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.

Entre a notícia e o romance de sensação: os estranguladores do Rio ou o Crime da Rua Carioca. Romance sensacional do Rio oculto

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo analisar o romance de sensação, gênero da literatura popular, que fez muito sucesso e alcançou tiragens significativas no Rio de Janeiro da virada do século XIX. Com isso, busca-se contribuir para a compreensão da circulação cultural entre romances canônicos e populares, tema ainda pouco estudado pela literatura acadêmica. O romance de sensação será abordado, nos capítulos um e dois, no contexto do processo de modernização do Rio de Janeiro no século XIX que faz com que ele ganhe força enquanto produto estético da vida urbana frenética capaz de produzir sensações diversas a partir de elementos como as transformações do espaço, as novas tecnologias, uma nova forma de viver, bem como pela criminalização, pelo medo, pela fascinação pelo terrível e pela mistura entre ficção e notícia. Argumenta-se, ainda, que este tipo de romance terá seu desenvolvimento propiciado por elementos como o barateamento do livro, uma linguagem jornalística e sensacionalista e adequações estruturais que teriam viabilizado um aumento do público leitor e consumidor. Por fim, no terceiro capítulo, analisamos o romance Os estranguladores do Rio ou o crime da Rua Carioca. Romance sensacional do Rio oculto, do autor Abílio Soares Pinheiro, onde podemos observar as características dessas narrativas de caráter popular, que dialogam com textos jornalísticos e científicos, com estruturas de sedução e composição do folhetim, com audaciosas temáticas que incorporam o submundo da pobreza e do mundo criminoso, ambos marcados pela violência, sangue e sexo.

Policing the Globe: State Sovereignty and the International in the Post-9/11 Crime Novel

Two recent studies of 9/11 literature are dismissive of the contributions that crime and espionage novels have made to ongoing efforts to map the significance of 9/11 and its aftermath. My essay contests the assumption that only literary fiction – which pays sufficient attention to trauma – can “bear witness” to the events of 9/11 and argues that such fiction is, in fact, singularly ill-equipped to illuminate the complex geo-political circumstances that 9/11 entrenched and transformed. By contrast, genre novels by John Le Carré and Don Winslow have responded in imaginative and critical ways to post-9/11 and avowedly trans-national securitization initiatives and hence to efforts to trouble traditional accounts of state sovereignty.

Lucy Hosmer, or, The guardian and ghost : a tale of avarice and crime defeated /

Lucy Hosmer, or, The guardian and ghost / D.P. Thompson -- Julia Grayson, or, The sailor in love / D.P. Thompson -- The old soldier's story.

Post-revolutionary post-modernism: Central American detective fiction by the turn of the 21st century

Contemporary Central American fiction has become a vital project of revision of the tragic events and the social conditions in the recent history of the countries from which they emerge. The literary projects of Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua), Dante Liano (Guatemala), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), and Ramon Fonseca Mora (Panama), are representative of the latest trends in Central American narrative. These trends conform to a new literary paradigm that consists of an amalgam of styles and discourses, which combine the testimonial, the historical, and the political with the mystery and suspense of noir thrillers. Contemporary Central American noir narrative depicts the persistent war against social injustice, violence, criminal activities, as well as the new technological advances and economic challenges of the post-war neo-liberal order that still prevails throughout the region. ^ Drawing on postmodernism theory proposed by Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon and Brian MacHale, I argued that the new Central American literary paradigm exemplified by Sergio Ramirez's El cielo llora por mí, Dante Liano's El hombre de Montserrat, Horacio Castellanos Moya's El arma en el hombre and La diabla en el espejo , and Ramon Fonseca Mora's El desenterrador, are highly structured novels that display the characteristic marks of postmodern cultural expression through their ambivalence, which results from the coexistence of multiple styles and conflicting ideologies and narrative trends. The novels analyzed in this dissertation make use of a noir sensitivity in which corruption, decay and disillusionment are at their core to portray the events that shaped the modern history of the countries from which they emerge. The revolutionary armed struggle, the state of terror imposed by military regimes and the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, are among the major themes of these contemporary works of fiction, which I have categorized as perfect examples of the post-revolutionary post-modernism Central American detective fiction at the turn of the 21st century.^

Writing Violence: the legal, moral and aesthetic Implications of creative non-fiction.

This essay began as a hybrid critical/creative paper that was presented as part of an all-female panel discussing the intersections between writing and extreme violence. My own paper was on the relationship between my creative nonfiction novel The Museum of Atheism and the real life murder of six-year-old beauty queen, JonBenet Ramsey. This essay is an attempt to represent the writing process of the creative nonfiction author, and to consider the ways in which critical theory can be used to highlight, or conversely obscure, fictional writing. In addition to considering the effect of using a real story, a true crime, as the basis for a semi-fictional work, this essay will also consider the relationship I had as a writer to my publisher, editor and agent, and their interventions in the writing process to ensure that facts were deliberately skewed or warped in order to avoid litigation. Finally, I will consider my own relationship to the material, and the impact that this had on the writing process.

Crime and Punishment.

The study of Victorian crime and punishment is a rich area of research that has attracted the interest not only of literary scholars but also of social historians, legal historians, and criminologists. Related scholarship therefore often situates itself at the intersection of traditional disciplinary boundaries, facilitating interdisciplinary conversation. Crime and punishment was a pressing issue for the Victorians and provoked a wealth of responses from contemporaneous commentators in literature, culture, and science. As a new phase of industrialization brought immense wealth for some and abject poverty for others, Victorian urban centers in particular were afflicted by crime. Without an effective system of social welfare in place, social inequality and deprivation drove women, men, and children into petty crime and more serious offenses, resulting in severe punishment ranging from incarceration via penal transportation to hanging. Public executions, not abolished until 1868, attracted huge crowds of spectators, including authors such as Charles Dickens and William Thackeray, who wrote about these experiences. A forerunner of the popular press, street literature conveyed and illustrated these events for a broad audience. Execution broadsides of famous cases, printing the alleged last lamentations of convicts on the scaffold in verse, are estimated to have sold by the million. As the legal system was undergoing reform (comprising changes in legal evidence procedure, divorce law, women’s property rights, and punishment for sexual offenses, for example), sensational trials caused furor and stimulated commentary in literature and the media. Crime and punishment was discussed in a range of literary and popular genres, poetry, and reformist writing. The “Newgate School” of fiction was accused of glamorizing crime, and the popular penny dreadfuls were feared to corrupt public morals. Sensational fiction in the 1860s, which often drew on real-life criminal cases and newspaper reports, depicted the supposedly respectable middle-class family home as a center of transgression. Similarly, detective fiction typically focused on crime in the world of the middle classes. For the student new to the subject of crime and punishment, this area’s interdisciplinary nature can pose an initial challenge.

¡Deshagan juego! Paradojas de una lectura cómplice de la ficción policíaca en L’absolue perfection du crime de Tanguy Viel

Delusion and gamble, but also failure and disillusion are some of the most striking features of The Absolute Perfection of Crime, a novel that encloses its own reading instructions, which are intimately linked to film codes and the idea of remake. Tanguy Viel’s work manages to stage the frailness of fiction, halfway between the signified and the signifier, critical detachment and fictional illusion. Following the anthropological approach to game theory and the theory of literary genres, this paper aims to analyze the inner functioning of the representation tools at work in the novel as a means to highlight the paradoxical role granted to the reader.

Post-Revolutionary Post-Modernism: Central American Detective Fiction by the Turn of the 21st Century

Contemporary Central American fiction has become a vital project of revision of the tragic events and the social conditions in the recent history of the countries from which they emerge. The literary projects of Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua), Dante Liano (Guatemala), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), and Ramon Fonseca Mora (Panama), are representative of the latest trends in Central American narrative. These trends conform to a new literary paradigm that consists of an amalgam of styles and discourses, which combine the testimonial, the historical, and the political with the mystery and suspense of noir thrillers. Contemporary Central American noir narrative depicts the persistent war against social injustice, violence, criminal activities, as well as the new technological advances and economic challenges of the post-war neo-liberal order that still prevails throughout the region. Drawing on postmodernism theory proposed by Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon and Brian MacHale, I argued that the new Central American literary paradigm exemplified by Sergio Ramirez’s El cielo llora por mí, Dante Liano’s El hombre de Montserrat, Horacio Castellanos Moya’s El arma en el hombre and La diabla en el espejo, and Ramon Fonseca Mora’s El desenterrador, are highly structured novels that display the characteristic marks of postmodern cultural expression through their ambivalence, which results from the coexistence of multiple styles and conflicting ideologies and narrative trends. The novels analyzed in this dissertation make use of a noir sensitivity in which corruption, decay and disillusionment are at their core to portray the events that shaped the modern history of the countries from which they emerge. The revolutionary armed struggle, the state of terror imposed by military regimes and the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, are among the major themes of these contemporary works of fiction, which I have categorized as perfect examples of the post-revolutionary post-modernism Central American detective fiction at the turn of the 21st century.

Children's Fiction About 9/11: Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities

In this study, Lampert examines how cultural identities are constructed within fictional texts for young people written about the attacks on the Twin Towers. It identifi es three significant identity categories encoded in 9/11 books for children:ethnic identities, national identities, and heroic identities,arguing that the identities formed within the selected children’s texts are in flux, privileging performances of identities that are contingent on post-9/11 politics. Looking at texts including picture books, young adult fiction, and a selection of DC Comics, Lampert finds in post-9/11 children’s literature a co-mingling of xenophobia and tolerance; a binaried competition between good and evil and global harmony and national insularity; and a lauding of both the commonplace hero and the super-human. The shifting identities evident in texts that are being produced for children about 9/11 offer implicit and explicit accounts of what constitutes good citizenship, loyalty to nation and community, and desirable attributes in a Western post-9/11 context. This book makes an original contribution to the field of children’s literature by providing a focused and sustained analysis of how texts for children about 9/11 contribute to formations of identity in these complex times of cultural unease and global unrest.