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Department of Foreign Languages College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences [CLASS] Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA, USA June 2008
La narrativa de de Lucía Etxebarría: desvelando el estado actual de la mujer española Lydia Masanet, Mercer University
Abstract
This article underlines the traits that support the narrative of Lucía Etxebarría in her up-front compromise to unveil and denounce the reality of the Spanish women’s position in the new millennium. The literary universe of Etxebarría, full of false gains, preconditioned determinations, and unreachable expectations, redundantly questions a reality in which women of Spain are immersed, all tricks that if seen from the distance, appear to transfer the practicing of equality mandated by new laws without difficulty.
Francisco Fernández, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Abstract
Once the Gothic crossed the Spanish border, a number of writers were influenced by this genre. This is the case of José de Espronceda in his El estudiante de Salamanca (1840). Influenced by Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, Espronceda not only uses Gothic conventions when he creates a protagonist haunted by a ghost but also subverts them by reversing the villain-victim relationship for the sake of poetic justice. As a result, the development of the plot is more strongly justified, for the hero’s sins are, after all, what lead him to his tragic end.
Soldados de Salamina (2001): Cercas en busca de un héroe con el instinto de la virtud. Marie Guiribitey, Florida International University
Abstract
The work analyzes the role of literature in reconstructing historical memory and in serving to attest against the collective amnesia which takes place during the transition to democracy in Spain. The recreating of a historic episode during the Civil War allows the narrator of Soldados de Salamina to remake the past and call for the recovery of historical memory. Also examined is Maurice Halbwachs’ premise--the need to maintain “an affective community” in order to arrive at a reconstruction of memories.
Global Health and Politics: Julia Alvarez’ Saving the World Amrita Das, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Abstract
Julia Alvarez’ novel Saving the World (2006) is a comment on the politics of Global Health. Alvarez reconstructs the tale of Isabel Sendales y Gomez, the lone female participant in the early 19th century’s Spanish Royal Expedition to eradicate smallpox around the world, mainly in the Spanish colonies. The historical narrative is paralleled by the tale of Alma Rodriguez, a 21st Century Dominican American author who is faced with a similar situation, aiding in an idealistic project to eradicate AIDS in the Dominican Republic. Alvarez’ work throws into sharp relief what happens when the philanthropic ideals of healing the world clashes with local politics and foreign policies. It also questions the ethical issues behind the use of third world volunteers in the testing of medicines manufactured by the first world pharmaceutical companies.
Absolute Seduction: The Faustian Motif in Balzac and Valéry Scott Shinabargar, Clark Atlanta University
Abstract
This article analyzes ways in which the "quest for the absolute" is treated in two works: Balzac's novel, of the same name (La Recherché de l'absolu), and Valéry's Monsieur Teste. Both texts involve a paradoxical narrative device, by which the genius of the protagonist is communicated to the reader, not by the representation of his thoughts, but by a veiling of them—an impenetrable interiority that suggests communion with the absolute. This device is successful, to the degree that it plays upon our own desires for transcendent knowledge. Under closer scrutiny, however, we find that such texts must eventually involve a moment of violence; a disruption of the spell these "cerebral heroes" have cast.
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