La Reina de las Nieves. La moral y el inconsciente : Leonardo Villalba según Sigmund Freud y Carl Jung

Esta tesina trata sobre la moral y el inconsciente a partir del análisis del personaje Leonardo Villalba de la novela La Reina de las Nieves, escrita por Carmen Martín Gaite. El estudio se hace a partir de las siguientes teorías: inconsciente de Sigmund Freud; ello, yo y superyó de Sigmund Freud; inconsciente de Carl Jung. La información almacenada en el inconsciente de una persona es algo que ésta no puede contar ya que ella misma no sabe que tiene tal información. Así, al ser Leonardo narrador-protagonista en gran parte de la obra, se supone que éste sólo puede transmitir la información de la que él mismo es consciente. No obstante, Martín Gaite consigue que Leonardo transmita información que él parece desconocer, a través de su inconsciente reflejado en sueños y reflexiones que explican ideas abstractas. Esto será demostrado en el apartado de análisis. La complejidad del personaje hace que la novela no sea una simple narración de hechos, sino que parte importante de ella sean sueños, la imaginación de Leonardo, preguntas existenciales que él mismo se hace, o recuerdos de su infancia o adolescencia que son de una importancia trascendental. La Reina de las Nieves es en gran parte una reflexión sobre la moral que, unida al inconsciente, son las bases de la novela.

The Secret Aria on Shame : An Analysis of Narrative Structure and Theme in Coetzee's "Diary of a Bad Year"

Coetzee’s last novel Diary of a Bad Year (2007) has an intriguing triple-voiced narrative structure and deals with the grey area of shame. The narrative is divided between a writer, his written contribution to a book called “Strong Opinions”, and his secretary’s thoughts about both the opinions in the manuscript and her employer’s circumstances. This essay explores the relation between form and theme in Diary of a Bad Year; to see in what way these two fundamental elements of the novel intervene and support each other. By doing so the narrative structure is read through Freud’s structural model of personality, whereby each narrator’s voice is related to the notions of the super-ego, the ego and the id. In other words, this essay argues that the specific threefold narrative structure in Diary of a Bad Year, by reflecting the interrelated parts of human identity, helps in creating and developing the theme of shame, which only exists connected to the human psyche. This connection in turn gives special meaning to the entire narratology of the novel.

Understanding Foreign Masters : the examples of Rabindranath Tagore and Fyodor Dostoyevskiy

The Indian author Rabindranath Tagore was received like royalty during his visits to the West after winning the Nobel Prize in 1913. Dreams of foreign cultures offered a retreat from a complicated age. In a time when the West appeared to be living under threat of disintegration and when industrialism seemed like a cul-de-sac, he appeared to offer the promise of a return to a lost paradise, a spiritual abode that is superior to the restless Western culture. However, Tagore’s popularity faded rapidly, most notably in England, the main target of his criticism. Soon after Tagore had won the Nobel Prize, the English became indignant at Tagore’s anti-colonial attitude.Tagore visited Sweden in 1921 and 1926 and was given a warm reception. His visits to Sweden can be seen as an episode in a longer chain of events. It brought to life old conceptions of India as the abode of spirituality on earth. Nevertheless, interest in him was a relatively short-lived phenomenon in Sweden. Only a few of his admirers in Sweden appreciated the complexity of Tagore’s achievements. His “anathema of mammonism”, as a Swedish newspaper called it, was not properly received. After a steady stream of translations his popularity flagged towards the end of the 1920s and then almost disappeared entirely. Tagores visits in Sweden gave an indication that India was on the way to liberate itself from its colonial legacy, which consequently contributed to the waning of his popularity in the West. In the long run, his criticism of the drawbacks in the western world became too obvious to maintain permanent interest. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevskiy’s Crime and Punishment (1866) has enticed numerous interpretations such as the purely biographical approach. In the nervous main character of the novel, the young student Raskolnikov, one easily recognizes Dostoyevskiy himself. The novel can also be seen as a masterpiece of realistic fiction. It gives a broad picture of Saint Petersburg, a metropolis in decay. Crime and Punishment can also be seen as one of the first examples of a modern psychological novel, since it is focused on the inner drama of its main character, the young student Raskolnikov. His actions seem to be governed by mere coincidences, dreams and the spur of the moment. it seems fruitful to study the novel from a psychoanalytical approach. In his book Raskolnikov: the way of the divided towards unity in Crime and Punishment (1982), a Swedish scholar, Owe Wikström, has followed this line of interpretation all the way to Freud’s disciple C G Jung. In addition to this, the novel functions as an exciting crime story. To a large extent it is Viktor Sjklovskij and other Russian formalists from the 1920s and onwards who have taught the western audience to understand the specific nature of the crime story. The novel could be seen as a story about religious conversion. Like Lasarus in the Bible (whose story attracts a lot of attention in the novel) Raskolnikov is awakened from the dead, and together with Sonja he starts a completely new life. The theme of conversion has a special meaning for Dostoyevskiy. For him the conversion meant an acknowledgement of the specific nature of Russia itself. Crime and punishment mirrors the conflict between traditional Russian values and western influences that has been obvious in Russia throughout the history of the country. The novel reflects a dialogue that still continues in Russian society. The Russian literary historian Mikhail Bakhtin, who is probably the most famous interpreter of the works of Dostoyevskiy, has become famous precisely by emphasizing the importance of dialogues in novels like Crime and Punishment. According to Bakhtin, this novel is characterized by its multitude of voices. Various ideas are confronted with each other, and each one of them is personified by one of the characters in the novel. The author has resigned from his position as the superior monitor of the text, and he leaves it to the reader to decide what interpretation is the correct one..The aim of the present study is thus to analyze the complex reactions in the west to Tagore’s visits in Sweden and to Fyodor Dostoyevskiys novel Crime and Punishment.. This leads to more general conclusions on communication between cultures.

Deadly Desire : A Psychoanalytical Reading of Desire and Death in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas' work is often explored in light of the poet himself, and he has been referred to as modernism's l'enfant terrible or even described as a late romanticist. The aim in this essay is to explore the poetry without regard to his personal life as well as highlight previously ignored oedipal elements in said poetry. The main goal is to assert Thomas' place amongst the modernist literati, of which most were heavily influenced by Freud, as well as to be an acknowledgement of his work without considering his biography.

Frustración lorquiana : Metáforas y símbolos en La Casa de Bernarda Alba

El presente trabajo está orientado a detectar los símbolos y metáforas ambivalentes en la obraLa Casa de Bernarda Alba de Federico García Lorca. Debido a que hay pocos estudiosdedicados al simbolismo de la frustración, se ha concentrado en analizar dicha temática. Paraanalizar el concepto de frustración, primero ha sido necesario comprender cómo eraconcebida la moral de la época en que se inscribe la obra. En segundo lugar, ha sidofundamental entender cómo surge la frustración en el ser humano. Atendiendo a estascuestiones se ha aplicado la teoría del formalismo iluminista y una visión freudiana sobre lasteorías del psiquismo. En base a estas nociones se detectaron cuatro símbolos ambivalentesque connotan sentimientos de frustración: el blanco, el olivo, la maroma y el mar. Estossímbolos antitéticos contienen una fuerza negativa que se impone a la fuerza positiva, lo cualtiene como resultado la frustración. Las fuerzas contradictorias están presentes durante laobra entera. Esta característica no solo se manifiesta a través de los tropos estudiados, sinoque también se detectó que a menudo las fuerzas antitéticas se hacen presentes enprotagonistas que forman grupos ambivalentes, donde cada personaje actúa como una fuerzaopuesta, lo cual lleva hacia una tensión permanente entre una persona positiva y otranegativa.