Dolores Herrero Granado | University of Zaragoza (original) (raw)
Papers by Dolores Herrero Granado
Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies
Although dystopia has been an enduring trope in literature, it is now, however, that dystopian an... more Although dystopia has been an enduring trope in literature, it is now, however, that dystopian and apocalyptic fiction has become especially popular all over the world. The main aim of this article is to discuss how contemporary Indian fiction denounces the barbarity of contemporary Indian nationalism, in particular the policies enforced by a repressive Indian state where tradition and purity are valued above multiculturality, dialogue and equality. In order to do this, I focus on two internationally acclaimed novels, namely, NayantaraSahgal’s When the Moon Shines by Day (2017) and Prayaag Akbar’s Leila (2018). In different but complementary ways, both dystopias draw a telling portrait of precarious times in contemporary India. Both novels also warn against the dangers of the fundamentalist version of Hindu nationalism and cultural censorship, at the same time as they bring to our attention the damage that a dominant minority can inflict on those situated at the bottom of the social...
International Journal of English Studies, 2021
One of the effects of globalisation has been population mobility as a result of famine, climate w... more One of the effects of globalisation has been population mobility as a result of famine, climate warming and war conflicts, among other things. This flow of refugees, however, is often seen as a menace to the rule of law and human rights concomitant with the Western lifestyle. Refugees are no longer regarded as human beings and victims, but rather as danger, even as potential terrorists, which has led many governments, including the Australian, to detain them indefinitely in detention centres where they are confined in inhuman conditions. The main aim of this paper will be to describe Australian immigration policies and how contemporary Australian narratives on and by refugees are reflecting this situation, mainly by analysing a selection of texts from three recently published collections, namely, A Country Too Far (2013), They Cannot Take the Sky (2017) and Seabirds Crying in the Harbour Dark (2017), and Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains (2018).
Humanities, 2021
The main aim of this Special Issue is to expose how a variety of contemporary Australian dystopia... more The main aim of this Special Issue is to expose how a variety of contemporary Australian dystopias delve into a number of worrying global issues, thus making it clear that our contemporary world is already corroborating and bearing witness to a number of futuristic nightmares [...]
Atlantis Journal of the Spanish Association For Anglo American Studies, Jan 6, 2013
Humanities, 2015
This paper will rely on some well-known theories on trauma, memory and ethics to study how Jim Lo... more This paper will rely on some well-known theories on trauma, memory and ethics to study how Jim Loach's debut film Oranges and Sunshine (2010) testifies to the traumatic deportation of up to 150,000 British children to distant parts of the Empire, mainly Australia, until 1970. Oranges and Sunshine was based on Margaret Humphreys' moving memoir, originally entitled Empty Cradles (1994) but later re-titled Oranges and Sunshine after Loach's film. What these two texts basically claim is the need to recover historic memory through heartbreaking acts of remembrance, which can alone denounce the atrocities that were concomitant with the colonial enterprise and pave the way for disclosing and working through individual and collective traumas.
La finalidad de esta tesis será el análisis de la novela de Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure. Más co... more La finalidad de esta tesis será el análisis de la novela de Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure. Más concretamente, el estudio y comparación de los dos personajes protagonistas femeninos: Sue Bridehead y Arabella Donn, dos mujeres atrapadas en un contexto determinista y naturalista, marcadas por sus diferentes orígenes y posiciones en la obra. Sue es la individualista, la mujer con ideas muy avanzadas para su tiempo, mientras que Arabella forma parte del folclore rural, y está siempre dispuesta a adaptarse para poder sobrevivir. El trabajo mostrará cómo la dicotomía entre ambas mujeres ofrece una crítica abierta a instituciones como el matrimonio. Asimismo, Hardy ofrece un final que no deja indiferente. La incapacidad de Jude de adaptarse solo le traerá desgracias. La última novela de Thomas Hardy muestra, por consiguiente, la incertidumbre del fin-de-siècle y las diferentes reacciones que sus personajes principales muestran ante esta época de grandes cambios. ABSTRACT The main purpose of...
The literary fairy tale, present along history since the Middle Ages, is a device that portrays t... more The literary fairy tale, present along history since the Middle Ages, is a device that portrays the ideology, politics, values, and morals of a society. However, they have also worked as an acculturation device for many centuries now. The language used in these tales is a key element, for it is selected by the tale collector or the tale writer with a purpose. A clear example is the fairy tale "Cinderella". People with power, men in the majority of cases, have articulated some specific discourse in order to reproduce or, rather, create, a reality in which men are strong while women are weak, men are active while women are passive, men are the leaders while women are the followers, just to mention a few dichotomies. Male collectors of fairy tales such as Basile, the brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault have used their power as storytellers to reproduce a hierarchical structure of society, namely, patriarchy. These biased ideas on women, which the literary fairy tale has help...
The main objective of this Final Degree Dissertation will be to analyse the novel Two Years, Eigh... more The main objective of this Final Degree Dissertation will be to analyse the novel Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie. A good example of the literary movement known as magic realism, it illustrates what the great majority of critics consider to be the main characteristic of this sort of texts: the gradual insertion of the magic element onto the apparently realist text until the total superposition/overlapping of reality and fiction takes place. This is here done in order to represent the rationalism/religion binary and, more precisely, to denounce the rejection of reason in order to impose religious fanaticism, which is currently booming in certain parts of the world. The shocking and strange lack of gravity with which the novel beings will progressively dovetail into a whole fantastic world, which will put into question, not only the rationalism on which our modern world is based, but also the mere relevance and existence of it. By means of the use of ...
La propuesta de innovación de este TFM surge a partir de algunas necesidades identificadas en la ... more La propuesta de innovación de este TFM surge a partir de algunas necesidades identificadas en la materia inglés en un grupo de 4º curso de ESO en un contexto escolar multicultural: insuficiente práctica oral o de tareas de aprendizaje cooperativo, así como ausencia de textos de lectura auténticos. En consecuencia, la presente propuesta busca incorporar un tema actual que apele a la toma de conciencia, como lo es la crisis global de migración y asilo político, como eje conductor de una unidad didáctica como proyecto. La tarea final presupondrá que los alumnos elijan entre la realización de una novela gráfica o un corto de animación. Los principios teóricos y metodológicos que sustentan esta unidad son los actuales enfoques comunicativos, el aprendizaje por tareas en general, y el aprendizaje por proyectos en particular. La secuenciación de actividades sigue el patrón de diseño curricular inverso y el enfoque centrado en el lector es ampliamente aplicado en la interacción y negociació...
This dissertation will explore the great impact that technology has had on many aspects of daily ... more This dissertation will explore the great impact that technology has had on many aspects of daily life and, more specifically, the influence and importance that it has had over literature in recent years. Firstly, these important technological advances have dovetailed into new ways of writing and reading literature. There has been an ever-increasing development in the way of reading and searching for information, from the traditional method, characterized by concrete traditional printed sources, to the electronic one (i.e. electronic book devices), with which we are already living. Secondly, technology has not only influenced reading habits, but also the way in which these books come to light as a result of a new phenomenon known as ‘self-publishing.’ The analysis of this new phenomenon will reveal the advantages and disadvantages that it poses. This dissertation will also focus on Indian-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, who decided to resort to the self-publishing phenomenon in order to lau...
The topic of the essay is the analysis of the late Victorian novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D... more The topic of the essay is the analysis of the late Victorian novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The aim of the study is to show how this novel reflects the so-called "fin-de-siècle" crisis that took place in the last decades of the Victorian era and the beginning of the twentieth century. Thomas Hardy was a late Victorian writer, and could therefore be regarded as a transitional figure, because his long career straddled those two different centuries/ periods. The novel under analysis perfecly depicts the transition from an old rural world to a new industrial one. It is also Hardy's critique of the unfair and hypocritical society in which he lived, his attack against Victorian morality, and especially against the division of society into two separate spheres and the consequent double standard of morality that this entailed. The novel also reflects Hardy's fatalistic and pessimistic views about society's future, in keeping with Schopenhauer'...
This study intends to provide further insight and depth into the figure of Marianne Dashwood in t... more This study intends to provide further insight and depth into the figure of Marianne Dashwood in the novel Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. It will focus on how Romantic ideology is portrayed as a trap and severe danger for the heroine in the society of her time. In order to do that, this analysis will first consider the aim of the novel as regards Marianne’s evolution, to then study her in relation to her sister Elinor and the Romantic ideology that she so wonderfully seems to embody. Moreover, the use of language to express feelings and emotions will also be taken into account, as well as the environment in which Marianne has been brought up and the figure of Mrs. Dashwood, her mother. The conclusion that can be reached is that, in this novel, excessive feelings are shown as being rather dangerous, even life-threatening, in this transitional period (from Neoclassicism to Romanticism). On the whole, this is a didactic novel that strives to make it clear that some Neoclassical ...
Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel written by Emily Brontë, who made an excellent use of her ... more Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel written by Emily Brontë, who made an excellent use of her narrative skills to make the reader play an active role in the reading and interpretation of the novel. The figure of the villain in this intense and complicated love story has become a polemic topic discussed by many different critics, whose final conclusions are not always the same. The violent, unexpected and sometimes incomprehensible actions carried out by the mysterious Heathcliff have led many readers and critics to consider him to be the villain par excellence of the novel. However, it should be noted that, despite all his evil actions, there is something that on the other hand turns him into the hero and sufferer of the story: his impossible love for Catherine Earnshaw. The narrator, Ellen Dean, has also been regarded by some critics as the devilish villain of the story, due to her capacity to control the other characters and most of the situations that take place over the cours...
Este trabajo se ha realizado llevando a cabo, en primer lugar, una recolección de datos e informa... more Este trabajo se ha realizado llevando a cabo, en primer lugar, una recolección de datos e información sobre el género gótico y sus distintas variaciones; y en segundo lugar un análisis exhaustivo de la novela para encontrar y analizar las distintas manifestaciones del gótico en esta. Únicamente cuando han sido detectados todos los elementos góticos, femeninos y post coloniales, es posible entender el sentido total de la novela y su propósito: describir la realidad de Australia postcolonial vivida por los no nativos, y por las mujeres más específicamente. El resultado de este análisis podría resumirse en que la identidad individual de cada ser humano está atada al contexto social en el que habita, y por tanto lo unheimlich de la vida postcolonial en Australia marca también la vida privada de aquellos que la habitan.<br /
This dissertation analyses the treatment of three different aspects of interest in the novel Tirr... more This dissertation analyses the treatment of three different aspects of interest in the novel Tirra Lirra by the River, by the Australian novelist Jessica Anderson. Firstly, this paper will aim to carry out a comprehensive study of the impact that the use of intertextuality has on the novel, as well as to provide an explanation for the different uses that the novel makes of it. Secondly, it will examine the novel’s representation of women’s difficult condition and female artists’ problems during the first decades of the twentieth century; and thirdly, it will tackle the importance of trauma, mainly as reflected in the figure of the protagonist, Nora Porteous. Jessica Anderson, like her novel’s main female character, was strongly marked and influenced by the past, and strove to bring to the fore in her works her own conceptions of art, life and reality, as well as her own personal frights and concerns about the society she had to live in. In order to carry out this analysis, support m...
AbstractThis undergraduate dissertation will explore how Mary, the female narrator and protagonis... more AbstractThis undergraduate dissertation will explore how Mary, the female narrator and protagonist of the novel The Colour of Milk (2012) by Nell Leyshon, turns to writing in order to escape the wretched circumstances of being an abused illiterate fifteen-year-old, working-class rural girl. The socioeconomic context in which the story unfolds –the first half of the nineteenth century in England– will be provided for a better understanding of the analysis, in which the social constraints that working-class women had to endure, especially female agricultural and domestic workers like Mary, will be emphasised. The first part of the analysis will deal with Mary’s identity and the oppressive atmosphere in which she has grown up. Secondly, the two settings in the story will be examined: in one way, Mary’s precious farm and her intimate relationship with nature, and in another, the unfamiliar vicarage where she finds both comfort and misery. Lastly, Mary’s traumatic past will be explored i...
Este trabajo estudia la importancia de Wessex y la tradición popular en la obra de Thomas Hardy a... more Este trabajo estudia la importancia de Wessex y la tradición popular en la obra de Thomas Hardy a través del análisis del cuento “The Withered Arm”, incluido en su colección de historias cortas Wessex Tales (1888). El análisis de este relato revela la situación de una sociedad al borde del colapso, a saber, la Inglaterra rural Victoriana tardía y su choque con la nueva sociedad industrial emergente, tal y como ambas son representadas por los personajes Rhoda Brook y Gertrude Lodge, respectivamente. En concreto, se establecen comparaciones entre estas dos protagonistas del relato para ilustrar una de las principales dicotomías en torno a la cual giran los textos de Thomas Hardy: el choque entre Wessex y los miembros del ‘folk’ y los foráneos con respecto a esa tierra y al mundo rural en general. Esta dicotomía es muy importante para entender el destino de cada personaje y su evolución personal a lo largo del relato. Para concluir, este cuento, lleno de simbolismo, representa la impor...
Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies
Although dystopia has been an enduring trope in literature, it is now, however, that dystopian an... more Although dystopia has been an enduring trope in literature, it is now, however, that dystopian and apocalyptic fiction has become especially popular all over the world. The main aim of this article is to discuss how contemporary Indian fiction denounces the barbarity of contemporary Indian nationalism, in particular the policies enforced by a repressive Indian state where tradition and purity are valued above multiculturality, dialogue and equality. In order to do this, I focus on two internationally acclaimed novels, namely, NayantaraSahgal’s When the Moon Shines by Day (2017) and Prayaag Akbar’s Leila (2018). In different but complementary ways, both dystopias draw a telling portrait of precarious times in contemporary India. Both novels also warn against the dangers of the fundamentalist version of Hindu nationalism and cultural censorship, at the same time as they bring to our attention the damage that a dominant minority can inflict on those situated at the bottom of the social...
International Journal of English Studies, 2021
One of the effects of globalisation has been population mobility as a result of famine, climate w... more One of the effects of globalisation has been population mobility as a result of famine, climate warming and war conflicts, among other things. This flow of refugees, however, is often seen as a menace to the rule of law and human rights concomitant with the Western lifestyle. Refugees are no longer regarded as human beings and victims, but rather as danger, even as potential terrorists, which has led many governments, including the Australian, to detain them indefinitely in detention centres where they are confined in inhuman conditions. The main aim of this paper will be to describe Australian immigration policies and how contemporary Australian narratives on and by refugees are reflecting this situation, mainly by analysing a selection of texts from three recently published collections, namely, A Country Too Far (2013), They Cannot Take the Sky (2017) and Seabirds Crying in the Harbour Dark (2017), and Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains (2018).
Humanities, 2021
The main aim of this Special Issue is to expose how a variety of contemporary Australian dystopia... more The main aim of this Special Issue is to expose how a variety of contemporary Australian dystopias delve into a number of worrying global issues, thus making it clear that our contemporary world is already corroborating and bearing witness to a number of futuristic nightmares [...]
Atlantis Journal of the Spanish Association For Anglo American Studies, Jan 6, 2013
Humanities, 2015
This paper will rely on some well-known theories on trauma, memory and ethics to study how Jim Lo... more This paper will rely on some well-known theories on trauma, memory and ethics to study how Jim Loach's debut film Oranges and Sunshine (2010) testifies to the traumatic deportation of up to 150,000 British children to distant parts of the Empire, mainly Australia, until 1970. Oranges and Sunshine was based on Margaret Humphreys' moving memoir, originally entitled Empty Cradles (1994) but later re-titled Oranges and Sunshine after Loach's film. What these two texts basically claim is the need to recover historic memory through heartbreaking acts of remembrance, which can alone denounce the atrocities that were concomitant with the colonial enterprise and pave the way for disclosing and working through individual and collective traumas.
La finalidad de esta tesis será el análisis de la novela de Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure. Más co... more La finalidad de esta tesis será el análisis de la novela de Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure. Más concretamente, el estudio y comparación de los dos personajes protagonistas femeninos: Sue Bridehead y Arabella Donn, dos mujeres atrapadas en un contexto determinista y naturalista, marcadas por sus diferentes orígenes y posiciones en la obra. Sue es la individualista, la mujer con ideas muy avanzadas para su tiempo, mientras que Arabella forma parte del folclore rural, y está siempre dispuesta a adaptarse para poder sobrevivir. El trabajo mostrará cómo la dicotomía entre ambas mujeres ofrece una crítica abierta a instituciones como el matrimonio. Asimismo, Hardy ofrece un final que no deja indiferente. La incapacidad de Jude de adaptarse solo le traerá desgracias. La última novela de Thomas Hardy muestra, por consiguiente, la incertidumbre del fin-de-siècle y las diferentes reacciones que sus personajes principales muestran ante esta época de grandes cambios. ABSTRACT The main purpose of...
The literary fairy tale, present along history since the Middle Ages, is a device that portrays t... more The literary fairy tale, present along history since the Middle Ages, is a device that portrays the ideology, politics, values, and morals of a society. However, they have also worked as an acculturation device for many centuries now. The language used in these tales is a key element, for it is selected by the tale collector or the tale writer with a purpose. A clear example is the fairy tale "Cinderella". People with power, men in the majority of cases, have articulated some specific discourse in order to reproduce or, rather, create, a reality in which men are strong while women are weak, men are active while women are passive, men are the leaders while women are the followers, just to mention a few dichotomies. Male collectors of fairy tales such as Basile, the brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault have used their power as storytellers to reproduce a hierarchical structure of society, namely, patriarchy. These biased ideas on women, which the literary fairy tale has help...
The main objective of this Final Degree Dissertation will be to analyse the novel Two Years, Eigh... more The main objective of this Final Degree Dissertation will be to analyse the novel Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie. A good example of the literary movement known as magic realism, it illustrates what the great majority of critics consider to be the main characteristic of this sort of texts: the gradual insertion of the magic element onto the apparently realist text until the total superposition/overlapping of reality and fiction takes place. This is here done in order to represent the rationalism/religion binary and, more precisely, to denounce the rejection of reason in order to impose religious fanaticism, which is currently booming in certain parts of the world. The shocking and strange lack of gravity with which the novel beings will progressively dovetail into a whole fantastic world, which will put into question, not only the rationalism on which our modern world is based, but also the mere relevance and existence of it. By means of the use of ...
La propuesta de innovación de este TFM surge a partir de algunas necesidades identificadas en la ... more La propuesta de innovación de este TFM surge a partir de algunas necesidades identificadas en la materia inglés en un grupo de 4º curso de ESO en un contexto escolar multicultural: insuficiente práctica oral o de tareas de aprendizaje cooperativo, así como ausencia de textos de lectura auténticos. En consecuencia, la presente propuesta busca incorporar un tema actual que apele a la toma de conciencia, como lo es la crisis global de migración y asilo político, como eje conductor de una unidad didáctica como proyecto. La tarea final presupondrá que los alumnos elijan entre la realización de una novela gráfica o un corto de animación. Los principios teóricos y metodológicos que sustentan esta unidad son los actuales enfoques comunicativos, el aprendizaje por tareas en general, y el aprendizaje por proyectos en particular. La secuenciación de actividades sigue el patrón de diseño curricular inverso y el enfoque centrado en el lector es ampliamente aplicado en la interacción y negociació...
This dissertation will explore the great impact that technology has had on many aspects of daily ... more This dissertation will explore the great impact that technology has had on many aspects of daily life and, more specifically, the influence and importance that it has had over literature in recent years. Firstly, these important technological advances have dovetailed into new ways of writing and reading literature. There has been an ever-increasing development in the way of reading and searching for information, from the traditional method, characterized by concrete traditional printed sources, to the electronic one (i.e. electronic book devices), with which we are already living. Secondly, technology has not only influenced reading habits, but also the way in which these books come to light as a result of a new phenomenon known as ‘self-publishing.’ The analysis of this new phenomenon will reveal the advantages and disadvantages that it poses. This dissertation will also focus on Indian-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, who decided to resort to the self-publishing phenomenon in order to lau...
The topic of the essay is the analysis of the late Victorian novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D... more The topic of the essay is the analysis of the late Victorian novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The aim of the study is to show how this novel reflects the so-called "fin-de-siècle" crisis that took place in the last decades of the Victorian era and the beginning of the twentieth century. Thomas Hardy was a late Victorian writer, and could therefore be regarded as a transitional figure, because his long career straddled those two different centuries/ periods. The novel under analysis perfecly depicts the transition from an old rural world to a new industrial one. It is also Hardy's critique of the unfair and hypocritical society in which he lived, his attack against Victorian morality, and especially against the division of society into two separate spheres and the consequent double standard of morality that this entailed. The novel also reflects Hardy's fatalistic and pessimistic views about society's future, in keeping with Schopenhauer'...
This study intends to provide further insight and depth into the figure of Marianne Dashwood in t... more This study intends to provide further insight and depth into the figure of Marianne Dashwood in the novel Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. It will focus on how Romantic ideology is portrayed as a trap and severe danger for the heroine in the society of her time. In order to do that, this analysis will first consider the aim of the novel as regards Marianne’s evolution, to then study her in relation to her sister Elinor and the Romantic ideology that she so wonderfully seems to embody. Moreover, the use of language to express feelings and emotions will also be taken into account, as well as the environment in which Marianne has been brought up and the figure of Mrs. Dashwood, her mother. The conclusion that can be reached is that, in this novel, excessive feelings are shown as being rather dangerous, even life-threatening, in this transitional period (from Neoclassicism to Romanticism). On the whole, this is a didactic novel that strives to make it clear that some Neoclassical ...
Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel written by Emily Brontë, who made an excellent use of her ... more Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel written by Emily Brontë, who made an excellent use of her narrative skills to make the reader play an active role in the reading and interpretation of the novel. The figure of the villain in this intense and complicated love story has become a polemic topic discussed by many different critics, whose final conclusions are not always the same. The violent, unexpected and sometimes incomprehensible actions carried out by the mysterious Heathcliff have led many readers and critics to consider him to be the villain par excellence of the novel. However, it should be noted that, despite all his evil actions, there is something that on the other hand turns him into the hero and sufferer of the story: his impossible love for Catherine Earnshaw. The narrator, Ellen Dean, has also been regarded by some critics as the devilish villain of the story, due to her capacity to control the other characters and most of the situations that take place over the cours...
Este trabajo se ha realizado llevando a cabo, en primer lugar, una recolección de datos e informa... more Este trabajo se ha realizado llevando a cabo, en primer lugar, una recolección de datos e información sobre el género gótico y sus distintas variaciones; y en segundo lugar un análisis exhaustivo de la novela para encontrar y analizar las distintas manifestaciones del gótico en esta. Únicamente cuando han sido detectados todos los elementos góticos, femeninos y post coloniales, es posible entender el sentido total de la novela y su propósito: describir la realidad de Australia postcolonial vivida por los no nativos, y por las mujeres más específicamente. El resultado de este análisis podría resumirse en que la identidad individual de cada ser humano está atada al contexto social en el que habita, y por tanto lo unheimlich de la vida postcolonial en Australia marca también la vida privada de aquellos que la habitan.<br /
This dissertation analyses the treatment of three different aspects of interest in the novel Tirr... more This dissertation analyses the treatment of three different aspects of interest in the novel Tirra Lirra by the River, by the Australian novelist Jessica Anderson. Firstly, this paper will aim to carry out a comprehensive study of the impact that the use of intertextuality has on the novel, as well as to provide an explanation for the different uses that the novel makes of it. Secondly, it will examine the novel’s representation of women’s difficult condition and female artists’ problems during the first decades of the twentieth century; and thirdly, it will tackle the importance of trauma, mainly as reflected in the figure of the protagonist, Nora Porteous. Jessica Anderson, like her novel’s main female character, was strongly marked and influenced by the past, and strove to bring to the fore in her works her own conceptions of art, life and reality, as well as her own personal frights and concerns about the society she had to live in. In order to carry out this analysis, support m...
AbstractThis undergraduate dissertation will explore how Mary, the female narrator and protagonis... more AbstractThis undergraduate dissertation will explore how Mary, the female narrator and protagonist of the novel The Colour of Milk (2012) by Nell Leyshon, turns to writing in order to escape the wretched circumstances of being an abused illiterate fifteen-year-old, working-class rural girl. The socioeconomic context in which the story unfolds –the first half of the nineteenth century in England– will be provided for a better understanding of the analysis, in which the social constraints that working-class women had to endure, especially female agricultural and domestic workers like Mary, will be emphasised. The first part of the analysis will deal with Mary’s identity and the oppressive atmosphere in which she has grown up. Secondly, the two settings in the story will be examined: in one way, Mary’s precious farm and her intimate relationship with nature, and in another, the unfamiliar vicarage where she finds both comfort and misery. Lastly, Mary’s traumatic past will be explored i...
Este trabajo estudia la importancia de Wessex y la tradición popular en la obra de Thomas Hardy a... more Este trabajo estudia la importancia de Wessex y la tradición popular en la obra de Thomas Hardy a través del análisis del cuento “The Withered Arm”, incluido en su colección de historias cortas Wessex Tales (1888). El análisis de este relato revela la situación de una sociedad al borde del colapso, a saber, la Inglaterra rural Victoriana tardía y su choque con la nueva sociedad industrial emergente, tal y como ambas son representadas por los personajes Rhoda Brook y Gertrude Lodge, respectivamente. En concreto, se establecen comparaciones entre estas dos protagonistas del relato para ilustrar una de las principales dicotomías en torno a la cual giran los textos de Thomas Hardy: el choque entre Wessex y los miembros del ‘folk’ y los foráneos con respecto a esa tierra y al mundo rural en general. Esta dicotomía es muy importante para entender el destino de cada personaje y su evolución personal a lo largo del relato. Para concluir, este cuento, lleno de simbolismo, representa la impor...
Amsterdam and New York: Brill/Rodopi., 2011
These essays discuss trauma studies as refracted through literature, focusing on the many ways in... more These essays discuss trauma studies as refracted through literature, focusing on the many ways in which the terms ‘cultural trauma’ and ‘personal trauma’ intertwine in postcolonial fiction. In a catastrophic age such as the present, trauma itself may serve to provide linkage through cross-cultural understanding and new forms of community. Western colonization needs to be theorized in terms of the infliction of collective trauma, and the postcolonial process is itself a post-traumatic cultural formation and condition. Moreover, the West’s claim on trauma studies (via the Holocaust) needs to be put in a perspective recuperating other, non-Western experiences.
Geo-historical areas covered include Africa (genital alteration) and, more specifically, South Africa (apartheid), the Caribbean (racial and gendered violence in Trinidad; the trauma of Haiti), and Asia (total war in the Philippines; ethnic violence in India compared to 9/11). Special attention is devoted to Australia (Aboriginal and multicultural aspects of traumatic experience) and New Zealand (the Maori Battalion). Writers treated include J.M. Coetzee, Shani Mootoo, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Flanagan, Janette Turner Hospital, Andrew McGahan, Tim Winton, and Patricia Grace. Illuminating insights are provided by creative writers (Merlinda Bobis and Meena Alexander).
Heidelberg: C. Winter., 2011
Trauma and ethics are two terms inextricably linked. This book is concerned with trauma and its r... more Trauma and ethics are two terms inextricably linked. This book is concerned with trauma and its representations in contemporary British and American literature within the wider context of the ethics of writing, reading, and interpreting trauma and trauma narratives. More particularly, it analyses the connections between trauma, gender, identity, and genre issues. The contributors to this volume study the various modes of writing, genres, and generic conventions which have been used and/or subverted to represent traumas of different kinds in a selection of contemporary British and American novels. This collection will consequently deal with one of the most important concerns of contemporary academic criticism, namely, the ethical implications of the representation of trauma. Moreover, gender issues will also be given special attention, since many contemporary novels in English focus on the articulation of traumas resulting from the inequalities and abuses connected with identity and gender.