-
Preface
Read full article
Author: Kelley, Susanne
Abstract:
Preface to Volume VII
-
Buscando Identidad a través de Medios Masivos
Read full article
Author: Ireland, Andrew
Abstract:
During the latter half of the twentieth century, many Latin American authors experimented
with innovative techniques and creative narrative methods that challenged the reader
and attempted to comment on the current events of the time. This “New Literature”
had several unifying characteristics, one of which is the use of mass media to comment
on the theme of identity. Using several books from this Latin American post-Boom movement,
this paper aims to show the use of communication tools – movies, biographies, radio,
and photographs – to illustrate the struggle and search for characters’ real identities
as a major recurrent theme. In all of the mentioned works, characters’ identities
are revealed and affected by these forms of communication, and while these mass media
are presented as objective and representative of the truth, they are ultimately shown
to be prone to exploitation and made subjective.
-
Un análisis de la idea del suicidio restaurativo en la poesía de Gabriela Mistral
Read full article
Author: Pan, Debbie
Abstract:
This essay examines the concept of what I have termed “the restorative suicide,” a
unique type of suicide which is arguably present throughout the poetry of the Chilean
author Gabriela Mistral (pseudonym for Lucila Godoy Alcayaga), subtly serving as a
reflection of her own struggles with insecurity in her early life. As a symbol of
inspiration for the Latin American world, Mistral captures the dichotomous nature
of life itself through her lyric works in reference to themes such as love and betrayal,
pleasure and pain, hope and fear. In three selected works from her collections Ternura
and Desolación, I establish the argument that Gabriela Mistral was experimenting with
this “restorative suicide,” both within her writing and her life—that is, experiencing
not a literal death, but a figurative, intentional, and poetic death that serves as
a catalyst for the recovery of a new life, as well as a source of power and purpose.
This analysis will suggest a metaphysical perspective for the interpretation of Mistral’s
works and the extent to which a poetic voice is inherently linked to a poet’s life
story.
-
La langue de la soumission et de la libération dans le Cahier d’un retour au pays
natal
Read full article
Author: Ransom, Beni
Abstract:
This essay examines how Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal employs repetition,
anaphora, and other rhetorical devices to embody the way in which Martinique’s explosive,
revolutionary cultural richness is generated as a response to conditions of oppression.
The repetitious and anaphoric qualities of Césaire’s poetry are employed at the start
of the poem to emphasize the tedium of an oppressed landscape, and the use of repetition
and anaphora gives form to the repetitive, slavish labor of Martinicans in rum distilleries
and the everyday life of the classroom, where Christian missionaries drill Martinicans
with the same lessons despite their exhaustion and lack of interest. However, in the
same way that Aimé Césaire’s literary movement négritude uses a negative word for
an oppressed racial group and recovers a positive cultural meaning from an initially
degrading vocabulary, the repetitive and anaphoric qualities of Césaire’s poem develop
into a beautifully concatenating style which embodies an explosive landscape of abundance
and revolution. In Césaire, repetition embodies both the oppressive monotony of manual
labor and the concatenating rhythm of the tam-tam and African griots, or bards. This
essay examines how the consistent application of repetition and anaphora is used in
the poem to show how the same post-colonial environment can be remade from a landscape
of oppression, where slavery has its modern correlate in underpaid manual labor, into
a landscape of explosive revolution and abundance which not only overcomes oppression,
but uses the pressure caused by oppression to erupt thrillingly from the established
normative values and aesthetics of European culture.
-
Para Ver África: o olhar imperial e a criação do espaço social
Read full article
Author: Southwell, Michael
Abstract:
In this essay, I explore the beginning and end of Portuguese colonialism in Africa
to better understand imperial notions of space and place over a span of nearly five
hundred years. Drawing from Os Lusíadas (1572) by Luís Vaz de Camões and A Costa dos
Murmúrios (1988) by Lídia Jorge, I intend to present how cultural geography can be
interpreted within the canon of Portuguese literature. How are culture and identity
represented within the imperial space of Africa, and what do these social phenomena
reveal about the physical space around people? By rooting these questions within the
discipline of geography, the concepts of place, space, and scale reveal the complexity
of social interactions between the colonizer and the colonized. These relationships
are often not clearly delineated, as the first canto from Os Lusíadas introduces both
origin and religion to further complicate the identity of the Mozambican islanders.
Intersections of physical and imagined space are critical to understanding the colonial
legacy of Portugal, as identity and culture cannot be individually analyzed.
-
List of Readers for Volume VII
Read full article
Author: Kelley, Susanne
Abstract:
List of Readers
