1,720,972 research outputs found
The Anxious Hero: Dissecting Masculinities in Thirteenth–Century Medieval Iberian Literature
No full textPh.D.My dissertation examines the varying and converging constructions of gender and genre in four thirteenth–century medieval Iberian texts: Poema de mio Cid, Libro de Alexandre, Libro de Apolonio and Alfonso X’s Estoria de Espanna. By contextualizing the texts historically and using the perspectives of feminist theory, gender theory and cultural studies, I examine the constructions of masculinities within these texts and the role that these constructions play in the text’s genre. I contend that these texts bear witness to the anxious relationship between masculinity and power in the thirteenth century and aim to shape the reader’s/listener’s image of kingship/leadership and, in turn, hegemonic masculinity. They serve as a mirror for and of male leaders, a speculum principis for their thirteenth–century audience.In each text, the male protagonist is a hero and, therefore, exemplary of what I term hegemonic masculinity. The self–fashioning of the hero’s masculinity, as manifest in the Fall/Redemption narrative structure, reveals itself to be anxious. I ground my argument in the medieval exegesis surrounding the Fall/Redemption trope and its ubiquity. In each chapter, I argue that this narrative structure serves as means of inculcating the ideals manifest in the anxious and exemplary hero. The heroes’ masculine bodies, manners and speech are culturally constructed entities coded by the discourse of these hero tales.Their masculinities, as both culturally constructed and political tools, are part and parcel of the patriarchal structures of authority. The texts I examine are testimonies, specula, and each male author and character a witness, testis, to a process in which the conventions and protocols of medieval masculinity are indoctrinated as normative behaviors. Additionally, they are a means by which masculine authority, domination and control are maintained and propagated.In the bodies of work I have examined, I conclude that each hero, in the performance of his gendered self, reinforces the superiority of masculinity, in general, and the specific iteration of masculinity that he himself exemplifies. The male hero in each of the works, through his words and actions, constructs a version of masculinity tied to power and a version of masculinity that is superior and/or divinely sanctioned
Illiberalism In The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): A Challenge To Liberal Democracy
No full textD.L.S.An enduring belief shared by the United States and its allies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is that a set of mutually shared principles underpins the alliance, espousing the view that member nations adhering to these principles will ensure peace and security within the transatlantic area. Under this belief, security is accomplished through a shared commitment to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. Taken a step further, the belief holds that a values-based philosophy prevents democratic nations from going to war against one another. This assumption is actually codified within NATO’s founding charter and has been consistently repeated over the last seventy years within the strategic documents and public pronouncements made by various NATO leaders. For the alliance, these democratic principles are upheld to be universal, so certain standards of behavior are assumed to be expected from each member nation. In this context, NATO, which is widely considered to be the world’s most powerful political-military alliance, views itself not only as a security organization but a community of shared values, a claim that is often heard within the alliance. In recent years, however, NATO has witnessed the rise of illiberalism, or movement away from those very democratic principles and towards authoritarianism, nationalism, and populism. This is seen among several member nations, including the United States. In this context, the democratic principles that uphold NATO appear to be under attack, and this could threaten the alliance’s cohesion as well as its credibility. Russia figures prominently in this phenomenon. The Kremlin views not only NATO’s military power but its democratic principles as posing threats to Russia’s own security and way of life. Interestingly, the autocratic leadership exhibited by Russian president Vladimir Putin has found a certain appeal among various NATO leaders. Among them, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has unapologetically embraced illiberalism, claiming that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to democracy, which he insists that Hungary still is. Using the lens of postmodernism, this thesis examines the phenomenon of rising illiberalism within the NATO alliance. Can democracy, individual liberty, and rule of law flourish under autocratic leaders? Does illiberalism put NATO’s credibility at risk? Can illiberalism coexist with liberal democracies? This thesis explores these questions and seeks to uncover why illiberalism is happening
Quijotes en ciernes: Caballeria, genero y autoridad en las cronicas particulares del siglo XV castellano
No full textPh.D.QUIJOTES EN CIERNES:CABALLERÍA, AUTORIDAD Y GÉNERO EN LAS CRÓNICAS PARTICULARES DEL SIGLO XV CASTELLANOSacramento Roselló-Martínez, MAThesis Advisor: Emily C. Francomano, PhDABSTRACTThis dissertation approaches a series of understudied texts known as crónicas particulares or individual chronicles, written in the vernacular and produced in Castile between 1412 and 1454. Treating them not as documents that complement the official historiography of the period but as examples of an active field of cultural production, this work approaches the constructions of chivalry, gender and authority as aspects of social and political live that constitute a habitus for those involved in their production. Through a close reading of Victorial (c.1435-53), the Crónica de Álvaro de Luna (c. 1454) and the Memorias de Leonor López de Córdoba (c. 1412) the dissertation shows how the study of medieval subjectivity is contingent to the representation of chivalric values, of gender identity and the acquisition of authority. By embracing the generic idiosyncrasies of each text, this dissertation succeeds in reconfiguring the notion of genre in relation to the writing of history. Specifically, this work activates notions such as horizon of expectations, intended and ideal reader and relations of patronage in order to consider the crónicas particulares not as a genre in transition towards fiction, as many proposed, but as a genre in its own right with influences from different manifestations of vernacular prose such as biography. The result is an incisive description and analysis of a series of texts that constitute, in their variety, a genre in the making
Visions of antiquity remembering the classical past in the Castilian Roman Antique
No full textPh.D.The appearance of the Libro de Alexandre and the Libro de Apolonio in the thirteenth-century Castilian literary scene represents the first time in which the key classical narratives about Alexander the Great, the Trojan War, and Apollonius of Tyre are rendered in an Iberian vernacular language. Both works are traditionally studied against the background of the mester de clereca, a body of Castilian clerical didactic poems often composed in the same metrical form as the Libros and encompassing different genres such as hagiography, epic, or romance. In this study, I read the Libros from a European rather than exclusively Castilian perspective as part of the generic tradition of the Roman Antique or Roman D'antiquit, vernacular romances recounting some of the central narratives inherited from classical antiquity. The romances of antiquity initially took shape in twelfth-century francophone courts but were copied, read, and reworked in almost every Western European language throughout the Middle Ages. My reading stems from a reconceptualization of the Roman Antique as a genre primarily concerned with the construction of a collective memory of antiquity, a result of its investment in the larger process of cultural homogenization known as the Europeanization of Europe. I argue that memory is central to the Libros not only in the form of the memorable events recounted in the poems but also as a set of mnemonic strategies necessary to remember them, which the Libros offer to their audience as well. The study explores two fundamental rhetorical techniques of the Roman Antique, ekphrasis and anachronism, as they negotiate the interaction between word and image both within the text and on the manuscript page. In this way, I show how the Libros interrogate the visual and verbal means through which a vernacular cultural memory of antiquity, providing a shared past for the courtly elites throughout the continent, could be successfully created, stored, and transmitted
Libros de Buen Humor: Understanding the Comic in Fourteeth-Century Frame Narratives
No full textPh.D.This dissertation is a comparative study of the functions of humor in three fourteenth-century frame collections: the Iberian text, El Libro de buen amor, Boccaccio's Decameron, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. With the Libro de buen amor as the backbone of my investigation, I isolate several specific comic trends present across the three texts, identifying the nuances of their function and analyzing their relationship to other elements such as hermeneutics, parody, didacticism and reception. This study is the first piece of scholarship to treat all three of these canonical collections side-by-side for an in-depth examination of their humor.Humor is an essential element in these frame tales as well as an important commonality among them, however it is also one of the most complex themes for critical treatment. The way in which the comic functions in narrative discourse is at once central to self-expression and yet also impossible to fully theorize or describe. In order to manage the vastness of my project, I have focused my investigation on several very specific comic modes so that I may examine their roles in-depth and trace their functions across each text.I begin by contextualizing the comparative nature of the study and the critical approaches that it implicates. Chapter I presents an investigation of the collections' commonalities, inscribed audience, and theoretical lenses. Next, in Chapters II, III and IV, I introduce the specific trends of humor that I have identified as integral to these frame collections. The comic moments that I explore in greatest depth include three specific modes of humor: a comic trend of "wit-for-guilt" substitution present in fabliau episodes from each collection; a variation on "wit-for-guilt" substitution that occurs at the level of the extradiegetic or external frame; and finally a comic mode that I call "hermeneutical humor," in which the texts parody the same interpretive strategies that they invite.Through my investigations of humor's complex relationship to and intersection with elements of parody, hermeneutics, didacticism, intertextuality and inscribed readership, this dissertation addresses the need for a more-nuanced understanding of the role of the comic in the frame tale tradition. By placing these fourteenth-century comic discourses in dialogue with one another for the first time, the project makes a meaningful contribution to the interdisciplinary and comparative approaches necessary to any study of the European literary tradition of the Middle Ages
The Sacred and the Profane in Five Aljamiado Narratives
No full textPh.D.This dissertation points at where the scholarship on Aljamiado-Morisco literature falls short and remedy what I believe is a problem. Viewing the entire corpus of literary production of a Muslim diaspora that lived under Christian rule after being forcibly converted, as being entirely religious with few profane exceptions is anachronistic. It corresponds to an imposition of modern standards on medieval texts. When approaching Mudéjar and Morisco texts, this study shows that an either sacred or profane approach is not appropriate, for it prevents the reader from accessing a myriad of other possible readings there is to a given story. I believe every text is unique and reflects the sociocultural and linguistic realities of a given group of Moriscos, realities that are not shared by all. The only way to enter the mind of this authors and copyists is through their manuscripts and the literary treasures they hold. Since these Mudéjares and Moriscos were the first sizeable Muslim community living under Christian rule, their literary creation had to go through a process of cultural negotiation that adapted previous stories to their cultural reality. Critics have been approaching their texts with the previous knowledge of the Morisco future expulsion. However, in order to fully explore the intentionality of a text and conjecture about the possible hopes and angsts experienced by the authors of the story and their audiences, we have to let go of our own socio-historical and geopolitical contexts as it blinders our critical eye.The five narratives analyzed in this study La estorya de la çibdat de cobre, El ḥadīẕ del árabe y la doncella, El ḥadīẕ de la serpiente, El ḥadīẕ de Bishr y Hind, El ḥadīẕ del baño de Zarieb present a side of the Mudéjar and Morisco literary production that is still understudied. These authors used their knowledge and the tools that were at their disposition to create a new genre, compounding series of stories, some entertaining and amusing, others gloomy and dreary, but almost always didactic and hortatory. These stories use non-religious figures and protagonists to promote Islamic tenets and appropriate behavior, in a sophisticated and literary way that sets them apart of the more official and orthodox material used by religious officials in Islamic centers. These stories are a window into the hopes and fears of the Morisco authors and their community and my aim in this study is to bring some of them to light
Hacia una poética del performance cancioneril: culturas del libro de la España Trastámara a la Imperial
No full textPh.D.In my dissertation, I examine textual performance in the Spanish cancionero (songbook), a type of literary compilation that became an instrument for image projection, social commentary, and humanist exchange in lettered Iberian courts. During the 15th and the 16th centuries, Spanish authors, editors, printers, and readers engaged in a continuum of performative practices that redefined notions of literature and literary aesthetics, authoritative agency, and the book. I study a selection of Castilian cancionero manuscripts and printed books and texts that illustrate, more saliently, the rise of vernacular languages, cross-cultural exchange, and the shifting genres that propelled Spain into modernity. From the Cancionero de Baena (c. 1426-1430) (Ms. 37, BnF) to the Cancionero general by Hernando del Castillo, printed for the first time in Valencia in 1511, these collections are representatives of the social anxieties and cultural negotiations that occur in the Iberian peninsula as new literary tastes, technologies of the written word, and socio-political discourses converge. Due to their composite make-up, these anthologies are an archival treasure from which to learn about the history of reading in the Iberian Peninsula.The advent of print in Spain during the late 15th century, did not limit transmission of handwritten materials. For nearly two centuries, manuscripts and printed books circulated hand by hand, often text-borrowing and imitating each other’s physical and organizational features. Contemporary material culture scholars have confronted the heterogeneity of pre-modern books with a mix of enthusiasm and perplexity. As the appearance of books became more malleable and ever-wider networks of trade emerged, reading -both individually and communally- became more complex: Who interacted with and read which types of books, and to what purposes? Why did handwritten materials continue to be so popular and in which scenarios? What can we learn about current literary activities by scrutinizing book hermeneutics at the dawn of modernity? In today’s scholarly realities, while technology continues to alter reading and intellectual exchange, are there limits to what we call the book? Taking the instability and variability of texts and their material support as my point of departure. I argue that Cancionero performance lies in the negotiations of old and new modes, agents, and limits of textual representation
Samoans in Postcolonial Literature
No full textD.L.S.This thesis examines European representations of Samoan people and culture and then turns to the ways that Samoan writers “wrote back” to those external voices since the latter part of the 20th century. It explores Samoan writers’ constructions of national/ethnic identity in fiction. Before we hear from the voices of the Samoan people, it is important to understand the imperialist narratives in order to delve into the counter-narrative by the indigenous writers. What did others say about them, particularly those who had the luxury and the agency of the written word? For the most part of history, the South Sea Islands were a mystery to the Western or “civilized” world much like the outer rings of the galaxy. The world of the written word knew absolutely nothing or very little about these places and their inhabitants. Thus, the beginning of this research will start off with theories that Europeans had about these “new” races of people, particularly the Samoans. Novels and other literary works in the English language by Samoan writers were carefully selected for analysis. This study was primarily conducted in the English language. Modern-day Samoans are as skilled with the pen and keyboard as their forerunners in the written word, the European progenitors who helped them transcribe their language from tongue to paper beginning in the late 19th century. For most of their existence, their culture and history were passed down the generations through word of mouth. And most of what the world knew about them was articulated by the papalagi, the white “aliens” who came upon their shores.
This analysis will uncover what the Samoans themselves thought about the “white” intruders and how their interactions affected their lives and future. Little did we know and appreciate about the magnitude and gravity of the disruptions and traumatic experiences of those Samoans who lived during the colonial period. The Latin-American theorist, Mary Louise Pratt, refers to this space of encounter as “the contact zone.” Thanks to the first-hand accounts of the foreigners and the autoethnographic texts of the Samoans, we now know why things are the way they are and how to utilize the lessons of the past to chart better and more informed courses for the future
Historiographic Metafiction: Memory and Identity in Postmodern Spanish and British Textual and Filmic Narrative
No full textPh.D.This dissertation explores how historical memory and cultural memory are mediatized in contemporary Spanish and British novels and their film adaptations. It demonstrates how representations of historical and cultural memory in narrative respond to the need to understand and overcome the open wounds of the twentieth century’s turbulent past, specifically the Spanish Civil War and the decline of the British Empire following the Second World War. Identity, as a cultural representation, is put into question in its individual and national spectrums so constructions derived from Spanishness and Englishness are challenged to generate an open debate with the intended audiences. My aim is to elucidate the contemporary debate between history, fiction, and historiographical metafiction in historical narrative. I study the presence of historical and cultural memory in relationship to identity in the following novels and their film adaptations: La mitad del alma by Carme Riera, La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón, Atonement by Ian McEwan, and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Riera, Chacón, McEwan and Ishiguro share a common mode of representing historical and cultural memory: each writer introduces memory modes (cultural, historical, communicative) through a fictional frame structure within the diegetic reality of their narratives, and the past is negotiated though the lenses of metafictional and autobiographical memory in the narrative.Each novel and film dramatizes how the underlying traumas, of the Spanish Civil War or World War II respectively, rises to the surface in the present with the intention of rewriting the past. This rewriting is achieved by giving voice to the silenced memories and stories of marginalized individuals that were not part of official Spanish and British historiographical discourses. The use of the narrative genre of historiographical metafiction posits how fictionality and historiography are only differentiated by their frames and how, as porous genres, they influence each other. As a result, the insertion of historical memory demonstrates the importance of communicative memory, based on oral testimony, as an agent that actively participates in the individual and collective revaluation of cultural and national memory as a social concern derived from the outcome of the two conflicts
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