Harmonic Monads : Reading Contemporary Scottish Fiction through the Enlightenment

Peer reviewed

The representation of motherhood in contemporary Catalan fiction

This dissertation analyzes four twenty-first-century Catalan novels which present the complex positions occupied by mothers in the last seven decades. Its conceptual framework posits motherhood as both a changing social construction and a political institution in a constant state of flux. In Inma Monsó´s Todo un carácter (2001), Eva Piquer´s Una victoria diferente (2002), Carme Riera´s La mitad del alma (2004), and Najat El Hachmi´s El último patriarca (2008) motherhood is explored as a metaphorical act, a gender-constructing experience, as well as the locus of expression with regard to gender and power relations. During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939–1975), the majority of women were excluded from public spaces, and forced to stay home to care for their husbands and children. Furthermore, the state criminalized abortion, made contraception and divorce illegal, and promoted an ideal of femininity based on silence, sacrifice, and self-denial. The political changes of the late 1970s allowed women greater personal autonomy, and many women writers began to challenge stereotypical views of women’s social roles. Yet in the 70s and 80s, the narratives of Esther Tusquets, Ana María Moix, and Montserrat Roig represent the mother as a repressive figure whom the daughter must reject in order to liberate herself and regain her voice. It is not until the 90s when the novelists Mercedes Abad, Maruja Torres, Carme Riera, Imma Monsó, Eva Piquer, and María Barbal rehumanize the mother figure, recovering their matrilineal heritage. However, far from suggesting a unified trend in representations of motherhood in Catalan fiction, the diverse points of view of the novels under discussion here reveal that differences in attitudes among women authors about mother-daughter conflict are far from resolved. The theoretical background for this dissertation draws mainly on the work of Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, and Julia Kristeva. It includes psychoanalytic studies as well as sociologically based essays by Anna López Puig, Amparo Acereda, Jacqueline Cruz, Barbara Zecchi, Ángeles de la Concha, and Raquel Osborne, among others.

Becoming Other: Virtual Realities in Contemporary Science Fiction

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the boundary between human and other created by virtual worlds in contemporary science fiction novels. After a close reading of the three novels: Surface Detail, Existence, and Lady of Mazes, and the application of contemporary literary theories, the boundary presented itself and led to the discovery of where the human becomes other. The human becomes other when it becomes lost to the virtual world and no longer exists or interacts with material reality. Each of the primary texts exhibits both virtual reality and humanity in different ways, and each is explored to find where humanity falls apart. Overall, when these theories are applied to real life there is no real way to avoid the potential for fully immersive virtual worlds, but there are ways to avoid their alienating effects.

A linguagem da violência nos contos de Famílias terrivelmente felizes de Marçal Aquino

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Por dentro da cidade: solidão e marginalidade em Rubem Fonseca

The fictional work of the author Rubem Fonseca, since its debut in 1963, with the book of tales entitled Os Prisioneiros, it has been evoking a continuing interest in their readers and in the specialized criticism. The doctoral thesis entitled Por dentro da cidade solidão e marginalidade em Rubem Fonseca turns itself to his tale, it is considered by many as the most pungent of the author s literature. It is chosen a corpus of varied tales of the author, and still having as foundation the ideas from scholars of literary narratives, among them Antonio Candido (1980; 1987; 2006), Alfredo Bosi (1999; 2006) and still Walter Benjamin, (2000a; 2000b), the thesis discusses the contemporary Brazilian literature, more specifically the fonsequiana fiction, which exposes in an intense way the modern human condition in big cities: our dramas, inconstancies, desires and loneliness.

A construção narrativa em Cidade de Deus de Paulo Lins

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Mulheres contando história de mulheres: o romance histórico brasileiro contemporâneo de autoria feminina

Pós-graduação em Letras - FCLAS

Palimpsestos: Ana Miranda y la lectura de la historia literarria brasileña

We can notice in Brazilian literature —both past and contemporary— the presence of the historical novel in its several modalities which include traditional models but also contemporary formulations that break old models with irreverence. Among them are the historiographical metafictions (Hutcheon, 1991), which propose the rereading not only of history but also of literature itself. Therefore, in the large number of historical characters which are fictionalized by contemporary Brazilian historical novel in the last decades, this essay intends to discuss how Ana Miranda engages in reading the history of Brazilian literature through fiction in three of her novels. The first is Boca do inferno (1989), whose protagonists are two of the main representatives of Brazilian colonial barroque, Father Antônio Vieira and poet Gregório de Matos. Following the chronological order of protagonist writers, the next novel to be discussed is Dias & dias (2002), whose action is centered in Gonçalves Dias, a well known poet of national Romanticism. The third is A última quimera (1995), which makes an outline of Brazilian literature at the beginning of the 20th century, dealing with Augusto dos Anjos and Olavo Bilac. By inverting some traditional viewpoints, Ana Miranda proposes, as in a palimpsest, the rereading and discussion of the national literary cânon and its construction.