Jacinto Bejarano y sus "Sentimientos patrióticos". Edición crítica

El propósito de esta tesis doctoral es situar a Jacinto Bejarano Galavis y Nidos (1748-1828) y sus Sentimientos patrióticos (1791) en el lugar que justamente merecen en la historia de la literatura española del siglo XVIII. Estamos, sin lugar a duda, ante uno de los textos fundamentales de esa centuria, una de las claves imprescindibles de Azorín y uno de los puntales de la literatura regeneracionista española. De los avatares de esta obra me daba cuenta el profesor Gómez Moreno en la carta con que acompañaba un regalo que resultó ser este precioso libro. Me consta que los dos volúmenes de que consta la obra de Bejarano, bien conservados y elegantemente encuadernados, los había adquirido en la magnífica librería madrileña de Luis Bardón Mesa. Releer aquellas líneas me resulta especialmente grato porque creo haber cumplido con el encargo de mi querido maestro: En 1944, Dolores Franco, quien en vida fuera mujer de Julián Marías, publicó una bella antología de textos dispuesta a modo de ensayo, La preocupación de España en su literatura. Antología (con prólogo de Azorín, y conviene no perder de vista este dato); en 1960, salía a la calle la versión final, España como preocupación. Antología. Aunque inicialmente el libro se apoya en Cervantes, Quevedo y Saavedra Fajardo, su autora percibió pronto que el punto de partida real se hallaba en la literatura de ideas del siglo XVIII, con Forner, Jovellanos, Feijoo o Cadalso. A la larga serie de autores que se duelen de España y se esfuerzan en señalar sus males pertenece Jacinto Bejarano Galavís y Nidos, un simple curita de pueblo (concretamente de Riofrío, Ávila), como dice el título del libro, Sentimientos patrióticos o conversaciones christianas que un cura de aldea verdadero amigo del país inspira a sus feligreses. Se tienen los coloquios al fuego de la chimenea en las noches de hibierno. Los interlocutores son el cura, cirujano, sacristán, procurador y el tío Cacharro, Madrid, 1791. De este autor y de este título se acordaba mucho tiempo después el propio Julián Marías en relación con Azorín y con el ensayo-antología de su añorada esposa...

"Consolatoria super obitu inclyti principis Hispaniarum Iohannis" de Alfonso Ortiz: introducción, edición crítica, traducción y comentario

The present work submitted as a PhD thesis has the aim of studying from a philological point of view, the Latin text Consolatoria super obitu inclyti principis Hispaniarum Iohannis, written by the Castilian canon Alfonso Ortiz, who lived in the late 15th century in the time of the Catholic Monarchs (Isabel and Fernando), on the death of Prince John, first and only son of the sovereigns. The core of this work is the critical edition (the first complete edition ever made) on the comparison of two extant manuscripts (S and St), the second having the Spanish self-translation of the first. On the basis of this critical text we study the literary references as well as its structure and the literary genre to which it may be ascribed and, besides, we point out some features of the language used therein (Latin), the scope and characteristics of the self-translation and other style and rhetorical topics (e.g. the use of rhythmic clausulae at the end of sentences). Several appendices are added to complete and improve the text-study From that study it may be concluded that although the work follows a long time proven tradition based on medieval religious Ideas, the author, nonetheless, continuously shows within the text that he is willing to adapt that tradition into the new tunes of early Renaissance, not only by means of language and style features, but also through matter nuances that made it clear that life/death concepts were gradually shifting from the medieval times to the ideas of the new epoch. As the value of human life was rising, it needed a more attentive, profound and meticulous consolation through both conceptual and rhetorical arguments...

Estudio, edición crítica y traducción del "Memoriale virtvtvm" de Alfonso de Cartagena

Alfonso de Cartagena (1385-1456), possibly the most representative figure of the courtly, political and cultural dimension built around Juan II, was the third son of the famous convert Pablo de Santa Maria, Burgos’ rabbi and, later on, bishop of that same town. He started his career as governor of Cartagena’s cathedral, afterwards he was named dean of Santiago and Segovia, canon of Burgos and, after his father’s death, bishop of Burgos. Alternatively, he played a vital role in Castile’s national and international politics, as an ambassador in Portugal’s court, at Basel’s council and before Poland’s and Germany’s kings. His work, written both in Latin and Romance, either as an historian, treatise writer, theologist or translator, is quite broad; his literary connections were strong either with Italian humanists or with those who were fond of the language arts from Spain. The first part of this Thesis seeks to provide a wide enough perspective of the author, for which we place the emphasis on the most distinctive aspects of his life. Therefore, we divided the introduction in three sections: a biographical overview, his work and, last, a study on the Memoriale uirtutum itself. Thus, regarding the first aspect, we focus on the course of his life (§1.1), where we can highlight his university education, which isn’t restricted to his training as a jurist, but we also observe that his mental vitality takes him to develop certain inquisitiveness for Moral Philosophy or Latin, which leads him to study Grammar and Rhetoric; this would allow the influence of studia humanitatis to emerge, although he never got to learn the Greek language, as we can deduce from the epistolary confrontation between him and Leonardo Bruni. We also focus on the significance of his Jewish past, upon the defence of the converts during the massacre experienced in the XVth century (§1.2), and on his presence at Basel’s council (§1.3). Despite the fact that his work as a diplomat begins during the missions in Portugal as an emissary of king Juan II, he will get recognition owing to his legation in Basel, not only among the European ecclesiastics, but also among the scholars from Italy; the importance of Basel’s council in Cartagena’s life goes beyond his official work there, either as defending the Castilian interests, or as an active member of the purely conciliar functions, since it also had a huge impact in his intellectual growth. During this time period, Cartagena establishes a friendship with Pizzolpaso, Bishop of Milan, writer, humanist, and friend of Leonardo Bruni. As a result of this type of relationship with men of such high cultural standard, he re-awakens the study of the Classical antiquity among his contemporaries, developing a huge interest in the Greco-Roman masterpieces, which will bring him closely to the highly-regarded Spanish humanists of the XVIth century...

Libros históricos: evolución e historia a través de Jueces 1

El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar algunos aspectos del libro de Jueces, con especial cuidado en lo referente al género, estructura y la historia de la formación del libro. También vemos algunos de los problemas en la transmisión del texto. El trabajo consta de dos partes: La primera es teórica. En ella estudiaremos la composición y transmisión del texto, la historia deuteronomística y su relación con otros libros históricos. La segunda parte es práctica. Se estudia el texto y su contexto con el fin de explicar los problemas de transmisión del mismo. Esta parte gira en torno a dos ejes, uno diacrónico y otro sincrónico, para intentar demostrar que en el libro de Jueces se incluyen componentes diferentes a otros libros del Antiguo Testamento. Para lograr nuestro cometido, me baso en una versión sinóptica y políglota de los primeros versículos del libro, utilizando el original hebreo, y la traducción griega y latina. Como conclusión habría que destacar algunos puntos. El libro de Jueces pertenece a la escuela deuteronomística, donde modificaron y elaboraron el texto siguiendo unos ideales. Sobre el autor del texto las opiniones son heterogéneas. El libro tiene tres partes diferenciadas. Desde un punto de vista textual, se ven las diferentes influencias de unos textos sobre otros, llegando, en ocasiones, a la Vorlage hebrea. Se muestra la necesidad de un estudio filológico para reflejar las diferentes variantes redaccionales del texto.

"El cielo de Lima" de Juan Gómez Bárcena: su poética de la ficción

Tomando como marco teórico la pragmática literaria y tras delimitar los conceptos de ficción y de poética y los diferentes estilos de narrar, se aborda la investigación de la poética subyacente en esta novela, a través del análisis del narrador, los personajes, el espacio y el tiempo; descubriendo como su rasgo más característico una estructura de mundos interactuantes que configuran un espejo múltiple del pacto de ficción.

Ficción y realidad en "Les Bienveillantes" de Jonathan Littell

En el presente trabajo se analiza "Les Bienveillantes", novela que ficciona las memorias atormentadas de un nazi. A través de su lectura se viaja a los infiernos del holocausto, de la guerra y de una conciencia sin anclajes éticos ni estéticos, narrados por una mente perversa que apenas se conmueve ante las atrocidades más profundas. Tras contrastar a lo largo de su trama ficción y realidad, se destaca, a la luz de los debates sobre la reescritura de la Historia, la operatividad de esta novela para captar y transmitir la verdad de lo ocurrido favoreciendo de ese modo el desarrollo de una conciencia responsable y la no repetición de los hechos.

Private (Brown) Eyes: Ethnicity, Genre and Gender in Crime Fiction in the Gloria Damasco novels and the Chicanos Comic Series

The representation of women in crime fiction has traditionally been a complicated one. Consistently forced into secondary characters (assistants, girlfriends, or damsels in distress) the most active role a female character could aspire to was that of the femme fatale, a pit of perdition, an unwelcome distraction for a man looking for truth and justice. This traditional approach to the genre has been challenged in the last decades by women acting as detectives, trusted with solving their cases in a hostile male world. Similarly, the traditional white male protagonist has been contested by fictions where ethnic minorities are not just consigned to the criminal world, but where detectives are members of ethnic groups, and can use their knowledge of the community to solve the case. This essay focuses on the crossroads of ethnic and women’s detective fiction, specifically the Gloria Damasco series by Chicana writer Lucha Corpi and the graphic novel Chicanos (Trillo and Risso, 1996). Both protagonists (Gloria Damasco, a Chicana clairvoyant detective, and “poor, ugly, and a detective” Alejandrina Yolanda Jalisco) must face both the dangers of investigating criminal cases and discrimination in their professional surroundings due to their gender and ethnicity. By contrasting these texts, the essay elucidates the importance of specific cultural products, their connection to (and defiance of) canonical forms of the genre, and their rejection of generic and gender expectations.

"Le ravissementde Lol. V. Stein" se mira en "Moderato cantabile": algunos ecos narrativos en la escritura de Marguerite Duras

El artículo presenta la novela "Moderato cantabile" como texto fundador del universo narrativo de Marguerite Duras al contener y avanzar los temas principales y las estructuras discursivas esenciales del mismo. A partir de esta perspectiva de lectura, confrontaremos "Moderato cantabile" con la novela publicada en 1964, "Le ravissement de Lol. V. Stein", lo que permite plantear un juego de espejos entre ambos relatos, del que resultan las claves interpretativas para comprender los textos de la autora.

An analysis of authorship attribution: Identifying linguistic variables in oral and written discourse

This dissertation goes into the new field from applied linguistics called forensic linguistics, which studies the language as an evidence for criminal cases. There are many subfields within forensic linguistics, however, this study belongs to authorship attribution analysis, where the authorship of a text is attributed to an author through an exhaustive linguistic analysis. Within this field, this study analyzes the morphosyntactic and discursive-pragmatic variables that remain constant in the intra-variation or personal style of a speaker in the oral and written discourse, and at the same time have a high difference rate in the interspeaker variation, or from one speaker to another. The theoretical base of this study is the term used by professor Maria Teresa Turell called “idiolectal style”. This term establishes that the idiosyncratic choices that the speaker makes from the language build a style for each speaker that is constant in the intravariation of the speaker’s discourse. This study comes as a consequence of the problem appeared in authorship attribution analysis, where the absence of some known texts impedes the analysis for the attribution of the authorship of an uknown text. Thus, through a methodology based on qualitative analysis, where the variables are studied exhaustively, and on quantitative analysis, where the findings from qualitative analysis are statistically studied, some conclusions on the evidence of such variables in both oral and written discourses will be drawn. The results of this analysis will lead to further implications on deeper analyses where larger amount of data can be used.

From ‘Bad’ to ‘Mad’: Labelling and Behaviour in Peter Shaffer’s Equus

The process of ‘labelling’ (whereby labels are socially imposed on a given behaviour by a given person) is an extensive and recurrent one in our society, as proved by the labelling of behaviours and people even into the literary text. In our analysis, we will try to show how applying one of two most different labels (psychopathic or psychotic) greatly influences our understanding of the existence of ‘evil’ or moral responsibility in the deeds of a person. To such end, we will use Peter Shaffer’s play Equus (1973), which requires both the characters in the play and the spectators to decide whether Alan Strang’s terrible crime is a result of evil or of insane behaviour: whether he is ‘mad’ or simply ‘bad’. We will try to evince the current social and cultural confusion between madness and evil, and how processes of medicalization or criminalization affect our understanding of those around us and those living in the books we read.

The Ultimate Secrecy: Feminist Readings of Masculine Trauma in Vietnam War Literature

It is a widely acknowledged and often unquestioned fact that patriarchy and its modes of behaviour and social organization favour the appearance of trauma on the weakest (and defenceless) members of society: women. In the last decades, trauma seems to have taken the baton of typically female maladies such as 19th c. hysteria or 20th c. madness. Feminists in the 20th c. have long worked to prove the connection between the latter affections (and their reflection in literary texts) and patriarchal oppression or expectations of feminine behaviour and accordance to roles and rules. With Trauma Studies on the rise, the approach to the idea of the untold as related to femininity is manifold: on the one hand, is not trauma, which precludes telling about one’s own experience and keeps it locked not only from the others, but also from ourselves, the ultimate secrecy? On the other hand, when analyzing works that reflect trauma, one is astounded by the high number of them with a female protagonist and an almost all-female cast: in this sense, a ‘feminist’ reading is almost compulsory, in the sense that it is usually the author’s assumption that patriarchal systems of exploitation and expectations favour traumatic events and their outcome (silence and secrets) on the powerless, usually women. Often, traumatic texts combine feminism with other analytical discourses (one of the topics proposed for this panel): Toni Morrison’s study of traumatic responses in The Bluest Eye and Beloved cannot be untangled from her critique of slavery; just as much of Chicana feminism and its representations of rape and abuse (two main agents of trauma) analyze the nexus of patriarchy, new forms of post-colonialism, and the dynamics of power and powerlessness in ethnic contexts. Within this tradition that establishes the secrecies of trauma as an almost exclusively feminine characteristic, one is however faced with texts which have traumatized males as protagonists: curiously enough, most of these characters have suffered trauma through a typically masculine experience: that of war and its aftermath. By analyzing novels dealing with war veterans from Vietnam or the Second World War, the astounding findings are the frequent mixture of masculine or even ‘macho’ values and the denial of any kind of ‘feminine’ characteristics, combined with a very strict set of rules of power and hierarchy that clearly establish who is empowered and who is powerless. It is our argument that this replication of patriarchal modes of domination, which place the lowest ranks of the army in a ‘feminine’ situation, blended with the compulsory ‘macho’ stance soldiers are forced to adopt as army men (as seen, for example, in Philip Caputo’s Indian Country, Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story or Ed Dodge’s DAU: A Novel of Vietnam) furthers the onset and seriousness of ulterior trauma. In this sense, we can also analyze this kind of writing from a ‘feminist’ point of view, since the dynamics of über-patriarchal power established at the front at war-time deny any display of elements traditionally viewed as ‘feminine’ (such as grief, guilt or emotions) in soldiers. If trauma is the result of a game of patriarchal empowerment, how can feminist works, not only theoretical, but also fictional, overthrow it? Are ‘feminine’ characteristics necessary to escape trauma, even in male victims? How can feminist readings of trauma enhance our understanding of its dynamics and help produce new modes of interaction that transcend power and gender division as the basis for the organization of society?

‘You, my body, and my mind, one of these will go’: Madness as Disguise in Samuel Beckett's Murphy and Endgame

ithin the wide topic of disguise in literature, we could signal a subcurrent which can be found in a number of literary texts: the idea of madness as a disguise, i.e. the creation or invention of a ‘false self’ as a mask which is presented to the world and which conceals the real self. In The Divided Self (1960), R. D. Laing deals with the “personality, false self, mask, front or persona that (...) [schizophrenic] wear” (73). Using as a basis Laing’s theories on schizophrenia and the creation of a false-self system, we will analyze two works by Samuel Beckett: Murphy and Endgame, where we find the uses of madness as disguise in a series of ways: through the usage of ‘disguised’ language (what we could refer to as schizophrenese) which acts as a mask for real meaning; through odd ‘schizophrenic’ behaviour on the part of the characters (which screens real intentions), and, mainly, through the creation of a ‘false self’ which acts as a disguise and barrier between the inner self and the real world. These two works by Samuel Beckett, where real intentions and meanings are continuously concealed and disguised in a desperate attempt to preserve the inner self, lend themselves to an analysis of madness as disguise, precisely the one we attempt to carry out in our paper.

The Complications of the Erotic: Eroticism in Last Tango in Paris and Une liaison pornographique

Even more so than in other arts, film has tried to draw an artificial but clear line between eroticism and pornography, nonetheless perpetuating moral judgments about movies marketed as “erotic”. The explicit and repeated portrayal of sex in such films would place them dangerously near the vortex of the pornographic, and thus, since they are not concerned with transcendental issues, they would require little or no critical attention. I will however try to argue, using Last Tango in Paris and Une liaison pornographique, that many of these “erotic” films conclude that a relationship based solely on sex (i.e. “pornographic”), which ignores the complexities of individual identity and the interpersonal is doomed to fail. Also, I would like to show how these films ultimately conceive of sex as something that goes beyond the merely physical and walks the grounds of such transcendental issues as despair, loneliness, death, or love.