pregnance of obsessive images and fantasies. Their presence unravels a psychic web intertwined with great eloquence, so as to convey the writing of excess.

La más constante mujer is a Spanish Golden Age play written by Juan Pérez de Montalbán in 1631 and published for the first time in 1632. Although he was once one of the most famous playwrights in Madrid, known for running in the same literary and social circles as Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca, the bulk of the dramatist's work has been greatly ignored by scholars, or is referred to as being of second rate, and the author himself has nearly tragically been forgotten throughout the centuries following his short life. Although research has been conducted to chronicle the literature produced by Montalbán, his plays have been generally overlooked by modern scholars and very little of the dramatist's theatrical production has been analyzed within the last one hundred years. As a result, there are no modern editions of his plays. The intention of this thesis is to provide a regularized critical edition of La más constante mujer, together with an in-depth analysis of the life and times of its author, and the play's main themes, topics, influences, and characteristics.

Mujeres de papel examines the representation of female same-sex desire in Spanish literature and culture between 1868 and 1936, drawing on novels, popular sex manuals, sexological treatises, postcards, and illustrations. While scholars have productively attended to Post-Francoist literary and cinematographic expressions of non-normative sexualities, my dissertation sheds new light on its rich yet discontinuous prehistories. I argue that the figure of the “lesbian” is a convergence point for the ideas, beliefs and anxieties of Spanish modernity. From the will to know and categorize to erotic fantasies, the “lesbian” constitutes a pervasive yet unstable trope, which resists and at the same time motivates its definition and control. Chapter one analyzes Francisco de Sales Mayo’s 1869 La Condesita (Memorias de una doncella), a work halfway between a private diary, an erotic novel, and a medical treatise, which features a provocative case of female homosexuality. The next two chapters grapple with literary, (pseudo)scientific, and visual artifacts of the so-called “sicalipsis,” or erotic wave that inundated Spanish culture between the late 19th century and the 1930s. Works studied in these sections include novels by Rafael Cansinos-Assens, Álvaro Retana, Artemio Precioso, and Felipe Trigo, popular sex manuals by Vicente Suárez Casañ and Ángel Martín de Lucenay, and visual erotica. Chapter four turns to the fiction of Feminist writer Carmen de Burgos in conjunction with the theories on “intersexuality” formulated by Gregorio Marañon, Spain’s most renowned scientist and public intellectual of the 1920s. / Romance Languages and Literatures

The goal of this dissertation is to explore the use of transgressive language in the works of Juan Goytisolo and Zoé Valdés. This study examines the socio-political and cultural contexts in which the narrative of both authors develops, as well as the textual devices employed by these writers for undermining the "official history" imposed by the dictatorial regimes in Francoist Spain and Castro's Cuba. Furthermore, this dissertation argues that the deconstructing strategies in Goytisolo and Valdés mark their literary trajectory. Their vindicatory standpoints seek an alternative discourse of national identity. The function of language in demythifying and recodifying hegemonic discourse is examined in Goytisolo's trilogy Señas de identidad, Reivindicación del conde don Julián, and Juan sin tierra; and the novels of Zoé Valdés La nada cotidiana and Te di la vida entera. The parallelisms in the literary works of Goytisolo and Valdés are established by contrasting the authors' revisionist approach to history, the self-reflexivity of their novels, the sexual referent, and the use of irony and parody. The theoretical framework incorporates poststructuralist theorists such as Todorov, Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva; the psychoanalytical theory of Freud; and the feminist theories of Cixous and Irigaray. The comparative approach of this study and the interplay of power, politics, aesthetic creation, and author's psychology provide an illuminating perspective that could be of interest to individuals from a variety of disciplines.

This research seeks to establish a connection between the Hermetic tradition and the paranormal phenomena found in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera --- “Un alma en pena” (1862), Póstumo el transmigrado (1872) and Póstumo el envirginado (1882) --- and Benito Pérez Galdós´s La sombra (1870) and “Celín” (1871). By establishing a Hegelian influence in their works, we uncover the possible origin of these paranormal events. German Idealism, so widespread during the first half of the 19th century, seems to have given both authors access to new currents of thought, allowing them to explore the union of art with the metaphysical. Thought is given precedence over sensation and Idealism prevails over Empiricism. Nature is now seen to be spiritual, as well as spatial, and among the major exponents of this movement is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), whose philosophy states that human knowledge is based on the “Idea,” a concept in which nature and spirit fuse. Hegel holds the traditional hermetic conception of philosophia perennis that supposes a universal truth common to every culture, religious tradition, and belief upheld by humankind. By examining the Hegelian influence in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera and Benito Pérez Galdós, and relating major passages of their works to the precepts contained in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Emerald Tablet, and the Kybalion (1908), we uncover a subtle, sometimes explicit, presence of this esoteric doctrine, which allows the authors to explore the metaphysical side of life.

Este estudio identifica un conjunto de narrativas españolas, publicadas entre 1994 y 2008, que contienen personajes anoréxicos, con el fin de analizarlos y ubicarlos dentro del panorama literario español. Sin olvidar el contexto más global, este estudio se enfoca en los textos que contienen periodos de hospitalización para el tratamiento de la anorexia, Billete de ida y vuelta (1999) de Gemma Lienas, "Debilitamiento" (2002) de Andrés Barba, Estela: Diario de una vida adolescente (1997) de Javier López Garcìa, La foto de Portobello (2004) de Vicente Muñoz Puelles, Mi tigre es lluvia (1997) de Carlos Puerto, Morir de hambre: Cartas a una anoréxica (2002) de Luis Martìnez de Mingo, Peso cero (2007) de Antonia Romero, Porque eres mi amiga (2008) de Ana Pomares y Rosas blancas para Claudia (2005) de Carlos Puerto. Primero, y a base del criterio diagnóstico para la anorexia que propone la Asociación Psiquiátrica Americana, se analizan los personajes anoréxicos para establecer la veracidad de su anorexia, asì estableciendo el realismo de los textos. Luego, se indaga sobre las manifestaciones de control que resultan en los estados de descontrol, demostrando que la anorexia se puede leer como una crisis de identidad en los personajes anoréxicos. Después, se analizan los temas de vigilancia y normalización en los programas de hospitalización según las ideas de Michel Foucault sobre el Panóptico de Jeremy Bentham y su aplicación a los programas de hospitalización por Mebbie Bell. Se considera el alto nivel de reincidencia después de los periodos de hospitalización y, por lo mismo, se compara la terapia de hospitalización con otras terapias alternativas, vistas en Peso cero y Sara y la anorexia: El triunfo del alma sobre la mente (2006) por Nieves Mesón, concluyendo que los programas más sutiles consiguen con mayor eficacia la recuperación de la anorexia. Entonces, se analizan los cambios económicos, socio-históricos y culturales que ocurren en España en las décadas anteriores al aumento de los casos de anorexia, particularmente la abertura de la economìsa española y su entrada en la Comunidad Económica Europea en 1986, el fin de la dictadura de Francisco Franco y los consecuentes cambios en el papel de la mujer en la sociedad española y los cambios culturales en cuanto a la alimentación; se demuestra cómo estos cambios contribuyen al aumento de los casos de anorexia y cómo se ilustran dentro de los textos bajo consideración. Debido a la relación entre estos factores y la anorexia, se propone que las chicas anoréxicas, por llevar la crisis de la transición española en sus cuerpos, reflejan la crisis de identidad de España después de la muerte de Franco. Finalmente, se lleva a cabo un análisis literario de las obras en cuestión, estudiando los temas posmodernos de fragmentación e intertextualidad, concluyendo que la narrativa sobre la anorexia ilustra bien la condición anoréxica y, por lo mismo, se considera una literatura posmoderna para una enfermedad igualmente posmoderna, fragmentada y llena de múltiples voces. Encima, por su conexión con la cuestión de identidad, se propone que este cuerpo textual se considere una extensión de la literatura española posfranquista que trata el tema de la identidad. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2009. / May 28, 2009. / Postmodernism, Fiction, Eating disorders, Spain, Identity, Intertextuality / Includes bibliographical references. / Brenda Cappuccio, Professor Directing Dissertation; Virgil Suárez, Outside Committee Member; Roberto G. Fernández, Committee Member; Delia Poey, Committee Member.

The present study reports the findings of two self-paced reading tasks (N = 98). The primary experiment (subjunctive task) investigated the effects of lexical preference on L1 Spanish and L2 Spanish readers' processing of the subjunctive during online sentence processing. Participants of various proficiency levels (intermediate, high intermediate, advanced and native Spanish speakers) read sentences that were either ±Form or ±Meaning. The variable "Form" was operationalized as a (mis)match between the lexical expression of modality in the main clause of a sentence and the mood marker (indicative or subjunctive) on the subordinate verb. The variable "Meaning" was operationalized as a (mis)match between the lexical-semantics of the subordinate verb in a sentence and the action or situation depicted in a corresponding image. The secondary experiment (local agreement task) investigated the same learners' processing of localized subject-verb agreement violations during online sentence processing. The results of the subjunctive task revealed that only native speakers demonstrated sensitivity (i.e., increased reading times as measured via a self-paced reading methodology) to modality-mood mismatches (±Form). Intermediate through advanced-level L2 learners demonstrated sensitivity to sentence-image mismatches (±Meaning) only. In the local agreement task, only intermediate L2 learners were not sensitive to grammaticality violations. These findings are discussed in light of the Lexical Preference Principle (VanPatten, 2004, 2007) and the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2011. / April 28, 2011. / Spanish Subjunctive, Sentence Processing, Lexical Preference, Input Processing, Shallow Structures Hypothesis / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael Leeser, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Kaschak, University Representative; Carolina González, Committee Member; Patrick Kennell, Committee Member; Gretchen Sunderman, Committee Member.

Orientador: Maira Angélica Pandolfi / Resumo: O trabalho em questão visa, a partir de Últimas tardes con Teresa (1966), de Juan Marsé, discutir os embates sociais da década de 50 na Espanha franquista. Marsé cria a história da relação amorosa de dois integrantes de classes sociais diferentes, que por olhos mais superficiais pode ser considerado como tradicional e debate, durante a narrativa, questões de significativa importância histórica. Há a intenção de discutir as questões sociais presentes em Lazarillo de Tormes, clássico produção espanhola e suas relações com o romance de Juan Marsé, seus temas e subtemas. A utilização de diversas vozes persuasivas e irônicas na obra de Marsé possibilita o estudo de questões importantes no período pós-guerra espanhola. Os conceitos de Cronotopo e Dialogia (teorias difundidas pelo Círculo de Bakhtin) permeiam a interpretação da obra e, juntos à narrativa, constroem uma personagem emblemática da literatura espanhola contemporânea: Pijoaparte, jovem andaluz, representante de migrantes, ladrão de motos, que elabora uma relação peculiar com a burguesia estudantil dos anos 50, especificamente em Barcelona. / Resumen: El trabajo en cuestión tiene como objetivo, a partir de Últimas tardes con Teresa (1966), de Juan Marsé, discutir las luchas sociales de la década de 1950 en la España franquista. Marsé crea la historia de la relación amorosa de dos miembros de diferentes clases sociales, que desde un punto de vista más superficial puede considerarse tradicional y debatir, durante la narración, cuestiones de importancia histórica significativa. Su objetivo es discutir los problemas sociales presentes en Lazarillo de Tormes, la producción clásica española y sus relaciones con la novela de Juan Marsé, sus temas y subtemas. El uso de varias voces persuasivas e irónicas en el trabajo de Marsé permite estudiar cuestiones importantes en el período de la posguerra en España. Los conceptos de Cronotopo y Dialogismo (teorías difundidas por el Círculo de Bakhtin) impregnan la interpretación de la obra y, junto con la narrativa, construyen un personaje emblemático de la literatura española contemporánea: Pijoaparte, joven andaluz, representante de migrantes, ladrón de motocicletas, que construye una peculiar relación con la burguesía estudiantil de los años cincuenta, específicamente en Barcelona. / Abstract: The work in question aims, starting from Juan Marsé's Últimas tardes con Teresa (1966), to discuss the social struggles of the 1950s in Francoist Spain. Marsé creates the story of the love relationship of two members of different social classes, which by more superficial eyes can be considered as traditional and debate, during the narrative, issues of significant historical importance. It is intended to discuss the social issues present in Lazarillo de Tormes, classic Spanish production and its relations with the novel of Juan Marsé, its themes and subthemes. The use of various persuasive and ironic voices in Marsé's work makes it possible to study important issues in the postwar period of Spain. The concepts of Chronotope and Dialogy (theories spread by the Bakhtin Circle) permeate the interpretation of the work and, together with the narrative, build an emblematic character of contemporary Spanish literature: Pijoaparte, young Andalusian, representative of migrants, motorcycle thief, who builds a peculiar relationship with the student bourgeoisie of the 1950s, specifically in Barcelona. / Mestre

My dissertation "Género, clase, etnia y raza en la (re) presentación de la mujer inmigrante y extranjera en Argentina (1880 -1930)," studies the various ways in which the representation of immigrant and foreign women, who arrived to Argentina between 1880 and 1930, were shaped by the modalities of gender, race, ethnicity, and class in literary and visual texts. I approach this study with an understanding that the before-mentioned politics of difference are social constructions that reflect and perpetuate the prevailing distribution of power and privilege in a society. I look at novels, plays, travel literature and photography, re-envisioning canonical texts from a different critical direction. Thus, my dissertation casts new light on the representation of immigrant and foreign women by expanding the range of readings and exposing a patriarchal attitude towards the changing role of women in an unstable social structure. Drawing from theories such as gender, performance, ethnic studies, and visual culture, I emphasize the link that exists between the way the immigrant and foreign female bodies are seeing, and ways of structuring desire according to the logic of commodity capitalism. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2006. / April 28, 2006. / Clase, Raza, Performance, Teatro, Eugenesia, Argentina, Inmigración, Género, Etnia / Includes bibliographical references. / Jean Graham-Jones, Professor Directing Dissertation; Brenda Cappuccio, Professor Directing Dissertation; María Morales, Outside Committee Member; Santa Arias, Committee Member.