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.

The study was performed in the Edwards Plateau region of West Texas from the years of 1994 through 2004 and involved data collected on 291 F1 Boer-Spanish and Spanish does and their 1,941 kids. Differences were estimated between dam types for growth traits, fertility traits, prolificacy, kid growth traits, survivability, longevity, and progeny growth. The mixed model analysis of variance procedure was used for all traits, except doe survivability where chi-square analysis was used. The F1 Boer-Spanish does were significantly heavier at birth than Spanish does, but there was no significant difference between the F1 Boer-Spanish and Spanish does for weaning weight. The F1 Boer-Spanish does had a significantly heavier body weight at breeding than the Spanish does (46 vs. 43 kg). No significant differences were found between breed types for fertility traits. Age of doe was a significant source of variation for fertility. There was no significant difference between the two doe breed types for number of kids born or number of kids weaned. Age of doe significantly affected both number of kids born and number of kids weaned. There was no significant differencebetween breed for total litter weight at weaning. For kid birth weight there was no significant difference between dam breed types. Kid weaning weight and pre-weaning average daily gain were not significantly different between dam breed types. Age at time of leaving the herd for all causes was 6.15 years for F1 Boer-Spanish does and 5.56 years for Spanish does (P = 0.06). There was no significant difference between breeds for proportions of does leaving the herd for the three main reasons. Although F1 Boer-Spanish does were significantly heavier for birth weight and body weight at breeding, there were no significant differences for weaning weights, reproduction, production, and progeny growth differences at weaning between F1 Boer- Spanish and Spanish does. When kid production was measured at weaning there was no difference between breeds. However the greater body weight of the F1 Boer-Spanish does at breeding suggests that if kid production was measured at a later endpoint, a significant difference may be realized.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-140). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Proefshrift--Groningen. / "Abréviations bibliographiques": p. [1]-7.