1,720,975 research outputs found
Frustración de un sueño libertador: Yo el Supremo, de Augusto Roa Bastos
No full textEl aporte de Yo el supremo como pieza fundamental de la novela histórica bien puede marcar la definición de la impasse que Latinoamérica ha tenido que vivir desde 1492. Durante los siglos, los sueños y las ideas de naciones libres e independientes se han visto frustradas, muchas veces por la imposibilidad de compartir el mismo sueño con los demás y por la imposibilidad de crear algo de la nada. En el marco de la nueva novela histórica latinoamericana Yo el Supremo y la historia paraguaya son una de las posibles representaciones de la transición difícil que tienen que vivir los países latinoamericanos. En el sueño libertador del Supremo, que queda en la descripción roabastista a mitad entre bien y mal, tenemos la oportunidad de ver representada la “historia cíclica” de libertad/opresión que ha caracterizado América Latina. La obra de Roa Bastos se vuelve así una pieza fundamental y muy actual que describe las dificultades con las que América debe de enfrentarse para quitarse de encima los “vestidos” que le puso Europa en el momento de su conquista
Borges in Hollywood: From Art House to Blockbuster Cinema
No full textPh.D.This dissertation examines Jorge Luis Borges’s influence on contemporary cinema. I postulate that cinematic appropriations of Borges are shifting from art house to blockbuster films, facilitated partly by postmodern disruption of aesthetic hierarchies. First I analyze Christopher Nolan’s films Memento (2000) and Inception (2010) to represent the shift from art house to mainstream Hollywood. Then I analyze Diego Paszkowski’s novel Tesis sobre un homicidio (1998) and Hernán Goldfrid’s film adaptation (2013) to represent the domestic market that regards Borges as a national cultural referent. I examine and compare the treatment of Borges in both novel and film, which are laden with Hollywood references, including Inception’s influence on Goldfrid’s film. In the selected works Borges appears as an element of pastiche, which I broadly define as a collage of discordant elements that draws from past styles.I identify postmodernism as the cultural movement that motivates contemporary cinematic appropriations of Borges. Although I do not share Fredric Jameson’s negative stance toward postmodern culture, I employ his Marxist theories on postmodernism as the cultural dominant of late capitalism to conceptualize pastiche as a marketing strategy. I propose that contemporary cinematic pastiches of Borges signal a film industry desperate to overcome exhausted narrative forms.I argue that the pastiche of Borges in the selected works is motivated by the desire to capitalize on his cultural capital and explore new modes of narration. It yields a new type of Hollywood blockbuster, a marketable hybrid of art house and mainstream entertainment that allows Inception to preserve the intellectual sensibilities in Memento. For the domestic market, it attracts a Borges-informed audience while allowing the film to honor a celebrated author. I review other critical perspectives to address Jameson’s concerns about the blurred high/low culture division and highlight the positive implications of a cinematic pastiche of Borges. I conclude that Borges inspires innovative film narratives; in turn, commercially successful film adaptations of Borges keep his work relevant and expand his reader base to include never before accessible markets
Transgresion y modernidad: la prosa de Ruben Dario
Full text linkEn este trabajo el autor sostiene que el motor de la producción en la prosa de Darío es la transgresión que se manifiesta en diferentes niveles como el erotismo y la figura del poeta. Afirma que no hay que privilegiar uno sobre otro (como hacen Angel Rama y Pedro Salinas), sino que hay que ver la característica fundamental que está detrás de esos temas: el elemento transgresor que rompe con los valores de la sociedad burguesa: la represión sexual y el trabajo utilitario.Georgetown UniversityTesi
La imaginación biográfica: El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega y la formación del campo cultural peruano (1847-1916)
No full textPh.D.This dissertation examines the importance of the life and work of the 16th century mestizo writer, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in establishing the field of cultural production in Peru. My research analyzes the historiographical production related to the Inca Garcilaso, as well as the controversy over the historical and literary value of his work. Compared to the 17th and 18th century historiography of the Incas, where Garcilaso's work was a central source of information, during the 19th century, his authority as a historian was questioned and discredited. He was no longer considered an accurate historian, but rather a literary author, on account of his indigenous mind, supposedly vulnerable to the fable and credulity. In this context, the biographical account constructed by Peruvian intellectuals in the early 20th century took the form of an historical rehabilitation. The work of the Inca was once again considered as a truthful account of history, but one that also had literary merit. From a transnational point of view, this biographical research produced by the Peruvian historians José Toribio Polo, Manuel González de la Rosa, and José de la Riva-Agüero presents a discursive space of dialogue and polemic with the work of 19th century historians such as William H. Prescott and George Ticknor in the United States, and Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo in Spain.Furthermore, this study emphasizes that there is a strong connection between the defense of the historical value of Garcilaso and the foundation of the Peruvian Academy of History in 1905, since this defense took place in the pages of the academy's institutional journal, Revista histórica. The most successful argument in the Inca's biographical defense was given by Riva-Agüero, for whom the defense of Garcilaso meant more than winning an argument. It was the gateway to a more important intellectual and political project, namely, the recuperation of the colonial archive, almost absent from the intellectual life of Peru. This dissertation demonstrates that the recovery of the authority of the Inca Garcilaso was raised as an issue of cultural autonomy and marked the work of the then new disciplines of history and literature
Atlas: A Cartography of Sports in Latin American Literature (1888– 1940)
No full textPh.D.This dissertation analyzes the relationship between writing and the emergence of the modern athletic imagination in Latin America at the end of the 19th century as a way of charting the subjective dimensions of globalization. I explore the moment at which modernismo—the first aesthetic movement that originated in Latin America—addressed the restoration of the Olympic Games in 1896 with the publication of Artemis, a novella by Enrique Larreta set in Olympia and published six months after the inauguration of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens. I consider this inaugural encounter between modernismo and the Olympic movement as a literary matrix to further explore the athletic making of the modern world through the intersection of writing and sports.This essay argues that Latin American literature adopts sports imaginaries since they provide a cosmopolitan lingua franca through which both Latin American writings and bodies acquire a global citizenship. Thus, I also reflect upon Rubén Darío’s introduction of sports to his chronicle readers as a paradoxical way of “living in English but dreaming in Spanish”, and upon the pseudonyms that the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga borrowed from Pierre Loti’s novels and adapted to his cycling races in Salto, Uruguay. Advancing these research scenarios to the 20th century, I conclude by calling special attention to the Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral’s poetic depiction of a sports stadium and the masses of spectators in 1940 at the beginning of World War II
Sleek Words: Art Deco and Brazilian Modernism
No full textPh.D.I explore Art Deco in the Brazilian Modernist movement during the 1920s. Art Deco is a decorative arts style that rose to global prominence during this decade and its proponents adopted and adapted the style in order to nationalize it; in the case of Brazil, the style became nationalized primarily by means of the application of indigenous motifs. The Brazilian Modernists created their own manifestations of the style, particularly in illustration and graphic design. I make this analysis by utilizing primary source materials to demonstrate the style's prominence in Brazilian Modernism and by exploring the handcrafted and mechanical techniques used to produce the movement's printed texts.I explore the origins of the Art Deco style and the decorative arts field and determine the sources for the style, specifically avant-garde, primitivist, and erotic sources, to demonstrate the style's elasticity. Its elasticity allowed it to be nationalized on a global scale during the 1920s; by the 1930s, however, many fascist-leaning forces co-opted the style for their own projects.I examine the architectural field in the Brazil during the 1920s. Art Deco was a popular style and skyscrapers rapidly appeared in Rio de Janeiro with Art Deco ornamentation. I link the rapid dissemination of the style to a similar architectural style in the region, the Neocolonial Style. I examine the origins of both styles to question their claims to national "authenticity".I explore Art Deco in Brazilian Modernist illustration and graphic design and trace the chronology of the printing press in Brazil. The chronology is crucial to understanding the speed with which these changes in illustration and graphic design took place in a country that had experienced centuries of print culture stagnation.My final chapter explores several books of two prominent Brazilian Modernists, Oswald de Andrade and Vicente do Rego Monteiro. The works I explore are little studied in literary criticism and I utilize the first editions of these works to demonstrate the differences between the first and later editions. My goal is to establish that new printing technologies were just as essential as the final visual product in Brazilian Modernist printed production
Alcoholismo, marginalidad y crónica del hampa: Victor Hugo Viscarra y las memorias de un indigente
No full textPh.D.In this dissertation I will study the underworld of La Paz, Bolivia through the writings about marginalized people by the indigent and alcoholic writer Víctor Hugo Viscarra (1958-2006). This study will focus on showing the social degradation suffered by the homeless and how they lose the title of being considered “subjects” within society and can be defined as abject beings. According to Julia Kristeva abjection is “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules” (5). I analyze how Viscarra's work becomes a testimony that narrates the collectivity of the Bolivian marginal community, of these abject beings who disturb society. In this dissertation, I will consider, the dictatorship (1964 – 1982) to our times. Viscarra as a writer attempts to show the human side of the urban underworld by placing the reader in an empathetic position with marginalized people. Viscarra’s literature recognizes and values the life of the indigent people, and through the representation of their stories, he gives them the voice they deserve. For a better understanding of Viscarra’s work I will describe how the underworld is segregated. Specifically, I describe the beings that are more marginalized in the streets such as: the indigenous people who migrated to the city, the afrobolivians, the cholas that became prostitutes, the transgender people, homeless children, and street animals.
Space also has a crucial role in Viscarra’s literature. I will analyze the places in the city that these human beings occupy. I describe the urban space such as the streets, alleys, bars, and other visible and clandestine places.
Finally, I want to show how an "abject hero" is built with the legend of Víctor Hugo Viscarra and the influence of his work. This is one of the central tenets of this dissertation because Viscarra became popular and aroused a great deal of interest as a subject of popular culture. In this way, I intend to show how the actual death of Viscarra as "abject hero" makes him a symbol or a myth that society has used to identify a section of the population that was always ignored. His figure is a fundamental influence for the production of different artistic manifestations that show the reality of abjection within marginalized communities. Viscarra’s work inspired and continues to inspire new generations
Recordando la Patria Perdida: Identidad Nacional y Memoria en Narrativas Sobre la Migración Venezolana
No full textPh.D.This dissertation focuses on the Venezuelan migration and refugee crisis in the twenty-first century. Through literary and film analysis and historical contextualization, I analyze how various written and audiovisual narratives represent the construction of the memory and national identity of Venezuelan migrants from dissimilar social classes and races. My work contributes to migration studies and film and literary criticism in Latin America by drawing attention to multimedia narratives that illustrate a migration crisis with global implications. The dissertation comprises four chapters. The first chapter analyzes three collective imaginary constructions that influence the memory and national identity of Venezuelan migrants. These constructions include Venezuelan nationalism based on the epic history of this country, the oil’s cultural impact in Venezuela, and the Venezuelan diaspora’s media representation as a symbol of the nation’s decline. The second chapter demonstrates how the novel La hija de la española (2021) by Karina Sainz Borgo depicts a repugnant Venezuela that contaminates the protagonist’s national identity and increases their nostalgia for a lost country. In the third chapter, I analyze how Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles’s novel Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul (2010) and Alejandro Bellame’s film Dirección Opuesta (2021) represent the protagonists’ fragmented memories and national identity within a Caracas symbolized as between rubble and ruins. The final chapter explores how the music videos “Me fui” (2019) by Reymar Perdomo and “Tonada del caminante” (2018) by Pía Páez shape the collective memory and resilience of Venezuelan migrants from the lower classes
A "REVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS": REDEFINING VENEZUELAN NATIONAL IDENTITIES THROUGH CINEMA
No full textPh.D.I explore the popular Venezuelan National Film Platform, one of President Chávez's controversial social initiatives established in 2004. The Platform promotes the "Revolution of Consciousness" through cinema supporting both national film production and public participation in creating Venezuelan film. I provide an analysis of this complex film program while also offering close readings of three blockbuster films that are products of the initiative. I analyze the political use of these popular films in a contemporary context.I begin exploring the five organizations that make up the National Film Platform. These organizations include a new national, regional and community film network that accounts for the popularity of these films. While the community network is innovative I show that other aspects of this initiative are a continuation of a century-old tradition of combining filmmakers with the Venezuelan state to use cinema as a political tool.To place this film initiative within a Latin American context, I then examine the use of cinema as a revolutionary tool in two of the strongest national film projects in Latin America, Cuba and Brazil, which serve as models for the current Venezuelan Platform and the base of the New Latin American Cinema tradition. Building on the theoretical framework of Michael Chanan I further dispute the unified New Latin American Cinema Tradition and the past canon of revolutionary cinema that persists today. I analyze Venezuela's previous and present role in the interconnected world of Latin American Cinema.I dedicate the remaining chapters to an analysis of three celebrated films that are products of the Platform. In these films the national stories are revisited to incorporate the realities of today's Venezuela. I examine a reshaping of the canonical foundational fictions and analyze popular documentary films that challenge the previously accepted Venezuelan official history.While the National Film Platform is an attempt to reach `authentic' representation and inclusion, the process continues to face challenges due to cumbersome government organizations and top-down initiatives. My goal is to add depth and visibility to the complexities of this initiative and its role in Venezuela's current political process
Las ficciones del traductor: el traductor como protagonista en la literatura reciente en español
No full textPh.D.This dissertation examines the upsurge in the representation of translators and the act of translation in contemporary fiction. In Latin American and Spanish literature of the past three decades, I focus on works that feature a translator or interpreter as protagonist. To understand translation’s increased importance in our globalized world, I argue that these “translator’s fictions” challenge the idea of fluid transnational dialogues. The depiction of fictional translators questions notions of authorship, fidelity, and professional ethics traditionally associated with translation.The first chapter introduces the Fictional Turn of Translation Studies tracing how translators move from marginal to indispensable beings. Jorge Luis Borges’s “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote” and Rodolfo Walsh’s “Nota al pie” foreshadow two recurrent themes: the impossibility of faithfully rendering the original and the translator as a tormented struggling character. The following chapter analyses four historical fictions: Juan José Saer’s “El intérprete” and Carlos Fuentes’s “Las dos orillas” are set during the Spanish conquest of the Americas, while Néstor Ponce’s El intérprete and Andrés Neuman’s El viajero del siglo take place in the early 19th century. Through a contemporary lens, translation in these works operates as a metaphor for redefining concepts of national identity and otherness shaped during earlier epochs. The third and fourth chapters present the consequences of neoliberalism and techno-modernity during the 1990s in Argentina and Spain, respectively. In the Argentinean fictions, translators function within a deteriorating publishing market where translation is merely an economic transaction, as in Salvador Benesdra’s El traductor, Marcelo Cohen’s El testamento de O’Jaral and Ricardo Piglia’s La ciudad ausente. In the Spanish case, Antonio Muñoz Molina’s El jinete polaco and Javier Marías’s Corazón tan blanco offer insights into the world of international interpreters. Interpretation is both alienating and empowering in evoking the politics of memory in contemporary Spanish society. Finally, a coda outlines future research paths on the potential of fiction to bridge the gap between translation practice and theory in the Spanish language context
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