La Malinche is one of the most controversial figures in Mexican and Chicano literature. The historical facts about her life before and after the Spanish Conquest are largely speculative. What is reliably known is that she had a significant role as translator, which developed into something of mythic proportions. The ideological appropriation of her image by three authors, Octavio Paz, Laura Esquivel and Cherríe Moraga, are explored in this thesis. The full extent of the proposed rendition of La Malinche by Octavio Paz is the basis of the second chapter. The conclusion drawn by Paz, in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) is that La Malinche is what he calls la chingada [the raped/violated one] and proposes that all women are always open to conquest, sexually and otherwise. Laura Esquivel's novel Malinche (2006) is a re-interpretation that focuses on the tongue as the source of power and language as the ultimate source of autonomy for La Malinche. This aspect of La Malinche and the contrast of Paz's understanding are the basis of the third chapter of this thesis. Cherríe Moraga, in Loving in the War Years (1983), proposes that if women are to be traitors, it is not each other that …

This study is an attempt to analyze the novels of Juan Valera y Alcala Galiano, with particular attention to the characterization of the principal figures.

Carlos Morton is a prominent Chicano playwright that has contributed greatly to Chicano theatre, creatively and academically, since in 1970s. This thesis offers a feminist analysis of the gender representation in three of his works: Lilith (1977), La Malinche (1984), and Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda (1992). The female characters in these three plays possess a unique agency that allows them to challenge oppressive patriarchal standards imposed on their gender identity. The second chapter explores Morton's Lilith, a play based on a Jewish creation myth. In the play, Lilith possesses agency of her gender identity and forms a bond with Eve to fight the patriarchal gender norms used to restrict women in Chicano culture. La Malinche is an adaptation of Eurpides's Medea set in post-Conquest New Spain. Chapter three focuses on the agency displayed by La Malinche through her indigenous roots to fight for her own form of motherhood and freedom from patriarchy. The final play analyzed in this thesis is Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda, a dream-like play that is based on Diego Rivera's mural by the same name. Several female characters in the play demonstrate agency through their androgynous sexual identities as they unite …

It is my purpose in this thesis to show any influence that Emile Zola's Naturalism had on the novels of Blasco Ibáñez.. Because the novels of the Spanish author contain many suggestions of the Zolaesque theory of Naturalism, many literary critics have assumed that he did obtain much of his inspiration from this source; they have even called him the "Spanish Zola." I shall try to determine how much he imitated Zola's Naturalism, and to show to what extent it is correct to call him the "Spanish Zola."

Categories titled simple plots, loose plots, no plots, and parallel plots are used within this thesis to organize and contrast sixteen novels by Spanish author Pio Baroja.

This thesis discusses the life and works of the Mexican novelist Mariano Azuela, who lived and wrote during the time of the Mexican Revolution.

The major proposition is that the childhood point of view in two Delibes novels--El camino (1950) and Las ratas (1962)--aids the reader's comprehension of the basic values held by rural Spaniards. These values are stressed in both novels, giving the reader an insight into the nature of these simplistic people. Honest, accepting attitudes of the child protagonists aid the reader's understanding of the plight of the villagers.The superiority of the natural way of life is revealed in both novels. Nature became even more important to Delibes as his stature as novelist increased, The later work, therefore, is a social protest against effects of industrial progress on rural Castilians.

This thesis presents a brief background of poetry in Mexico in the nineteenth century, along with a biography of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and a study of his three poetic periods: 1876-1886, 1886-1890, 1890-1895.

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the extent and nature of criticism in the plays of Jacinto Benavente. Source material included the writings of such prominent critics of Spanish literature as Walter Starkie, Federico de Onis, Richard Chandler, Kessel Schwartz, Emiliano Diez-Echarri, Jose Franquesa, Federico Sainz de Robles, and Valbuena Prat. Twenty plays which best exemplify Benavente's criticism of society were selected from the dramatist's 172.

This paper is a study of the major influence of the German philosophy, Krausism, in the writings of Benito Perez Galdds. The study is an analysis of the effects of this ideology on Spain and her people, as illustrated in the works of the most representative writer of the nineteenth century in that country. Also included is a discussion of historical incidents of the period which is necessary to place the acceptance of both this philosophy and the works of Perez Galdos in its proper perspective.

The purpose of this thesis is to make a study of the third and fourth series of the Episodios nacionales. The study will deal with the plot structure, the characterization, and the historicity of the twenty novels which make up the two series.

This study discusses the life and works of Larra and many of his beliefs and ideas. The chapters have been divided into three, traeting of Larra's social, literary and political satire that deals mainly with the high cociety of Madrid (Spain).

Various groups of Mexican culture have assigned to el narco archetypical characteristics of a heroic figure in the literary, visual, and auditory arts. As a result, today’s narcocultura has expanded its tentacles to a vast array of prominent industries, such as publishing companies, the silver screen, and recording studios. El narco is no longer seen by some sectors as the outlaw that stalks our society but, instead, as a hero who fights against a hegemonic faction to reclaim his sovereignty. This thesis unites interdisciplinary observations of the narco phenomena that Mexican culture has assigned to the iconic figure of el narco. The purpose of this work is to recreate the evolutionary development through a theoretical-literary analysis of this prototype in order to better understand Mexican society’s stance on this phenomenon. Octavio Paz’s theory of the Mexican psyche, Joseph Campbell’s theory of the hero’s journey, and an interdisciplinary focus will be employed to analyze this iconic figure. In this thesis, my aim is to investigate how an ultra-conservative Mexican society evolved into a consortium that upholds the narco’s indistinct behaviors and actions. What roles do first world governments and the Mexican state play to fortify, eradicate, or control the narco phenomenon? …

This thesis examines the themes in the work of Argentine novelist Gustavo Adolfo Martínez Zuviría, who wrote under the pseudonym of Hugo West.

In the present study, the three principal theories of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin--the carnavalesque, grotesque, and dialogical--are applied to the musical-theatre genre of the Spanish zarzuela. The focus of the study centers on the works of composer Pablo Sorozábal and the various librettists who collaborated with him, among them the renowned literary author Pío Baroja. Within this study, zarzuela is first analyzed on its own in terms of the academic debate surrounding the genre and its importance in terms of both literary and musical criticism. After establishing the particular capacity of the zarzuela to make important cultural contributions, the central theoretical framework of the thesis is established via Bakhtinian theory, and several links are drawn between this theory and the genre of the zarzuela, which is shown to be a body of work often capable of conveying subversive messages, both cultural and sociopolitical. With this critical lens, then, the specific sociopolitical context of Spain between 1931-1942 is analyzed and described in order to illustrate the various extratextual and intertextual elements at play in Sorozábal's zarzuelas. The three works ultimately studied are Katiuska (1931), Adiós a la bohemia (1933), and Black, el payaso (1942). By way of highlighting the Bakhtinian characteristics …