This dissertation re-evaluates the place of José Donoso in the Latin American Boom as well as the consequences of this period in the writing process of his most renowned novel, The Obscene Bird of Night (1970). Its focal points are under-utilized archival material related to the novel's writing process, including Donoso's notebooks, typescripts and his personal correspondence. Spotlighting the transformation of specific episodes of the novel and the traces of the Boom through his notebooks, I argue that the published version of this work is in great part the result of Donoso's relationships with the writers of the Boom and the "nueva novela". The borderline position that Donoso occupies in the Boom (sometimes included, sometimes not) can best be explained by the late publication of this crucial novel, since Donoso's correspondence reveals that he was an important agent in the machinery behind the Boom.

Can words create worlds? My fiction thesis, El mundo es mentira (The World Is a Lie), explores different voices and points of view to examine the ways in which they not only tell stories, but also generate spaces, atmospheres and, ultimately, worlds of their own. Moreover, the book aims to be a meeting ground where these voices dialogue with the voices of the literary tradition, reinterpreting and rewriting it. This collection was conceived as an experimental laboratory as well: it is comprised by short and micro-stories which question and challenge conventional forms of storytelling by incorporating poetic, memoiristic and essayistic devices.

This study draws parallels between the dramatic works Rabinal Achí­, an anonymous ancient Mayan text, and the Luis Valdez masterpiece Zoot Suit. The parallel that I seek to establish is one of the strong trend of historical revisionism in both works as well as a parallel development of plot and characterization. This work does not claim to be representative of revisionism as a whole, nor does it seek to establish a new official history, but it does to demonstrate how both works, even though they are separated by hundreds of years, share a common bond of subversion and direct opposition to established norms and to the "facts" of a recorded official history in an attempt to give voice to the experience of the historically overlooked individual.

Rosa Montero's novels Lágrimas en la lluvia and Peso del corazón focus on Bruna Husky, an android private detective living in Madrid in 2109. Husky's career leads her into investigating various sinister plots, both of which she falls victim to. These quests lead her to make discoveries about herself that challenge her beliefs about herself. All the cases that Bruna investigates take her on journeys that mirror Campbell's structure of the monomythic quest. My analysis of the novels focuses on how Bruna follows the model of the Campbellian cycle while at the same time questioning the quest, keeping true to archetypes of the feminine quest as established by Anis Pratt and Dana Heller. My article focuses on three distinctive steps in the quest, the crossing of the threshold, initiation, and the return, as well as the most important characteristic of the feminine quest, the heroine's negation of the patriarchal society.

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[pt] A presente tese teve como ponto de partida a evidência de que, cada vez mais, se queremos uma escola para todos, precisamos promover a inserção do aluno numa nova estratégia de ensino que dê conta das mudanças na sociedade decorrentes da cultura do digital e das demandas dos alunos que nela se inserem. Assim sendo, o trabalho investigativo exposto objetivou discutir o fazer escolar na interação docente-discente a partir de estratégias que apresentavam condições lúdicas que, por suas características estruturais, ressignificavam o processo de ensino-aprendizagem e davam maior significação à construção do conhecimento. O referencial que permeou a construção teórica desta pesquisa e iluminou a experiência nas reflexões e aprendizagens se construiu segundo os conceitos de jogo e lúdico. O conceito de jogo proveio de Huizinga e Piaget; a relação entre jogo/lúdico e Educação foi discutida tendo em vista as considerações de Piaget, Winnicott, Paín e Macedo, Petty e Passos. Adotou-se o desenho metodológico de pesquisa-ação, com ênfase no caráter avaliativo de um programa inovador. Como a estrutura metodológica da pesquisa pressupunha também uma permanente avaliação da professora condutora do processo, apresentou ainda um caráter de autoestudo. Os autores foram 54 adolescentes, alunos do sexto ano do Ensino Fundamental do Colégio Militar do Rio de Janeiro na disciplina Língua Portuguesa durante todo o segundo semestre letivo de 2014. Os dados foram extraídos através de diferentes meios de coleta: diário de bordo da professora pesquisadora; vídeos que captaram momentos das aulas; produções dos autores, com destaque para os dizeres dos discentes em questionário de perfil de estudo, em caderno de opinião alimentado durante todo o processo e em três autoavaliações. A análise dos resultados permitiu identificar representações dos discentes sobre questões comuns à vivência escolar como, por exemplo, as avaliações e a visão que revelam sobre as práticas a que são submetidos pelos professores no cotidiano da sala de aula. Também foi possível analisar criticamente as construções coletivas de aprendizagem, singularidades e individualidades nos processos de ranqueamento e consequente menos-valia daquele aluno que não atinge os objetivos intelectivos, formais de base avaliativa escrita. Os resultados mais expressivos desta pesquisa indicam que: ocorreu mudança de atitude do aluno, com aumento na participação, no envolvimento e progresso na aprendizagem formal da disciplina Língua Portuguesa, quando submetido a uma estratégia lúdica de aprendizagem, na qual a ele é dada a chance de autoria; a relação professor/aluno com as práticas lúdicas ultrapassou expressivamente o espaço de aprendizagem intelectiva para a integração do desenvolvimento afetivo em um processo de confiança construída entre ambos com feedback constante e interativo; algumas representações construídas revelaram o medo, o tédio e o branco como queixas comuns da vivência escolar tradicional por parte dos alunos. Finalmente, o trabalho ratifica a necessidade de ampla reflexão sobre: o fazer escolar, as práticas docentes, as condições físicas, sociais e afetivas de aprendizagem dos discentes e as condições de trabalho do professor. Entretanto, abre também uma perspectiva de mudança pedagógica a curto prazo se adotados procedimentos em que o gozo por aprender seja a tônica. / [en] The present thesis was driven by the evidence that, even more frequently, if we want a school for all, we need to insert students within a new teaching strategy, one that covers the society s changes deriving from digital culture and from the demands of the students that are immersed in it. Therefore, the investigation work herein exposed aimed to discuss the school practices in the interaction teacher-learner, based on the strategies presented in ludic conditions, which, due to their structural features, gave new meaning to the teaching-learning process and provided new meaning to the construction of knowledge. The references embedded in the theoretical construction of this research and which enlightened our reflections and learning process were built on the concepts of games and ludic activities. The concept of games originated from Huizinga and Piaget; the relation between games/ludic activities and Education was discussed observing Piaget s, Winnicott s, Pain s and Macedo, Petty e Passos considerations. We adopted the methodology design of research-in-action, emphasizing the evaluation character of an innovative program. As the methodology structure of the research presumed a continuous evaluation of the teacher who conducted the process, it also presented a self study character. Fifty-four teenage students of Portuguese language, from the sixth grade of Colegio Militar do Rio de Janeiro, were the actors during the whole second semester of 2014 school year. The data were extracted via different collection means: the teacher-researcher journal; videos that captured classroom moments; learners production, with a highlight to their statements on a study profile questionnaire, registered in an opinion notebook filled out during the whole process within three self evaluations. The analysis of the results allowed the identification of the learners representations about common issues regarding school life, such as: the evaluation and their point of view on practices they are submitted to in the classroom everyday life. It was also possible to critically analyze collective knowledge construction, singularities and individualities in the ranking processes and, consequently, the feeling of loss from those who do not reach the formal cognitive goals in a written basis evaluation. The most expressive results of such research indicated: a) that an attitude change from the learner has occurred, increasing participation, engagement and progress in the formal process of learning Portuguese language whenever the learner was submitted to a ludic learning strategy in which he was given the chance of being the actor; b) the relation teacher/learner with ludic practices expressively exceeded the intellectual learning space towards integration of affective development in a trustful way, built along constant and interactive feedback.Also, some of the learner s documentated representations revealed fear, boredom and thoughts going blank as the learners mostcommon complaints of traditional school life. Finally, the paper confirms the need of a wide discussion about: school practice, teaching practice, learners physical, social and affective conditions and teachers working conditions. However, it also opens a perspective for pedagogical change in a short term, if procedures are adopted in a way that the delight of learning is the highlight.

Humorous and sarcastic on every page, the historical novel Los perros del paraíso (1983) by Abel Posse, presents itself as an iconoclast and subversive response to the historical account of the so-called discovery of the New World and the role played in it by Christopher Columbus. In this post-Boom narrative, linear time collapses and events conflate to depict a fantastic world where anachronism makes almost anything possible. Comic and grotesque in their attributes, characters appear performing a colonial play in which the absurd is apparently the sole stable rule. However, underneath this joyful surface, a colonial reason flows to confirm European Self and Indigenous Other in their classical division of ideological labor: master and slave, superior and inferior. A mystic Columbus, convinced he has finally found the Earthly Paradise and naïve Caribbeans, who believe conquerors are their returned gods reshape the myths of Latin American history not only as a total non-sense, but even worse, as an eternal condemnation of continuing its present condition of subordination. This process of mythification of history implies what I call its dehistorization, which means its epistemological cancellation as an explanatory discourse of human events. The ontological degradation of Columbus to an ape self-exiled from social life, and of indigenous as both cannibals and the perros del paraíso deprived from having a voice and having the will to rebell is the most eloquent proof that debasement of history is a consequence of the survival of a colonial point of view, which structures this novel as a whole.

This thesis considered the impact of censorship and authoritarian rule by dictator Francisco Franco on two novels by 20th century Spanish author Carmen Martín Gaite: El balneario, (1955) and Entre visillos (1958). The two works utilize a “discourse of censorship” to express complaints about life as a young woman deprived of fulfilling relationships and self-determination. These novels were analyzed through a search for subtexts and hidden meanings to argue for their status as texts that contain a subversive message. This investigation was accomplished through historical research on Francoist censorship and repression; use of Michel Foucault’s theories about panopticism; and feminist criticism of both novels. In the exploration of El balneario it was determined that a very strange dream sequence revealed psychological trauma from the Spanish Civil War, an anxiety-provoking sense of voicelessness, and an overwhelming isolation from the outside world. In the inquiry into Entre visillos, it was found that provincial and traditionalist social structures prevented meaningful communication and promoted unquestioned obedience to social norms. Martín Gaite achieved this look into society through her detailed depictions of the characters’ experiences and by viewing their social interactions through the lens of an outsider – a German teacher, Pablo Klein. The conclusion of this study was that, despite censorship’s silencing effects, Martín Gaite’s novels do expose the difficulties of daily life under authoritarian rule and are subversive in their implication that Franco’s insistence on maintaining 19th century social and political structures is harmful, and that change is possible if freer communication were allowed.

This project consists of a transcription and translation of the Annuae 1626-1645, written by an unidentified Jesuit missionary in Tonkin (Vietnam). The document appears to have been used as a source text for António Cardim's book Batalhas da Companhia de Jesus, and, as a result, there are many similarities between the two works. Despite these similarities, the Annuae contains new and insightful information on the state of the Tonkin mission as well as an interesting outsider's perspective on Vietnamese politics in the early 17th century.

This study uses lexical availability as a way in which to measure the level of an individual's acquisition of the dialect of their spouse. Although lexical availability studies are in abundance, to the author's knowledge, this is one of the few, if not the only, type of study that uses lexical availability to measure dialect contact. Lexical availability studies attempt to determine the most readily available lexical items in an individual's lexicon. This study implemented standard methodologies in order to determine whether dialect contact was more likely when specific topics were chosen. That is, if the topic in question was considered a masculine topic, would the female spouse utilise the spouse's word and vice versa. Participants completed vocabulary lists on six different topics of interest in addition to noting down their definition of a series of visual images that appeared before them.The conclusions highlight that, for this study at least, men are more likely to show evidence of dialect contact if the topic under scrutiny is traditionally considered male-related. The same is true for female participants, that is, the probability of their exhibiting dialect interference is greater if the topic is considered female-related. The results also showed that, in general, women are more likely to use their spouse's vocabulary item. The length of time that the couple had been married was not an overly telling factor.