The literature of Medieval Europe has been studied so extensively that there are a great number of academic contributions that can be analyzed by current and future generations. The purpose of this particular work is to examine this topic, but as it pertains to the Medieval Iberian Peninsula. The medieval age of Spain has been considered a period wrought with conflict and religious persecution throughout the confines of its borders. From the inception of the invasions of various European tribes into the Iberian Peninsula, the stage was set for a continual onset of conquest for many years to come. This conquest took place during the 800 years that the Muslims maintained control of the southern half of the Medieval Iberian Peninsula. Such an occupation was achieved by way of the Strait of Gibraltar in which a mixed force of Arabs and Moroccan Berbers overthrew the Visigothic kingdom, giving this Muslim power an unquestioned supremacy (O'Callaghan 1). In an effort to closely examine this period, this study analyzed Las jarchas, El cantar de mio Cid, and Las coplas por la muerte de su padre. The first two literary works written anonymously, the third by Jorge Manrique. With all three being key works from the Iberian Peninsula during the early part of the Middle Ages, the goal was to apply their principles to modern day culture. This work has interpreted in depth the code of honor and its use during the Middle Ages as a key element of its time, and has demonstrated that it is no longer followed as closely as it once was. It has supported the idea that although the Medieval Iberian Peninsula saw its conflicts, there was in fact a certain level of coexistence among the various religious groups sharing the peninsula. Along with these findings, this work presents the conclusion that although the distance in time is clear, it is important to analyze the literary works of the past in order to have a clearer image of what the life and culture may have been like for the individuals who lived and breathed when the Middle Ages was their present time.

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El Desencanto es una pelicula de tipo documental creativo dirigida por Jaime Chavarri en 1976 que retrata a la familia Panero. Por su tematica y estetica contrasta con la ideologia franquista, y fue leida como un simbolo de su tiempo. A traves del analisis de sus personajes y distintas obras de ese periodo historico, este trabajo trata de analizar este componente simbolico y ofrece una lectura politica de la obra.

This dissertation examines the differing responses to modernity in the visual culture of Madrid from 1926-1936. I trace the debates generated by the anticipation, apprehension, or expectations to the ongoing processes of modernization. My work is guided by the understanding that the metropolis is both a physical and psychological space, and that the resulting visual culture is imbued with those experiences of Madrid. Thus, the questions and concerns of the period are instilled in the visual arts, regardless if the city is explicitly represented in them or not. Although Madrid was not a model of industrialization, the city’s inhabitants acknowledged and reacted to the attempts to modernize the city as well as the ongoing political and social transformations. My study examines diverse media alongside the popular press of the period. By examining individual works of art alongside periodicals, my dissertation reveals the relationship between the thriving popular culture, the elite culture, and an emergent mass culture. In the first chapter, I introduce how these different kinds of culture have been defined, as well as Madrid’s current place within art historical scholarship. In the second chapter, I look at how the construction of the Gran Vía avenue was presented in the press to investigate the social effects of the reorganization of Madrid’s center. The third chapter analyzes the development of the public persona of writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna and how he used his image as an advertisement for modernity. In the fourth chapter, I examine the film Esencia de verbena, directed by Ernesto Giménez Caballero. The film pictured Madrid’s traditions but also invoked Surrealist aesthetics. By bringing together ideas of international modernity and local folklore Giménez Caballero showed how popular culture was a useful resource for the local avant-garde. In the final chapter, I focus on the sculpture of artist Alberto Sánchez to demonstrate how his seemingly depoliticized artworks actually engaged in a critical discourse about the economic and social conditions resulting from modernization. This dissertation challenge the current understanding of the distinctions between the popular, elite, and mass cultures in Spain. Such categories cannot fully express the complexity of the visual culture of Madrid in the 1920s and 1930s. Instead, I argue that Madrid’s inhabitants negotiated and mediated modernity by blurring the boundaries and exploring the interconnections between these different cultures. / Art History

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Don Juan Manuel’s laudatory portrayal of Saladin, the Muslim Sultan of Babylon, in Exempla 25 and 50 of El Conde Lucanor presents an interesting paradox, particularly when considering that the fourteenth-century text was intended as moral instruction for a Christian audience. This report addresses this paradox by determining Saladin’s placement within Juan Manuel’s moral and spiritual philosophy through textual and comparative character analyses. The first section applies Victor Turner’s social drama theory in a textual analysis of Exempla 25 and 50 to establish Juan Manuel’s representation of Saladin as a triumphant figure, capable of meeting and overcoming challenges to his honor and virtue. The second section applies M. M. Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to engage in a closer examination of Saladin’s “voice” in relation to other characters of Juan Manuel’s exempla for the purpose of revealing the ambiguities and finer intricacies of Saladin’s character. These analyses serve to raise and address paradoxical questions relating to Juan Manuel’s presentation of Saladin as both a Muslim adversary and friend of Christendom. / text

A pesar del interés que suscita, la minificción del exilio republicano español en México ha sido mayormente ignorada por la crítica y, cuando se ha reparado en ella, su acercamiento descontextualizado ha provocado inexactitudes que se reflejan en el canon minificcional propuesto para la Península. Por ello, examino algunas vías de contacto entre el exterior y el interior de España y propongo una primera aproximación a un corpus de autores en exilio, entre los que destacan Max Aub, María Luisa Elío y José de la Colina. Además, el estudio de estos tres autores revela una minificción que no está ubicada ni aquí ni allí, tampoco instalada en un pasado ni en un presente, y menos aún alojada en la voz de un narrador monolítico, sino polifónico. A este grupo lo denomino minificción de intersticio, es decir, aquélla que manifiesta un distanciamiento y, a veces, oscilación de los grandes centros deícticos (espacio, tiempo y voz). Dicha poética del intersticio se ve reflejada en varios recursos, como la representación del extrañamiento (ostranenie), una fuente de enunciación inusual, la ucronía, la mise en abyme, la parodia y la ecfrasis, entre otros. El conjunto de estas estrategias desrealizadoras expresa una narrativa híbrida y ex-céntrica, en cuyo análisis vertebro un paradigma de encuentro y de oscilación, que facilita un estudio transatlántico entre la minificción del exilio y su lugar en la historia literaria.

This thesis analyzes the relevance of Miguel de Unamuno’s idea of Spain and its Nietzschean influence in two contemporary authors, Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Luisa Castro. My work contributes to a debate that is ever present in literature and politics: what is Spain and what defines Spanish identity. This debate has continued throughout the democratic period and reveals that Spain is still a controversial idea. The Constitution of 1978 might have shaped national identity but Spanish sociopolitical evolution has indeed questioned the idea of Spain emerged in the Transition. From my point of view, Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Luisa Castro evoke Unamuno’s ideological inheritance to offer a solution of what has been branded as the age-old problem of Spain. By the end of the nineteenth century, Unamuno introduced his theory of intrahistory in order to contravene the model of nation promoted by the political class during the Restoration. The author considered that this model imposed on society a metaphysical idealization, protected by reason, which distorted its actual national identity. Currently, the works of Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Luisa Castro reflect Unamunian intrahistory thus putting an end to this idealization. As seen in the chapters of this thesis, the combined analysis of the works by Pérez-Reverte and Castro reveals the implicit survival in our days of Nietzsche’s influence in Unamuno’s intrahistory. In this sense, they highlight the crucial role of individual subjectivity, work and interaction with their immediate environment, in the characterization of Spanish national identity. In so doing, their works reflect Unamuno’s implementation of Nietzschean theories on metaphysics, the Greek tragedy, the eternal recurrence and the overman. Pérez-Reverte and Castro’s works suggest that the solution to the problem of identity in Spain is to be found in Nietzsche’s influence on Unamuno’s intrahistory.

O propósito deste trabalho é mostrar que na concepção do Romance d A Pedra do Reino e o príncipe do sangue do vai-e-volta, do escritor paraibano Ariano Suassuna, estão presentes, como elementos constitutivos, dois (sub)gêneros narrativos de origem hispânica, os livros de cavalaria e o romance picaresco, antagônicos, em sua origem. Fortemente vinculados a um tempo e a um espaço bem definidos, eles passam por adaptações para deslocar-se adequadamente para a ambiência dA Pedra do Reino. O autor incorpora em seu texto um farto acervo de manifestações da cultura popular nordestino-sertaneja (em cujas características híbridas se acentuam os traços de origem ibérica) como catalisador, encaixe e amálgama desses elementos. Recorre-se, no trabalho, à análise comparativa, com o propósito de identificar as marcas dos gêneros aludidos e os mecanismos adaptativos, aos quais recorre o autor. / The purpose of this paper is to show that in the conception of the novel Romance dA Pedra do Reino e o príncipe do sangue do vai-e-volta by the Brazilian writer Ariano Suassuna, the chivalry books and the picaresque novel, two narrative subgenres of Hispanic origin, stand out as constitutive elements. Strongly attached to a well defined notion of time and space, they go through adaptations to suit adequately the environment of the Romance dA Pedra do Reino. The author includes in his narrative an extensive collection of Northeast-centered popular cultural manifestations (in whose hybrid characteristics are stressed out Iberian traits) as catalyst and amalgam of these elements. The comparative analysis is used with the aim of identifying the traits of the gender models considered and the adaptable mechanisms employed by the author.