Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

The Crafting Of The Self In Private Letters And The Epistolary Novel: El Hilo Que Une, Un Verano En Bornos, Ifigenia, Querido Diego, Te Abraza Quiela, And Cartas Apócrifas, Angelica A. Nelson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The inherent flexibility of the letter form or epistolary mode of writing frees the writer within the framework of salutations and closings to use vocabulary and language to create, to omit or to invert conventional constraints imposed on women by a patriarchal society. The letter begins as a blank page but becomes the space for writing one’s personal thoughts and emotions to the absent other in a communicative effort to minimize the separation.

This dissertation examines the female narrator in actual letters written during the Spanish emigration to the New World in the sixteenth century and four epistolary novels written …

El Bildungsroman Femenino De Ángeles Mastretta Y Carmen Boullosa: Hacia Una Perspectiva Posmoderna, Rebeca Cunill

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The traditional Bildungsroman that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th Century embodied the concept of progress and the belief in the Enlightenment ideals of universality, knowledge and the search for truth. In the classic model of the genre the values of the society represented, those of modernity, are ultimately legitimized. In this dissertation, I argue that the female Bildungsroman of Ángeles Mastretta and Carmen Boullosa respond to a fundamentally postmodern aesthetics and ideological framework. In their novels, “Arráncame la vida” (1985), “Antes” (1989), “Mal de amores” (1995) and “Treinta años” (1999), the Mexican writers challenge the legitimacy …