This study traces the history and culture of Spain as seen through the lens of the nation´s production of horror cinema. Starting from the boom of Spanish horror film in the early 1960s, the thesis compares and contrasts the political and social aspects of Spanish society throughout three distinct eras of the 20th century: 1962 – 1975 (the boom of Spanish horror film through the Franco dictatorship), 1975 – 1999 (the transition to democracy through the end of the 20th century) and 2000 – present (the 21st century). Movies as diverse as Gritos en la noche (1962, Jesús Franco), ¿Quién puede matar a un niño? (1976, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador) and Angustia (1987, Bigas Luna) are framed by culturally-related anectodes as well as correlations to their respective social environments. Special attention has been paid to the production and release of each film, especially in regards to censorship during the Franco dictatorship. The results show that Spanish horror cinema has acted as a true mirror to culture, society and politics in its native country throughout the 20th century and that this trend will likely extend in to the future.

Spain underwent drastic social and political changes in the last decades of the twentieth century which also affected the nation’s patterns of emigration. Contemporary Spanish literature and film that portray these decades reflect the country’s fluctuating characteristics of migration. ¡Vente a Alemania, Pepe! (1971) by Pedro Lazaga, Coto vedado (1985) by Juan Goytisolo, El hijo del acordeonista (2003) by Bernardo Atxaga, and Yoyes (2000) by Helena Taberna demonstrate Spain’s migration trends during the last years of Franco’s dictatorship and the transition to democracy. The nation’s highly increased socioeconomic development in the 1970s and 1980s which eventually led to a first-world status also affected emigration, which can be seen in Carlota Fainberg (1999) by Antonio Muñoz Molina, Kasbah (2000) by Mariano Barroso, Restos de carmine (1999) by Juan Madrid, and Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009) by Isabel Coixet.

This thesis discusses characterization in Ramón Pérez de Ayala's novels.

This thesis explores the themes in the novels of Manuel Gálvez. The summaries deal with a considerable portion of his work which may be generally classified as sociological novels.

The purpose of this thesis is to review and to analyze the part that tremendismo has played in the fiction of Carmen Laforet. To this end, each of her published volumes will be studied individually so that her relationship to tremendismo may be clearly seen in each of its various stages.

The purpose of this thesis is to make an intensive study of the dramatic works of Max Aub in order to determine his significance as a playwright.

The political ideologies that Martí envisioned of an America free from the inherited yoke of European ideals were taken by Fidel Castro as an anti-imperialist discourse. Therefore, Marti’s political vision on the power that the United States began to carry out at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century was an excellent strategy to establish the anti-imperialist character of the Cuban revolution. Since 1961, Castro set Martí as the face of his Marxist-Leninist ideology to institute his anti-American philosophy; Castro created a myth of Marti’s persona, and converted him into the bastion of his political ideology. As a result, Castro distorted the revolutionary ideas of Marti’s. Castro proposed his ideas out of context and portrayed the incorrect idea of this great thinker and poet. Martí’s human ethic and love for the independence of Cuba placed Martí as a liberator of revolutionary and progressive ideas of his generation. Martí was not thought as a dictator and never was a man who lacked democratic values. The expressed analytical assimilation of Martí on his sociopolitical and economic juncture that was presented in America and Cuba was used to trace the political anti-imperialist propaganda by the dictatorial regime …

The unfolding of eroticism always has been controlled socially; its expression forbidden for the women and accepted for the men. Ernestina de Champourcín’s poetry is an example of the presence of eroticism and the Avant-Garde in Spanish poetry. Champourcín becomes a member of the Generation of ‘27 after appearing in the prologue of Gerardo Diego’s anthology, Poesía Española Contemporßnea (1934). According to this thesis, the shortage of studies on her work is due to her exile, not to the Spanish Civil War. The exposition celebrates the life and work of Champourcín and studies the relationship between the Avant-Garde and sensuality in her poetry and in poems of Pedro Salinas and Vicente Aleixandre. It compares their individual handling of the Avant-Garde, the sexual act, and love, and concludes that Champourcín’s poetry is as Avant-Garde and erotic as the works of her companions of the Generation of ‘27.

Manuel Machado is known as one of the most innovative Spanish modernist poets of the twentieth century. Despite his recognition as a literary figure in Spain, the mimetic descriptions in Machado's poetics are interpreted as mere innovations in Spanish poetry. Those mimetic descriptions are examples of ekphrasis in Spanish literature. Ekphrasis is both a literary and representational art. The mimetic dimension in Machado's poetry is ignored or misinterpreted by the critics of his poetics. This study written in Spanish investigates the use of ekphrasis in terms of Machado's poetic style. An analysis of Manuel Machado's ekphrastic poems will determine: ekphrastic poetry is a representational art; how visual and acoustic aspects of Machado's poems create enargeia; and the manifestation of ekphrasis in Spanish verse. In using Machado's poems, this project will contribute to future explorations of ekphrasis in Spanish literature.

This paper reports a study of VanPatten's processing instruction (PI) and Ray's TPRS. High school students in a beginning Spanish course were divided into three groups (PI, TPRS, and control) and instructed in forms using the Spanish verb gustar. Treatment included sentence-level and discourse-level input, and tests included interpretation and production measures in a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest given two and a half months following treatment. The PI group made the greatest gains in production measures and in a grammaticality judgment test, and the TPRS group made the greatest gains in written fluency. The PI group's statistical gains in production measures held through the delayed posttest.

This thesis is a study of social criticism in the works of Leopoldo Alas ("Clarín"), a nineteenth century Spanish novelist, literary critic and short story writer. In Clarín's two major novels, "La Regenta" and "Su único hijo," and in his numerous short stories there is frequent criticism of the abuses of the clergy, the state of Spanish morality, the misunderstanding and misapplication of religion by the laity, the quality of education, literature, theater and medicine, the corruption of law and government and the treatment to which the poor and uneducated were subjected. Because of Clarín's techniques it can be said that he was the leader of the naturalistic movement in Spain. It can also be said that Clarín as a naturalist did not follow the tenets of the French school.

This thesis...