Historia del Instituo Lorente, (1894-1997)

Introduction. This thesis is the result of study of the Llorente Institute since its origins, contemporaries of the Pasteur Institute in France and in Sclavo Institute in Italy, until its disappearance in 1997 as a pharmaceutical laboratory. Synthesis. The first objective was to demonstrate the development of research activity of Llorente Institute. It was also intended to clarify what were the real causes of its decline, which can be attributed not only to internal factors, but also to general policies that concerned a set of pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Vicente Llorente figure is not the essential part of this thesis, although it have made new contributions about on their way through politics as a member of the Restoration Parliament during the legislatures between 1899 and 1905. Research carried out in the General Archive of the State Administration and in the Mercantile Register are the main sources of this research, together with the testimony and unpublished documents provided by his last owners. Also, it has been important to the development of products that constituted the vademecum of Llorente Institute...

El surrealismo en la obra poética de Federico García Lorca

The main objective of this investigation is the retrieval of the study of possible Surrealism in Federico García Lorcás poetic work, a poet who enjoyed in his time prestige and international fame for decades, and still does. Numerous articles in magazines and newspapers of his time speak of his writings, literary activities and stand as a testimony of how well-regarded he was during his lifetime and even after his tragic murder death at the hands of fascists right after the outbreak of the Spanish civil war back in July 1936. Nevertheless, and for diverse reasons, literary ,social, as well as the extent of the studies, researches and abundant biographies about him, the study of Surrealism in all his works, such as in his playwrights for instance, has not been sufficiently expanded, and has been overlooked by the extensive bibliographies written about him. We have limited the investigation to his poetic works only. The extensive bibliographies written about him, is a fact that hindered and held back our efforts, as we had to resort to resources from different libraries, such as the Faculty of Philology of the UCM General Library, the Faculty of Information Science, the Student Residence, as well as the National Library. In addition to the analysis and commentary of his works, not to mention that current publications on him, various literary magazines and articles from the poet’s time have been consulted as well...

Historia de la dirección escénica en España: Miguel Narros

The year 2013 saw the passing of Miguel Narros, one of the most outstanding men of theatre of recent decades, and a creator to whom we remain in debt today. His extensive legacy deserves a special place in our memory and stands as a subject of study of the keenest interest, in view of the increasing amount of research being done on the discipline of stage direction. The objective of the thesis being presented is to provide an overview of Narros’ work, so as to draw conclusions related to the situation of theatre in Spain throughout the second half of the twentieth century and in the early twenty-first century and to elucidate the director’s poetic conception and a theory of his stage practice. The thesis has focused on the director’s biography —in which work and personal life are closely intertwined—, the artistic and technical credits and dates of his stage productions, the compiling and summarising of a number of reviews in the press, the classification and discussion of the different historical and literary periods dealt with by the director, as well as the poetics of his theatre (his points of reference, his conception as stage director —form and content— and his position on the elements that make up a stage production). Also attached is a selection of photographs of more than half of his stagings (in addition to some of the director himself) which are testimony to his creation and a reflection of a number of the characteristics of his theatre. The study —based on information from the written press, public and private archives (which provided everything from photographs to handbills) and a number of personal interviews, among other sources— reveals a professional whose work transformed, enriched and consolidated the Spanish stage. Indeed, Spanish theatre simply cannot be understood without taking into account Miguel Narros. Narros worked as an actor and immersed himself in the teachings of the figures that populated the theatre world of the mid-twentieth century, such as Jardiel Poncela, Elvira Noriega, José María Rodero, Carmen Seco and, above all, Luis Escobar...

Escritura entre rejas: literatura carcelaria cubana del siglo XX

The present dissertation examines literary perspectives, as well as textual and extra textual mechanisms of the Cuban Prison Literature of the twentieth century. By the term “Prison Literature” I refer to the literary works that have been developed inside the prison space –physically inside of it– and to those that take as a focal point jail itself. In other words, literary works about imprisonment created in order to reminisce about a prison experience or to recreate it, and imagine it from the outside. Likewise, I discuss the political, social and cultural context of each of the different periods where the works presented are framed, as well as the metaphorical projection of the concept of “prison” in various significant levels (the island, the city, the body and the language). Our corpus consists of a myriad Cuban intellectual works from the XXth century that we consider to be representative of the Cuban prison literary tradition, which dates back to the nineteenth century –mainly through the figure of José Martí and his poetic testimony El presidio politico en Cuba (1871)– the same continues during the twenty-first century with writers as María Elena Cruz Varela, Roberto Jesús Quiñones, Raúl Rivero, Ángel Santiesteban and Agnieska Hernández...

Aspectos cognitivos en torno a la novela y el cine de la memoria histórica: "La voz dormida" de Dulce Chacón y su adaptación fílmica

Culture, history, and biology are inseparable. Cultural manifestations are necessarily immersed in a context, originate in the embodied minds that create them, and are directed to the embodied minds that receive them and recreate them within their contexts (individual and collective). The novel and the film of historical memory in Spain aim to connect their audiences with a problem that has not been solved, as the Civil War, the postwar, and the pact of forgetfulness left a wide sector of the Spanish society voiceless. During the last few years, a series of initiatives coming from the arts, as well as other realms such as the legal, have sought to reexamine the unhealed wound that still haunts Spanish subjects. La voz dormida [The Sleeping Voice] is one of those initiatives. It begins as testimony, develops into a hybrid and intertextual novel, and later becomes a film. It constitutes an inclusive project, one of offering an alternative version to the “official history”, while incorporating the marginal voices of women that had been left out of the memory of the war and the dictatorship. Objective and Results By examining both the literary and the cinematic versions of Chacón’s work I aimed to evidence the connections that exist between the artistic portrayal of the postwar repression (particularly how it affects women) and the current movement of recovery of historical memory in Spain. Specifically, I was interested in showing how both the novel and the film employ a series of narrative strategies that emphasize the body and intentionality, with the purpose of creating in readers and spectators an empathetic response that may lead to prosocial behavior. In order to carry out this interdisciplinary study, which relates fiction, mind, and socio-historical context, I draw on cognitive theories of literature and film, as well as theories from social and developmental psychology, such as the Richard Gerrig’s theory of narrative experience, Keith Oatley’s psychology of fiction, Suzanne Keen’s theory of narrative empathy, and the empathy-altruism hypothesis, derived form the ideas of Jean Decety, among others...