The vast corpus of testimonial literature that has been produced
in Latin America since the 1960s, reaches a peak in the 1970s and
continues to the present day.
The dissertation investigates this phenomenon in Chile, Argentina
and Uruguay, through the examination of a group of literary works
that range from personal testimonies to documentary novels.
This genre is defined by a pact of truth established with the
reader in relation to the experience that is being narrated.
The first chapter describes testimony as a collective discourse
that responds to a counter-hegemonic cultural project which opposes
the doctrine of “National Security” that prevailed in the region during
that period.
Chapter II presents the guidelines that will frame the
dissertation, preparing a synthesis of several existing models based
upon diverse criteria: social, semantic, syntactic and functional.
In establishing the relationship between narration, history and
testimony, the thesis emphasizes that narrative techniques are
needed in order to tell any story, even those which were not
developed with a literary purpose. Testimony is not an exception,
because it transforms experience into stories, applying to
remembrances the structure of a plot.
The texts are organized accordingly, taking into account the types
of narrativization employed, and this taxonomy is connected with the reception theory and the contributions of the social criticism, in order
to provide a comprehensive understanding of the genre.
Chapters III, IV and V examine various works from the three
countries mentioned above, establishing a connection between the
historic-social situation, the collective symbols, the artistic
production of that period, and testimonies.
The conclusion suggests that the return of Latin American
literature to its hybrid origins implies transformations such as the
democratization of writing and the disappearance of the author as
the centre of the literary production. It also claims that this corpus
provokes a change in the direction of contemporary writing in those
countries, generating a necessary catharsis and a new elaboration of
a fragmented collective identity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/3355 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Strejilevich, Nora |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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