Marta Cerezo Moreno | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (original) (raw)

Articles by Marta Cerezo Moreno

Research paper thumbnail of "The secret lives of things: a phenomenological approach to Oliver Sacks’ narrative of the life course".

Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación 33 (2024): 79-95, 2024

Framed within the phenomenological turn that literary studies have experienced th... more Framed within the phenomenological turn that literary studies have experienced through the last few decades, this article analyses Oliver Sacks’ narrative of the life course in Uncle Tungsten(2001) and Gratitude(2015) as about the very act of embodied perception from an object-oriented perspective. Sacks presents himself as what French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty depicted as a «phenomenal body», a sentient body playing an active and intentional role ‒ in the phenomenological sense of being directed toward something ‒ in his/her relation to and perception of the self, nature, and the other. This study reads Sacks’ narrative as an outstanding literary illustration of Gilbert G. Germain’s presentation of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception as a return journey to a world permeated by an affective, lyrical, and enigmatic understanding of science where the embodied perception of natural objects is central to the recognition of the self and what surrounds it.

Research paper thumbnail of "Introduction. Shakespeare's Religious Afterlives".

Critical Survey 35.2 (Summer 2023): 1-10.

Research paper thumbnail of "Charles William Stubbs and Shakespeare: The Incarnation and the English Cult of Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"

Religion & Literature 54.1-54.2 (Spring-Summer 2022): 1-25 , 2022

Research paper thumbnail of "The Shakespeare Sermon (1879-1900): Shakespeare the Poet and Shakespeare the Dramatist"

English Studies 104.2 (2023): 240-263, 2023

This article focuses on how the Shakespeare sermons delivered from 1879 to 1900 in Holy Trinity C... more This article focuses on how the Shakespeare sermons delivered from 1879 to 1900 in Holy Trinity Church (Stratford-upon-Avon) participated in the nineteenth-century debates on whether Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be read or put on stage. It contends that these sermons gradually show a theatrical turn in the interpretation of Shakespeare’s production as they present them not only as “sacred poetic texts” to be read alongside the Bible, but as “sacred incarnational dramas”, interpreted in the light of the Romantic notion of “Shakespeare creative sympathy” and written to be watched and performed on stage. The sermonic focus on the public staging of Shakespeare’s plays is closely related to a significant theatrical turn in the history, first, of the Shakespeare’s birthday festival with the opening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1879 and, second, of English preaching, which became more socially involved due to the rise of liberal Broad Church positions.

Research paper thumbnail of “Christian Socialism and English Literature: Frederick Denison Maurice's Teaching of Shakespeare”

E-rea - Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone, 19.2 (2022): 1-16., 2022

This article focuses on F. D. Maurice’s contribution to the development of Christian Socialism fr... more This article focuses on F. D. Maurice’s contribution to the development of Christian Socialism from a literary point of view by analysing the way his social readjustment of the doctrine of the Incarnation is reflected in his lectures on Shakespeare, first at King’s College and later at the Working Men’s College. To analyse this until now unexplored issue, the following paper will first focus on the underlying social principles of Maurice’s theology of the Incarnation; second, on the main lines supporting his educational method as a national and providentialist enterprise, and on how Maurice perceived English literature as essential in that national educational scheme; and third, on how his emphasis on the earthly, social, and material nature of the Incarnation, on a Godly order ruling society and the resulting notion of divine revelation and progress reveal themselves in his teaching of Shakespeare’s drama, especially of his history plays.

Research paper thumbnail of “An Early History of the Shakespeare Sermon (1769-1830): From Garrick’s Jubilee to the Reverend Arthur Savage Wade’s Stratford Festival Shakespeare Sermons”

Shakespeare, 17:4, 428-450, 2021

This article addresses crucial landmarks in the origins of the tradition of the Shakespeare sermo... more This article addresses crucial landmarks in the origins of the
tradition of the Shakespeare sermon. First, it focuses on
two significant dates: Garrick’s 1769 Jubilee and 1810,
when the relationship between Shakespeare,
commemoration and sermonic discourse is first established.
The composition of probably the earliest Shakespeare
sermon took place in 1810. This sermon, which must be
read as part of a campaign against Methodism, proves the
flexibility of the homiletic genre at the time, which serves
to support this article’s argument that, according to
nineteenth-century sermon genre conventions, the
Reverend Arthur Savage Wade’s speeches during the 1827
and 1830 Shakespeare celebrations in Stratford should be
catalogued as the earliest recorded Stratford Shakespeare
sermons. Wade’s speeches–unexplored events in the critical
history of the Shakespeare sermon tradition–deserve
academic attention for three important reasons: Wade
participated in the controversial debate within the Church
of England at the time about the morality of the stage; his
radicalism opposed the Reverend James Davenport’s, Vicar
of Holy Trinity, conservative stance during the 1827
Shakespeare celebrations; and in 1830 the preacher
sacralised The Merchant of Venice to argue for religious
liberties in the midst of the social debate about Jewish
emancipation in England.

Research paper thumbnail of "Shakespeare and Mercy at the Vatican, 2016" (2020)

International Journal of English Studies Vol. 20 (3): 145-164, 2020

This article explores a central chapter in the history of the Catholic reception of Shakespeare"s... more This article explores a central chapter in the history of the Catholic reception of Shakespeare"s work during the contemporary age: the Catholic readings in 2016 of Shakespeare"s dramatic presentation of mercy in the context of the celebrations of the 400 th anniversary of Shakespeare"s death and the Holy Year of Mercy. This study directs its focus first to Catholic public manifestations on mercy −such as printed volumes, articles and cycles of lectures− which incorporated Shakespeare"s reflections on mercy within their religious debate. Second, it studies how the Globe to Globe Hamlet performance at the Holy See on 13 April 2016 triggered the interpretation within the Vatican context of Hamlet as a play which, despite its focus on revenge and crime, opens up glimpses of mercy that allow a redefinition of justice.

Research paper thumbnail of “Traces of Stigma in John Banville’s The Sea” 2018

Literature and Medicine 36.1 (2018): 124-145, 2018

Despite acknowledging the centrality of Anna’s illness in studies of John Banville’s The Sea, sch... more Despite acknowledging the centrality of Anna’s illness in studies of John Banville’s The Sea, scholars have not attended to the close relationship between Anna’s cancer and her husband Max’s process of self-stigmatization. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of the trace, I analyze Max’s experience of his wife’s illness to show how Banville depicts disease imprinting psychic traces not only on the patient but also on his/her family. My main contention is that an assay of Max’s self-stigma creates new insights into The Sea that show how the novel’s superb reflections on disease, stigma, pain, suffering, age, death, and artistic creation promote a narrative destabilization of time categories. This destabilization underscores the fact that consciousness of finitude is inherent in the human experience—not just in the late stages of his/her life but throughout the entire life cycle.

Research paper thumbnail of “Returning Home versus Movement without Return: A Levinasian Reading of John Banville’s The Sea (2005)” 2015

Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 37.1 (June, 2015): 51-68, 2015

Taking as its starting point the contrast Emmanuel Levinas outlines between returning to consciou... more Taking as its starting point the contrast Emmanuel Levinas outlines between returning to consciousness as homecoming and the theory of the trace of the other as a movement towards alterity, or a movement without return, this paper analyses how the narrative configuration of John Banville’s The Sea (2005) shows an internal dialectic between an inner and an outer movement. It centres on the study of Max and his wife Anna, the protagonists of the novel, as fictional impersonations of this dual dynamic. Framed within the Levinasian perception of totality as the reduction of the other to the same, this paper envisions Max’s return home as a totalising journey that constitutes individuality. Parallel to Max’s inner exploration, it regards Anna’s photographs of her fellow patients during her stay at the hospital—as a terminal stomach cancer patient—as a representation of Levinas’ conceptualisation of infinite responsibility for the other. By merging the philosopher’s theory of the trace of the other with Walter Benjamin’s theory of the optical unconscious and Roland Barthes’ photographic concept of the punctum, it will be shown how Anna’s pictures call for new social ethical narratives around terms of social integration and equality for disabled people that could dismantle restrictive, and in Levinas’ terms, ontological conceptions of normality. Keywords: John Banville; The Sea; Levinas; home; trace of the other; disability

Research paper thumbnail of “Narrative Chromaticism of Youth and Age in John Updike’s Seek My Face” 2009

Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts 3.3. (2009): 175-198, 2009

The encounter between 79-year-old abstract painter Hope Chafetz and 27-year-old art critic Kathry... more The encounter between 79-year-old abstract painter Hope Chafetz and 27-year-old art critic Kathryn D'Angelo in John Updike's Seek My Face (2002/2003) is envisioned as what G. Ephrain Lessing calls a “pregnant moment,” which acquires narrative movement through the constant and evolving interaction between both protagonists. Such interaction gains meaning when explored in the light of abstract painter Hans Hofmann's “push and pull theory.” In the following pages I intend to visualize the women's rapport as the alignment of two lines in a painting moving in different directions as they create a “universe, in motion” (p. 33) within the novel, where old age and youthfulness are part of the same palette of colors. Keywords: Updike, Seek My Face , aging, youthfulness, painting

Research paper thumbnail of “Responsabilidad personal y desafío a la fortuna: resortes de la evolución dramática del héroe trágico en el teatro isabelino” 2009

EPOS XXV (2009): 167-196, 2009

The present article shows a comparative analysis of English plays written during the second half ... more The present article shows a comparative analysis of English plays written during the
second half of the sixteenth century under the influence of the stories of political decadence narrated in the Mirror for Magistrates (1559). This comparative approach envisions the tragic heroes in these plays as transitional characters whose theatrical construction reveals two main thematic aspects. The first one is the tragic hero’s awareness of the dependence of his fall and of his kingdom’s political decline on his own decisions and acts. The second one is the authority that the ruler achieves by challenging the powers of Fortune, the stars and providence. Both thematic elements set in motion a clear dramatic evolution that eventually gives shape to the theatrical constituents of the tragic heroes that rule the English scene at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
KEYWORDS: Elizabethan theatre, tragic hero, Fortune, ruler’s personal responsibility,
dramatic evolution, transitional character.

Research paper thumbnail of “Génesis de la fusión dramática entre la violencia y la comicidad en Titus Andronicus” 2009

Analecta Malacitana Electrónica 26 (2009): 85-112, 2009

In order to comprehend the merging of the burlesque element and the excessive violence in Titus A... more In order to comprehend the merging of the burlesque element and the excessive violence in Titus Andronicus, the play must be analysed from a comparative perspective within the
frame of its literary context. This article deals with the comic elements that the characterization of Aaron introduces, in the light of the dramatic construction of characters that appear in plays drawing on the tradition of the morality plays, and in plays that combine the tradition of the Moor and the Vice. Keywords: Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare, Comedy, Violence, Aaron.

Research paper thumbnail of “Painful Complicities in Gender Violence: Consequences of the Patriarchal construction of Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle” 2007

Circunstancia. Revista de Ciencias Sociales del Instituto de Investigación Ortega y Gasset 12, 2007

Mothering, viewed as an ideological form, works as a social mechanism that, by adjusting to male-... more Mothering, viewed as an ideological form, works as a social mechanism that, by adjusting to male-dominant assumptions, helps to perpetuate male abuse against women. This essay focuses on the ways the patriarchal relationship between mother and daughter gives birth to potential victims of gender violence who have been trained to accept their own secondary status as passive, devalued and dependent beings. Gender violence episodes constantly reproduce men’s dominance and women’s subordination. This basic power relation of patriarchy is one of the primary lessons that a daughter learns from a mother who has been in turn taught that she belongs to the domestic and powerless domain and that her ultimate role in life is marriage and child-care. By merging a psychoanalytical and a cultural approach, this essay reveals how the analysis of the conflictive mother-daughter bond in Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle presents the novel as part of a feminist discursive practice that denounces the complicity of motherhood in gender violence. Keywords: Margaret Atwood, mother-daughter dyad, patriarchy, gender violence, Nancy Chodorow, Jacques Lacan, D. W. Winnicot, Adrienne Rich

Research paper thumbnail of “Sensibilidad senequista en la estructura de desorden de Titus Andronicus” 2005

Revista de Estudios Latinos (RELat) 5 (2005): 275-293 , 2005

In 1927, T. S. Eliot points out Seneca's presence on the Elizabethan stage so as to find out the ... more In 1927, T. S. Eliot points out Seneca's presence on the Elizabethan stage so as to find out the theatrical mechanisms of what he calls "the penetration of Senecan sensibility" in Shakespeare's works. This essay takes Eliot's words as a starting point in order to disclose the dramatic strategies by which the so-called Senecan sensibility strengthens the structure of disorder that pervades Titus Andronicus. Keywords: Shakespeare, senecan sensibility, structure of disorder, fragmentation.

Research paper thumbnail of “The Controlling force of Rome in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus” (1999)

Sederi X (1999): 205-210, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of "'Then She Usurps Upon Another's Right': Elizabeth Cary's Authorship" (1998)

Alfinge X (1998): 11-36, 1998

Book Chapters by Marta Cerezo Moreno

Research paper thumbnail of “Affective Oriented Time: Finitude and Ageing in Jackie Kay’s Border Country”

Bloomsbury Handbook of Literature and Ageing. Eds. Heike Hartung, Raquel Medina and Sarah Falcus. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. 413-425.

Research paper thumbnail of "Randall T. Davidson's Aldermanbury Shakespeare Sermon (1923). A Religious and Theatrical Commemoration of the First Folio"

Shakespeare's First Folio Revisited: Quadricentennial Essays. Ed. Remedios Perni. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2023. 151-167.

Research paper thumbnail of "Re-membering the Body in Philip Roth's The Dying Animal"

Reading the ‘Trace’ in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Eds. Rosario Arias and Lin Pattersson. Canterbury: Gylphi, 2022. 127-155, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of “Anne Tyler’s Noah’s Compass: Progress towards Wisdom” (2016)

Literary Creativity and the Older Woman Writer: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. Núria Casado-Gual, Emma Domínguez-Rué and Brian Worsfold. Bern: Peter Lang, 2016. 191-221, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of "The secret lives of things: a phenomenological approach to Oliver Sacks’ narrative of the life course".

Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación 33 (2024): 79-95, 2024

Framed within the phenomenological turn that literary studies have experienced th... more Framed within the phenomenological turn that literary studies have experienced through the last few decades, this article analyses Oliver Sacks’ narrative of the life course in Uncle Tungsten(2001) and Gratitude(2015) as about the very act of embodied perception from an object-oriented perspective. Sacks presents himself as what French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty depicted as a «phenomenal body», a sentient body playing an active and intentional role ‒ in the phenomenological sense of being directed toward something ‒ in his/her relation to and perception of the self, nature, and the other. This study reads Sacks’ narrative as an outstanding literary illustration of Gilbert G. Germain’s presentation of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception as a return journey to a world permeated by an affective, lyrical, and enigmatic understanding of science where the embodied perception of natural objects is central to the recognition of the self and what surrounds it.

Research paper thumbnail of "Introduction. Shakespeare's Religious Afterlives".

Critical Survey 35.2 (Summer 2023): 1-10.

Research paper thumbnail of "Charles William Stubbs and Shakespeare: The Incarnation and the English Cult of Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"

Religion & Literature 54.1-54.2 (Spring-Summer 2022): 1-25 , 2022

Research paper thumbnail of "The Shakespeare Sermon (1879-1900): Shakespeare the Poet and Shakespeare the Dramatist"

English Studies 104.2 (2023): 240-263, 2023

This article focuses on how the Shakespeare sermons delivered from 1879 to 1900 in Holy Trinity C... more This article focuses on how the Shakespeare sermons delivered from 1879 to 1900 in Holy Trinity Church (Stratford-upon-Avon) participated in the nineteenth-century debates on whether Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be read or put on stage. It contends that these sermons gradually show a theatrical turn in the interpretation of Shakespeare’s production as they present them not only as “sacred poetic texts” to be read alongside the Bible, but as “sacred incarnational dramas”, interpreted in the light of the Romantic notion of “Shakespeare creative sympathy” and written to be watched and performed on stage. The sermonic focus on the public staging of Shakespeare’s plays is closely related to a significant theatrical turn in the history, first, of the Shakespeare’s birthday festival with the opening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1879 and, second, of English preaching, which became more socially involved due to the rise of liberal Broad Church positions.

Research paper thumbnail of “Christian Socialism and English Literature: Frederick Denison Maurice's Teaching of Shakespeare”

E-rea - Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone, 19.2 (2022): 1-16., 2022

This article focuses on F. D. Maurice’s contribution to the development of Christian Socialism fr... more This article focuses on F. D. Maurice’s contribution to the development of Christian Socialism from a literary point of view by analysing the way his social readjustment of the doctrine of the Incarnation is reflected in his lectures on Shakespeare, first at King’s College and later at the Working Men’s College. To analyse this until now unexplored issue, the following paper will first focus on the underlying social principles of Maurice’s theology of the Incarnation; second, on the main lines supporting his educational method as a national and providentialist enterprise, and on how Maurice perceived English literature as essential in that national educational scheme; and third, on how his emphasis on the earthly, social, and material nature of the Incarnation, on a Godly order ruling society and the resulting notion of divine revelation and progress reveal themselves in his teaching of Shakespeare’s drama, especially of his history plays.

Research paper thumbnail of “An Early History of the Shakespeare Sermon (1769-1830): From Garrick’s Jubilee to the Reverend Arthur Savage Wade’s Stratford Festival Shakespeare Sermons”

Shakespeare, 17:4, 428-450, 2021

This article addresses crucial landmarks in the origins of the tradition of the Shakespeare sermo... more This article addresses crucial landmarks in the origins of the
tradition of the Shakespeare sermon. First, it focuses on
two significant dates: Garrick’s 1769 Jubilee and 1810,
when the relationship between Shakespeare,
commemoration and sermonic discourse is first established.
The composition of probably the earliest Shakespeare
sermon took place in 1810. This sermon, which must be
read as part of a campaign against Methodism, proves the
flexibility of the homiletic genre at the time, which serves
to support this article’s argument that, according to
nineteenth-century sermon genre conventions, the
Reverend Arthur Savage Wade’s speeches during the 1827
and 1830 Shakespeare celebrations in Stratford should be
catalogued as the earliest recorded Stratford Shakespeare
sermons. Wade’s speeches–unexplored events in the critical
history of the Shakespeare sermon tradition–deserve
academic attention for three important reasons: Wade
participated in the controversial debate within the Church
of England at the time about the morality of the stage; his
radicalism opposed the Reverend James Davenport’s, Vicar
of Holy Trinity, conservative stance during the 1827
Shakespeare celebrations; and in 1830 the preacher
sacralised The Merchant of Venice to argue for religious
liberties in the midst of the social debate about Jewish
emancipation in England.

Research paper thumbnail of "Shakespeare and Mercy at the Vatican, 2016" (2020)

International Journal of English Studies Vol. 20 (3): 145-164, 2020

This article explores a central chapter in the history of the Catholic reception of Shakespeare"s... more This article explores a central chapter in the history of the Catholic reception of Shakespeare"s work during the contemporary age: the Catholic readings in 2016 of Shakespeare"s dramatic presentation of mercy in the context of the celebrations of the 400 th anniversary of Shakespeare"s death and the Holy Year of Mercy. This study directs its focus first to Catholic public manifestations on mercy −such as printed volumes, articles and cycles of lectures− which incorporated Shakespeare"s reflections on mercy within their religious debate. Second, it studies how the Globe to Globe Hamlet performance at the Holy See on 13 April 2016 triggered the interpretation within the Vatican context of Hamlet as a play which, despite its focus on revenge and crime, opens up glimpses of mercy that allow a redefinition of justice.

Research paper thumbnail of “Traces of Stigma in John Banville’s The Sea” 2018

Literature and Medicine 36.1 (2018): 124-145, 2018

Despite acknowledging the centrality of Anna’s illness in studies of John Banville’s The Sea, sch... more Despite acknowledging the centrality of Anna’s illness in studies of John Banville’s The Sea, scholars have not attended to the close relationship between Anna’s cancer and her husband Max’s process of self-stigmatization. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of the trace, I analyze Max’s experience of his wife’s illness to show how Banville depicts disease imprinting psychic traces not only on the patient but also on his/her family. My main contention is that an assay of Max’s self-stigma creates new insights into The Sea that show how the novel’s superb reflections on disease, stigma, pain, suffering, age, death, and artistic creation promote a narrative destabilization of time categories. This destabilization underscores the fact that consciousness of finitude is inherent in the human experience—not just in the late stages of his/her life but throughout the entire life cycle.

Research paper thumbnail of “Returning Home versus Movement without Return: A Levinasian Reading of John Banville’s The Sea (2005)” 2015

Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 37.1 (June, 2015): 51-68, 2015

Taking as its starting point the contrast Emmanuel Levinas outlines between returning to consciou... more Taking as its starting point the contrast Emmanuel Levinas outlines between returning to consciousness as homecoming and the theory of the trace of the other as a movement towards alterity, or a movement without return, this paper analyses how the narrative configuration of John Banville’s The Sea (2005) shows an internal dialectic between an inner and an outer movement. It centres on the study of Max and his wife Anna, the protagonists of the novel, as fictional impersonations of this dual dynamic. Framed within the Levinasian perception of totality as the reduction of the other to the same, this paper envisions Max’s return home as a totalising journey that constitutes individuality. Parallel to Max’s inner exploration, it regards Anna’s photographs of her fellow patients during her stay at the hospital—as a terminal stomach cancer patient—as a representation of Levinas’ conceptualisation of infinite responsibility for the other. By merging the philosopher’s theory of the trace of the other with Walter Benjamin’s theory of the optical unconscious and Roland Barthes’ photographic concept of the punctum, it will be shown how Anna’s pictures call for new social ethical narratives around terms of social integration and equality for disabled people that could dismantle restrictive, and in Levinas’ terms, ontological conceptions of normality. Keywords: John Banville; The Sea; Levinas; home; trace of the other; disability

Research paper thumbnail of “Narrative Chromaticism of Youth and Age in John Updike’s Seek My Face” 2009

Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts 3.3. (2009): 175-198, 2009

The encounter between 79-year-old abstract painter Hope Chafetz and 27-year-old art critic Kathry... more The encounter between 79-year-old abstract painter Hope Chafetz and 27-year-old art critic Kathryn D'Angelo in John Updike's Seek My Face (2002/2003) is envisioned as what G. Ephrain Lessing calls a “pregnant moment,” which acquires narrative movement through the constant and evolving interaction between both protagonists. Such interaction gains meaning when explored in the light of abstract painter Hans Hofmann's “push and pull theory.” In the following pages I intend to visualize the women's rapport as the alignment of two lines in a painting moving in different directions as they create a “universe, in motion” (p. 33) within the novel, where old age and youthfulness are part of the same palette of colors. Keywords: Updike, Seek My Face , aging, youthfulness, painting

Research paper thumbnail of “Responsabilidad personal y desafío a la fortuna: resortes de la evolución dramática del héroe trágico en el teatro isabelino” 2009

EPOS XXV (2009): 167-196, 2009

The present article shows a comparative analysis of English plays written during the second half ... more The present article shows a comparative analysis of English plays written during the
second half of the sixteenth century under the influence of the stories of political decadence narrated in the Mirror for Magistrates (1559). This comparative approach envisions the tragic heroes in these plays as transitional characters whose theatrical construction reveals two main thematic aspects. The first one is the tragic hero’s awareness of the dependence of his fall and of his kingdom’s political decline on his own decisions and acts. The second one is the authority that the ruler achieves by challenging the powers of Fortune, the stars and providence. Both thematic elements set in motion a clear dramatic evolution that eventually gives shape to the theatrical constituents of the tragic heroes that rule the English scene at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
KEYWORDS: Elizabethan theatre, tragic hero, Fortune, ruler’s personal responsibility,
dramatic evolution, transitional character.

Research paper thumbnail of “Génesis de la fusión dramática entre la violencia y la comicidad en Titus Andronicus” 2009

Analecta Malacitana Electrónica 26 (2009): 85-112, 2009

In order to comprehend the merging of the burlesque element and the excessive violence in Titus A... more In order to comprehend the merging of the burlesque element and the excessive violence in Titus Andronicus, the play must be analysed from a comparative perspective within the
frame of its literary context. This article deals with the comic elements that the characterization of Aaron introduces, in the light of the dramatic construction of characters that appear in plays drawing on the tradition of the morality plays, and in plays that combine the tradition of the Moor and the Vice. Keywords: Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare, Comedy, Violence, Aaron.

Research paper thumbnail of “Painful Complicities in Gender Violence: Consequences of the Patriarchal construction of Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle” 2007

Circunstancia. Revista de Ciencias Sociales del Instituto de Investigación Ortega y Gasset 12, 2007

Mothering, viewed as an ideological form, works as a social mechanism that, by adjusting to male-... more Mothering, viewed as an ideological form, works as a social mechanism that, by adjusting to male-dominant assumptions, helps to perpetuate male abuse against women. This essay focuses on the ways the patriarchal relationship between mother and daughter gives birth to potential victims of gender violence who have been trained to accept their own secondary status as passive, devalued and dependent beings. Gender violence episodes constantly reproduce men’s dominance and women’s subordination. This basic power relation of patriarchy is one of the primary lessons that a daughter learns from a mother who has been in turn taught that she belongs to the domestic and powerless domain and that her ultimate role in life is marriage and child-care. By merging a psychoanalytical and a cultural approach, this essay reveals how the analysis of the conflictive mother-daughter bond in Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle presents the novel as part of a feminist discursive practice that denounces the complicity of motherhood in gender violence. Keywords: Margaret Atwood, mother-daughter dyad, patriarchy, gender violence, Nancy Chodorow, Jacques Lacan, D. W. Winnicot, Adrienne Rich

Research paper thumbnail of “Sensibilidad senequista en la estructura de desorden de Titus Andronicus” 2005

Revista de Estudios Latinos (RELat) 5 (2005): 275-293 , 2005

In 1927, T. S. Eliot points out Seneca's presence on the Elizabethan stage so as to find out the ... more In 1927, T. S. Eliot points out Seneca's presence on the Elizabethan stage so as to find out the theatrical mechanisms of what he calls "the penetration of Senecan sensibility" in Shakespeare's works. This essay takes Eliot's words as a starting point in order to disclose the dramatic strategies by which the so-called Senecan sensibility strengthens the structure of disorder that pervades Titus Andronicus. Keywords: Shakespeare, senecan sensibility, structure of disorder, fragmentation.

Research paper thumbnail of “The Controlling force of Rome in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus” (1999)

Sederi X (1999): 205-210, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of "'Then She Usurps Upon Another's Right': Elizabeth Cary's Authorship" (1998)

Alfinge X (1998): 11-36, 1998

Research paper thumbnail of “Affective Oriented Time: Finitude and Ageing in Jackie Kay’s Border Country”

Bloomsbury Handbook of Literature and Ageing. Eds. Heike Hartung, Raquel Medina and Sarah Falcus. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. 413-425.

Research paper thumbnail of "Randall T. Davidson's Aldermanbury Shakespeare Sermon (1923). A Religious and Theatrical Commemoration of the First Folio"

Shakespeare's First Folio Revisited: Quadricentennial Essays. Ed. Remedios Perni. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2023. 151-167.

Research paper thumbnail of "Re-membering the Body in Philip Roth's The Dying Animal"

Reading the ‘Trace’ in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Eds. Rosario Arias and Lin Pattersson. Canterbury: Gylphi, 2022. 127-155, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of “Anne Tyler’s Noah’s Compass: Progress towards Wisdom” (2016)

Literary Creativity and the Older Woman Writer: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. Núria Casado-Gual, Emma Domínguez-Rué and Brian Worsfold. Bern: Peter Lang, 2016. 191-221, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of “Introduction. Literature that Returns to Life and the Mystique of Age” (2016)

Traces of Aging. Old Age and Memory in Contemporary Narrative. Eds. Marta Cerezo Moreno and Nieves Pascual Soler. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2016. 7-19, 2016

This collection consists of eight essays that examine the way narratives determine our understand... more This collection consists of eight essays that examine the way narratives determine our understanding of old age and condition how the experience is lived. Contributors to this volume have based their analysis on the concept of »narrative identity« developed by Paul Ricoeur, built upon the idea that fiction makes life, and on his definition of »trace« as the mark of time. By investigating the traces of aging imprinted in a series of literary and filmic works they dismantle the narrative of old age as decline and foreclosure to assemble one of transformation and growth.

Research paper thumbnail of "Shakespeare at the Vatican, 1964" (2015)

Celebrating Shakespeare: Commemoration and Cultural Memory. Eds. Clara Calvo, Coppélia Kahn and Clara Calvo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 121-139, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of “Scrutinizing the ‘Medical Glance’: Bodily Decay, Disease and Death in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman.” (2014)

Alive and Kicking at All Ages: Health, Life Expectancy, and Life Course Identity. (Aging Studies in Europe 5). Eds. Ulla, Kriebernegg, Roberta Maierhofer, Barbara Ratzenboeck. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014. 275-284., 2014

The linking of age and ill-health is part of a cultural narrative of decline as age is often defi... more The linking of age and ill-health is part of a cultural narrative of decline as age is often defined as the absence of good health. Research has shown that we are aged by culture, but we are also culturally made ill when we age. The cultural ambiguity of aging can thus deconstruct negative images of old age as physical decrepitude. This volume investigates the topic of health within the matrix of time and experience by addressing issues such as how our understanding of health influences our notion of agency within a subversive deconstruction of normative age concepts, and what role the notion of health plays in such an interaction.

Research paper thumbnail of "Memory, History and Identity in Contemporary Fiction and Memoir" (2013)

Hopes and Fears: English and American Studies in Spain. Coord. Rosario Arias Doblas, Miriam López Rodríguez, Antonio Moreno Ortiz and Chantal Pérez Hernández. Universidad de Málaga, 2013. Formato electrónico, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of “El canon literario como artífice de la construcción cultural de la violencia de género: Chaucer y Shakespeare” (2010)

El sustrato cultural de la violencia de género: Literatura, arte, cine y videojuegos. Ángeles de la Concha Muñoz (Coord). Madrid: Síntesis, 2010. 19-43, 2010

Research paper thumbnail of “Roman Shakespeare and the Elizabethan View of the Roman Empire” (2008)

Estudios de Filología Inglesa. Homenaje a la Dra. Asunción Alba Pelayo. Teresa Gibert Maceda y Laura Alba Juez (Coord.). Madrid: UNED, 2008. 359-372, 2008

The permeating presence of Rome in Shakespeare’s Roman plays dramatically portrays the city as bo... more The permeating presence of Rome in Shakespeare’s Roman plays dramatically portrays the city as both a paradigm of order and a sign of tumult. This dichotomy relates to the rich, varied, and sometimes contradictory Elizabethan views of the Roman Empire. Rome is perceived by the Elizabethans as a multiform element which embraces opposite notions of order and chaos. Roman history turned into an instrument of power and was appropriated in order to support clashing political ideas. Shakespeare’s vision of Rome is a literary reflection of the varied Elizabethan attitudes towards Rome. His texts constituted an essential element within an Elizabethan cultural discourse that actively participated in the current political debates about the nature and legitimacy of monarchy and about the thin line that divides rightful and moral rule from tyranny. In the Roman plays, Shakespeare reflects on the dangers of political immorality and pride by depicting Rome as a city of both order and ruin. This study shows how no single attitude towards Rome prevails in Shakespeare’s Roman plays. The playwright’s portrayal of Rome as both a location of order and stability but also of political conflict, ruin, chaos, dissolution, mutilation and disease clearly reinforces the ambivalent conception of Rome during the Elizabethan period. Key Words: Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, Rome, Roman History, Order, Chaos.

Research paper thumbnail of “Female Sacrifice and Gender Violence in A. S. Byatt’s Babel Tower. An Ethical Perspective” (2007)

The Ethical Component in Experimental British Fiction in the 1960s. Eds. Susana Onega, Jean-Michel Ganteau. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 91-116, 2007

As A. S. Byatt herself has asserted, Babel Tower was planned to be “subtly, not ostentatiously, ‘... more As A. S. Byatt herself has asserted, Babel Tower was planned to be “subtly, not ostentatiously, ‘experimental’ ― should take apart the fabric of language and feeling and thought.” This chapter highlights the fact that the novel’s experimental and ethical constituents are closely related and views the novel as an ethical interrogation of patriarchal discourse. Such questioning puts forward, in Levinasian terms, the irreducibility of the other to the same. The novel’s appropriation and rewriting of traditional all-male sacrificial theories reinforce this ethical redefinition.

Research paper thumbnail of "Curso virtual de literatura inglesa anglosajona, medieval y renacentista (demostración)" (2006)

Proceedings of the 29th International AEDEAN Conference, Universidad de Jaén. 2006. 451-471. Formato electrónico, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of "Literatura y Violencia de Género: Cuestiones de Representación" (2005)

Proceedings of the 28th International AEDEAN Conference. Universitat de València, 2005. Formato electrónico, 2005

Research paper thumbnail of "Margaret Atwood's Female Docile Bodies: A Foucauldian Reading of the Handmaid's Tale" (2004)

Proceedings of the 27th International AEDEAN Conference. Salamanca: Ambos Mundos, 2004. Formato electrónico, 2004

Research paper thumbnail of “As You Like It como juego de revisiones y reescrituras” (2004)

Shakespeare en la imaginación contemporánea. revisiones y reescrituras de su obra. Ágeles de la Concha (Coord.). Madrid: UNED, 2004. 231-256, 2004

Research paper thumbnail of "The Dissected Body: Fascination and Horror on the Elizabethan Stage" (2003)

Fifty Years of English Studies in Spain (1952-2002): A Commemorative Volume. Elena Seoane Posse, María José Lopez Couso, Patricia Fra López, e Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez (Coord). Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2003. 483-489, 2003

Research paper thumbnail of “Surfacing and the Geography of the Mind” (2001)

Diaspora and Exile. Colección Estudio 78. Eds. Lucía Mora González, Bernhard Dietz, Asunción Sánchez Villalón. Ciudad Real: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2001. 43-51, 2001

Research paper thumbnail of "The Rhetoric of Rape in Ovid and Shakespeare:"Titus Andronicus" (2001)

Estudios de Filología Inglesa. Actas de las IV Jornadas de Filología Inglesa. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba. 441-449, 2001

Research paper thumbnail of Critical Approaches to Shakespeare: (1623-2000). Shakespeare for All Time

Critical Approaches to Shakespeare (1623–2000). Shakespeare for All Time addresses the keys to un... more Critical Approaches to Shakespeare (1623–2000). Shakespeare for All Time addresses the keys to understanding the significance of the critical reception of Shakespeare from the seventeenth to the end of the twentieth century. It aims to show that the richness of these different modes of reading Shakespeare over time and their productive interactions have been fundamental in the constant resignification of Shakespeare as they have gradually conformed and fed our critical perception and interpretation of his works.

This book outlines the most influential critical reflections and methods inspired by Shakespeare’s writings and their main representatives as it digs into the fertile dialogue between these approaches, which emanate from the complexity and depth of the author’s work. These critical paradigms react to previous positions and set the basis for the following ones, sometimes oppositional and sometimes complementary, but always vital to comprehending the past, present, and future historical, literary, and social impact of the author’s work.

The review Critical Approaches to Shakespeare offers of the main critical lines from the seventeenth to the end of the twentieth century shows where critical studies of Shakespeare come from, an indispensable scholarly task which is crucial to understanding that the new turns and approaches to the author during the twenty first century relate and speak to their forerunners in multifarious enriching ways from humanist, social, formalist, theatrical, and historical perspectives whose nuances can only be fully appreciated by knowing the evolution of Shakespeare critical practices from their very beginnings.

Research paper thumbnail of Ejes de la literatura inglesa medieval y renacentista

Ejes de la literatura inglesa medieval y renacentista , 2010

Research paper thumbnail of Shakespeare's Religious Afterlives. Special Issue

Critical Survey 35.2 (Summer 2023): 1-10. , 2023

Research paper thumbnail of Orientation and Recognition in Contemporary Illness Narratives (Special Issue. Guest editors: Rosario Arias, Rosalía Baena, Marta Cerezo)

Prose Studies, 42.1, 2021

What does it mean to live with breast cancer, anorexia, chronic pain, dementia, or COVID-19? How ... more What does it mean to live with breast cancer, anorexia, chronic pain, dementia, or COVID-19? How does it feel to care for aging parents or to live with people with Alzheimer’s? Contemporary illness memoirs foreground these experiences, offering readers insider accounts of lives marked by infirmity. This special issue of Prose Studies presents six critical readings of contemporary experiences of illness, highlighting both the aesthetic and personal experience of reading illness memoirs. These articles address pressing questions regarding how we understand illness and disability today, what popular perspectives get wrong about lived experiences of illness, as well as how reading illness memoirs might help correct widespread or less-thoughtful social and cultural perceptions of the experience of illness.

Research paper thumbnail of Traces of Aging. Old Age and Memory in Contemporary Narrative

This collection consists of eight essays that examine the way narratives determine our understand... more This collection consists of eight essays that examine the way narratives determine our understanding of old age and condition how the experience is lived. Contributors to this volume have based their analysis on the concept of »narrative identity« developed by Paul Ricoeur, built upon the idea that fiction makes life, and on his definition of »trace« as the mark of time. By investigating the traces of aging imprinted in a series of literary and filmic works they dismantle the narrative of old age as decline and foreclosure to assemble one of transformation and growth.