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Preface
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Author: Kelley, Susanne
Abstract:
Preface to Volume VII
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L’immigrazione siciliana a Monterey in California e il suo retaggio
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Author: Aliotti, Alexandria
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The many Sicilians who emigrated from their homeland to the United States in search
of a better life have a unique history, whose presence can still be seen today in
cities across the United States. The history of Sicilian immigration to Monterey,
California is especially fascinating; not only did these Sicilians help create the
historic “Cannery Row,” the most famous street in Monterey, but also they were able
to successfully bring their traditions, culture, and dialect with them. In Monterey,
the Sicilian immigrants recreated the most important religious holidays and by forming
a tight-knit community, they ensured that their homeland traditions would not disappear
among the future generations in Monterey. Although the first Sicilian immigrants arrived
on the Monterey Peninsula over one hundred years ago, their traditions, values, and
most importantly, their unique dialect, are still present today in Monterey, thanks
to the many generations of Sicilians who have maintained their connection with Sicily.
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Evidencia del hiperdialectalismo castellano por medio del Cid
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Author: Bodford, Jessica
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Hyperdialectism describes the act of pronouncing words or phrases within a dialect
that exaggerates the qualities distinguishing that particular style of speech from
those around it. The current work explores literary evidence of hyperdialectism in
El Cantar de Myo Çid (The Song of My Cid), the oldest preserved epic poem of Castile
that portrays the adventures of a fictional Castilian hero in the time of the Iberian
Reconquista. At the time of its circulation, circa 1200 CE, Castile served as a buffer
state between Asturias-León and Aragon, which contributed to the economic and social
hardships faced by the Castilian people. The negative stereotype associated with Castile
resulted in general disdain toward Castilian dialect; however, with the rise of The
Cid came exaggerated uses of linguistic characteristics that distinctively underlie
the Castilian dialect, thereby evidencing a rising sense nationalism as a result of
fictional creation. Possible explanations and areas for future study are also discussed.
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Der Begriff der Sprache in Emine Sevgi Özdamars Werken
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Author: Chen, Junhao
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Emine Sevgi Özdamar is a Turkish-German actress and author. She is famous for her
intercultural representation and blurring the line between statehood and language
in her literary works. She has a unique capacity to hybridize languages for example,
the title of her collection of short stories Mutterzunge. This essay is a study that
combines the discipline of literary studies and translation studies to investigate
the concept of language in two Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s works Mutterzunge: Erzählungen
and Die Brücke Vom Goldenen Horn: Roman. This study focuses on three dimensions of
the concept of language in her works: language as violence, language as therapy for
traumatic experiences, and hybridized language as a form of destabilizing nationhood.
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Una realidad equivocada
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Author: Jones, Shelby
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The work of Jorge Luis Borges is often riddled with metaphysical themes. This essay
highlights such themes in his short story “Las ruinas circulares” and analyzes his
view of mankind’s concept of reality. It also evaluates the role that dreams and thoughts
play in the inability of the human mind to think beyond the “circular” confines of
one’s mental structure. The main character, a magician with the ability to dream another
human being into existence, is distracted from the truth that he, too, is a dreamt
being. I propose that his limited knowledge disables him from being able to reason
beyond what he believes to be true of reality, and thus fails to understand the nature
of his existence until the end of the story. Along with the main character, the reader
is jolted out of the dream world by Borges’ unnerving perspective of the human mind’s
partial grasp of reality.
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La Quête de soi – Les relations dans La nausée
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Author: Kraus, Emily Rose
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In Sartre’s La nausée, a historian, Antoine Roquentin, suffers from a sickness of
existence which he calls Nausea. The goal of this paper is to study the self-quest
of Antoine, by examining the transformation he undergoes through his relationships
with others and himself. This transformation is regressive since he starts out as
an adult, but eventually becomes more and more like a kid before finally being reduced
to the state of consciousness, the base of human existence. After having gone through
this transformation, he is finally able to find what he should do with his existence:
write for himself instead of for others.
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Entre los hombres y las bestias: La jerarquía ontológica inexistente en Don Quijote
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Author: Markell, Michelle
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"Entre los hombres y las bestias: La jerarquía ontológica inexistente en Don Quijote"
explores particular episodes in Cervantes' El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la
Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of la Mancha) through the lens of animal
studies, seeking to challenge the ontological distinction and presupposed hierarchy
between animals and human beings. This paper focuses particularly on the episodes
involving the transportation of don Quijote in a cage (I.48), Eugenio the goatherd
that speaks affectionately towards his goats (I.50), the story of the crazy man from
Seville told by the barber (II.1), don Quijote's failed attempt at battling the caged
lion (II.17), and the war between villages with the town that has perfected braying
like donkeys (II.27). Through narrative techniques such as juxtapositions and inversions,
Cervantes strategically constructs episodes featuring animals to challenge and explore
the relationship between the two, confronting the treatment of insane humans as animals,
as well as questioning the role of clothes in the blurry line between beast and man.
Engaging with Mikhail Bakhtin’s studies of the carnavalesque and the inversions of
social hierarchies, as well as Jacques Derrida’s discourse “The Animal That Therefore
I Am,” this paper argues that the world of Don Quijote is one full of animals that
interact and relate to humans, defying expectations and asserting their being, to
the ultimate end of breaking down ontological hierarchies and calling for a closer
look at our relationship with the animal world.
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Une connaissance intermédiaire: la parole et l’objet chez Ponge
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Author: Ovrom, Lukas
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In this essay, I investigate the materialism of Francis Ponge from an epistemological
perspective using “La Cruche” (“The Carafe”), a poem that appears in Ponge’s Pièces(1962).
The following question guides the analysis: how does Ponge use an ordinary object—a
carafe in this case—to examine the role of language as a mediating device in man’s
quest for knowledge of the material world? In the first section, I identify the object
as a metaphor for the word (parole). Next, I use this metaphor to argue that Ponge
sees language as an intermediary between man and his material environment. Much like
the carafe, which mediates the relationship between man and water, the word acts as
a mediating device in man’s acquisition of knowledge of a given material object. For
Ponge, language does not refer to a material reality, but rather to a concept or idea
of that reality. In semiotic terms, the word is a signifier that refers to a signified.
It follows that language can produce only a partial and heavily mediated knowledge
of the material object. In this light, it is the object, and not our knowledge of
it, that is absolute. In the final section of the essay, I relate my discussion of
“La Cruche” to three famous poems from Ponge’s Le Parti Pris des Choses (1942): “L’Huître,”
“Le Galet,” and “De l’eau.”
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List of Readers for Volume VI
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Author: Kelley, Susanne
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List of Readers
