Desde los textos más tempranos, la literatura de Latinoamérica ha sido marcada por la presencia de sus comunidades indígenas, la representación de las cuales siempre está cambiando. A lo largo del siglo XIX vemos que esos textos tienden a dar una perspectiva de esas culturas desde afuera. No es hasta después de la emergencia del realismo mágico en el siglo XX que conseguimos una mirada a esas culturas desde adentro. De los tempranos mágicorrealistas, tal vez ninguno de ellos haya captado la realidad social del indígena mejor que el guatemalteco Miguel Ángel Asturias. Sin embargo, a pesar de sus buenas intenciones de representar la realidad indígena, sacar a luz los desafíos que enfrentan y mejorar las condiciones en que viven, muchos críticos han cuestionado la representación asturiana de las culturas indígenas, acusándole a Asturias hasta de ser racista. En aquellas criticas, el modelo teórico que ha sido aplicado a la relectura de las obras de Asturias ha sido sin duda el de los estudios poscoloniales. Pero, ¿se presta esa literatura a aquel tipo de análisis? ¿Son aplicables esas teorías a las realidades sociales de Guatemala? Otros investigadores creen que hacer eso es una simplificación y tomar las cosas fuera de su contexto histórico. Es a base de este último argumento que esta tesina se inicia. Los objetivos de este estudio son de examinar la propiedad de aplicar esas teorías a las obras de Asturias y también de analizar la imagen del indígena creada en su literatura a través del uso de la imaginación, mitología y lenguaje maya. Este estudio se centra en algunos de los textos más tempranos de Asturias tales como su tesis de abogado, producción periodística y obras de ficción para analizar cómo él ha representado la población indígena de Guatemala. Este análisis concluye que lejos del racismo de que Asturias ha sido acusado, él está completamente comprometido con el proyecto de mejorar las condiciones en las que los indígenas de Guatemala viven. Además, concluye que Asturias ha representado esas comunidades de una manera positiva a través del uso del imaginario, mitología, sintaxis, léxico y organización literaria maya.

ABSTRACT This research aims to investigate the work and impact of the prolific and popular Pablo Parellada y Molas. Although the author is now forgotten, he is an important figure regarding the struggles between Modernist writers and their critics. Pablo Parellada was one the key detractors of literary Modernism, a movement which he attacked through his parodies as evinced in his poetry, drama and short stories. His works contain the main pejorative features that would become the standard critique of these young poets of Spain in the early 1900's. Through the work of Pablo Parellada, this study seeks to understand the literary debates of Modernism in Spain that took place in the early twentieth century. Through this understanding, this study becomes important for it reveals the many personal characteristics that were attributed to the young Modernist poets. Some of these characteristics continued to be used by literary critics and as well became part of the collective imagination at the time and were still circulating several decades later.

En esta disertación se exploró el desarrollo del sistema de la literatura infantil decimonónica en México. La investigación se inscribió dentro de una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, exploratoria y descriptiva (e interpretativa, aunque en menor medida) de los aspectos histórico-culturales y literarios a los que pertenece el sistema, autor y obra. En la búsqueda de una todavía limitada pretensión interpretativa, en este estudio se trazó una periodización para caracterizar el desarrollo que la literatura infantil adquiere en los dos períodos delimitados para el siglo XIX: sujeto educando de la divina revelación y sujeto educando de la ciudadanía. Se concluyó que en la fábula compleja de la literatura infantil se introduce y construye un discurso integrador de la nación mexicana. En esta formación identitaria, las publicaciones periódicas y los libros para niños fueron un discurso formativo de fundamental soporte a las políticas sociales que guiaban al país, la joven nación republicana. De igual forma, se recopiló una valiosa información sobre el estado del arte de la literatura infantil latinoamericana y mexicana; se exploraron los textos precursores del haz de escritores fundacionales de la literatura infantil latinoamericana; se delimitó el surgimiento, desarrollo y consolidación de la LI en México y, por último, se compiló una lista de publicaciones sobre historia, consulta y crítica de la literatura infantil y juvenil en Latinoamérica con el propósito de establecer líneas futuras de investigación.

ABSTRACT Of all the writers associated with the McOndo movement, a literary movement that focuses on the reality of urban life for millions of young Latin Americans, Jorge Franco is perhaps the most distinguished. As the author of Paraíso Travel and Rosario Tijeras, Franco has expertly shown his international audience the brutal conditions under which so many residents of his birth city of Medellín, Colombia, live. In both novels the reader is introduced to a world in which various factors have set up a society characterized by victims and predators. This study will attempt to show how economics, violence, machismo, racism and class discrimination all play a role in establishing a social hierarchy that facilitates anti-social behavior, and how these social institutions perpetuate themselves to the detriment of those caught in the cycle.

El presente estudio examina cuatro ensayistas periodistas latinoamericanas, Patricia Verdugo de Chile, Viviana Gorbato de la Argentina, Alma Guillermoprieto de México y Zoé Valdés de Cuba, para entender cómo cada autora transcribe sus investigaciones en el campo en forma narrativa. A través de un examen del uso del procedimiento de la entrevista, analizamos cómo todas estas periodistas de investigación utilizan el testimonio de sus personajes para crear historias que intentan, por un lado, reportar sobre temas culturales de manera objetiva, y por otra parte, captar las emociones de los que viven y que son testigos a los eventos de sus ensayos. Implementamos, por consiguiente, las estrategias discursivas del nuevo periodismo, las cuales proporcionan una manera de diseccionar la estructura de los textos. Al entender la forma de los ensayos en vinculación con probar la importancia del testimonio respecto al elemento emocional, se provoca una búsqueda de lo que significa cada obra. Debido al gran empleo del testimonio, se encuentra con una pluralidad de voces que en su conjunto tienen un mayor propósito: representar una comunidad con una causa pertinente. En el proceso de presentar su causa, se evidencia una posible conexión entre los textos y el género híbrido de la novela testimonial. Finalmente, al considerar el peligro de ser periodista en América Latina, hacemos hincapié en la importancia de esta labor literaria y la gran cantidad de mujeres de esta región mundial que corren tanto riesgo para facilitar a sus lectores esta diversidad de temas culturales.

The temple of the Sagrada Familia, by Gaudí, is nowadays one of the most emblematic buildings of Barcelona, and the most visited monument in Spain. Despite the high popularity surrounding the name of the architect, his great work, still unfinished, has divided public opinion in the city for decades and has starred since its inception in a complex and paradoxical cultural phenomenon. My object of study consists of four major novels of modern Spanish narrative (Antagonía [1973-81], by Luis Goytisolo, La ciudad de los prodigios [1986], by Eduardo Mendoza, Campo cerrado [1943], by Max Aub and El amante bilingüe [1990], by Juan Marsé): all of them stand out because of the interartistic dialogue they establish with the famous building, which is referred to more or less extensively in their plots. The study will prove that the textual references to the Sagrada Familia in each particular case contain important interpretive keys that illuminate the discursive characterization of the texts while at the same time opening a new avenue for reading them.

To this end, I start by situating my object of interest within the studies on the literary city, a field where Barcelona has a unique tradition of reflecting on its novel. Then I trace the cultural reception of the Sagrada Familia as evidenced in literary testimonies of the early twentieth century, and continue by documenting the presence of the building in modern, post-Civil War narrative. After that, I explain the conceptual notions and terms on the phenomenon of the intersection between architecture and literature, which will guide the analysis of the texts.

Finally, I carry out the literary analysis of the four aforementioned novels.

The Sagrada Familia, as well as showing itself to be a versatile metafictional emblem at four different times in modern Spanish narrative, illustrates the possibilities of a literary analysis that takes into account the architectural component of the texts in order to illuminate their comprehension and their characterization.

This research aims to develop a narration theory based on Argentinian writer Juan José Saer’s (1937-2005) four collections of essays: El río sin orillas (The River Without Banks) (1991) —which is thought by critics to be the Facundo of the 20th century—, El concepto de ficción (The Concept of Fiction) (1995), La narración-objeto (The Narrative Object) (1999) and Trabajos (Works) (2005). His essays examine the Latin American novel from 1960 to 2000, in other words, from the founding of the modern novel during the Latin American boom to its establishment as the most commercial genre upon the arrival of neoliberalism in Latin America in the 1990’s. Saer not only questions the novel in literary terms, but also contextually: from its relationship to politics and the Cuban Revolution and the years of literary compromise à la Sarte and the historical novel’s insurgency as the favored genre that settled the region’s past and present in the 1980’s to the conception of the genre as a commodity as large transnational entertainment consortia purchased all publishers. Within this context, Saer simultaneously critiques and formulates a theory on narration to oppose the novel. He presents narration as a continuation of a wasted and formulaic genre such as the historical novel. He juxtaposes the “real” to realism, ponders the impossibility of the historical novel, defends and rehabilitates the French noveau roman, which was much vilified by authors of the boom, demystifies Borges’ reading of the Argentinian tradition and at the same time confronts it with Witold Gombrowicz. He removes literature from the bonds of nationalism and Latin Americanism and contrasts Sartre’s ideas with German philosopher Theodore W. Adorno’s proposals about the novel during the cultural industry era.

This thesis makes a comparison between the internal dialogue of the Empress Carlota of Mexico in Noticias del Imperio (1987), by Fernando del Paso, and the internal dialogue developed in the original written letters by Carlota during her insanity in 1869. These letters were published in the book Una emperatriz en la noche (2010) by Laurence van Ypersele. Del Paso uses the New Historical Novel genre to write about the French Invasion in Mexico and to bring back to life Carlota, Maximilian, and Benito Juarez amongst others. In the case of Carlota, del Paso uses fiction to recreate the thoughts of a clinically-declared insane woman. The author of Noticias del Imperio can only imagine how the mind of an insane person works based on historical texts describing the behavior of the Empress during her sick years. Overall, when comparing both Carlotas, del Paso captures with great magistry the way of thinking of a mentally ill person, and there are a lot of similarities between both worlds. However, as time goes on and the Empress continues writing her letters, her insanity worsens and one can appreciate a reality that del Paso could have never imagined to recreate in his novel. The written correspondence during Carlota’s insanity becomes more confusing and one can notice a complete transformation of her world, which is perfectly logical to her. In these letters it can be appreciated that the reality of insanity, surpasses the fiction written by del Paso.

In the mid-1990’s, in Mexico, a group of novelists emerged during a public appearance at a literary venture aimed to go against predominant forms of aesthetics, canon, groups or literary ‘mafias’ prevalent during that time period. The group of five young writers called themselves “El grupo crack,” (The crack group). They brought with them the crack manifesto (1996) where each member of the group wrote to plea for a renovation of the novel with the assurance of having literary works that would challenge the reader as much as the literary status quo. Along with the manifesto, each one of them presented a novel. A few years after the presentation, the members of the group received many literary prices and accolades, inside and out of academic circles.

One of the primary objectives of this work is to expose the poetic proposal of the literary grupo crack as it relates to previous movements, groups, and literary trends. Among the five writers of the group, Jorge Volpi has shown a significant growth in his literary corpus in a very short period of time. Aside from the great recognition he has received for his novel En busca de Klingsor (1999), (In search of Klingsor), Volpi has been a motive of study, mostly, for his narrative, leaving behind his essays. There are two collections of political-cultural essays that are well hidden in the early Jorge Volpi bibliography. The first one is titled La imaginación y el poder. Una historia intelectual de 1968 (1998), (Imagination and Power. An Intellectual history of 1968), and the second, La guerra y las palabras. Una historia intelectual de 1994 (2004), (War and Words. An intellectual history of 1994). Both works have been ignored in the bibliography of the grupo crack.

To analyze both works it was necessary to contextualize Mexican history of the years 1968 and 1994, respectively. The analysis shows the interaction and coexistence between the intellectual class and the Mexican political class in an authoritarian regime, same symbiosis that Vargas Llosa would once refer to as “the perfect dictatorship.”

Esta tesis doctoral examina la prevalencia del discurso racial y hegemónico que sigue siendo una barrera para el ejercicio de los derechos fundamentales de ciudadanía y la búsqueda de la justicia social en América Latina, el Caribe y en todo el continente americano. Entre 1840 y 1960, la ideología del mestizaje, o mezcla de razas, fue el elemento constitutivo en estructurar el discurso de la formación de la nación de escritores muy diversos como José Antonio Saco, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José Martí, Fernando Ortiz y Alejo Carpentier, entre otros. La ideología mantenía—ante la evidencia de una división profundamente arraigada en consideraciones raciales—que el mestizaje, un proceso a la vez biológico y cultural, sentó las bases para la unificación de la nacionalidad cubana frente al primer dominio colonial español y luego al poder imperial de los Estados Unidos. El estudio se vertebra de la teoría cultural poscolonial de Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha y Edward Said para analizar y cuestionar la perspectiva eurocéntrica de Alejo Carpentier en sus novelas Écue-Yamba-Ó (1933) y El reino de este mundo (1949). Aunque estas novelas parecen proponer el reconocimiento y reivindicación de la imaginada y oprimida población afrocaribeña, se observa que Carpentier termina por respaldar las imágenes estereotipadas en el discurso racial y colonial por su formación europea. La tesis, por lo tanto, resalta los elementos de resistencia que los afrocaribeños han desarrollado en un intento por aumentar su visibilidad en el Caribe y crear la conciencia de su aporte a la cultura caribeña híbrida, sincrética y transculturada.