QUE HAY EN VOL 28 NO. 2
INDICE Y ABSTRACTOS
Luz-Mary Rincón : The Use of Discourse Markers in the Spanish of Bucaramanga, Colombia
Natalio Ohanna : Traducción de la memoria: Entenado, de Juan José Saer
David W. Bird : Arendtian Banality and Irony in Francisco Umbral’s Leyenda del César visionario (1992)
John P. Gabriele : Memory, Trauma, and the Postmodern Self in Alfonso Vallejo’s Panic
Joann McFerran Mount : Neruda: The Offerings of Strangers
José Luis Venegas : El “Principio de Incertidumbre” de Heisenberg y la narración intersticial de “Axolotl” de Julio Cortázar
Frederick B. Mills : Moments of Decision in Mario Bencastro’s Disparo en la catedral
Rebecca J. Atencio : Remembering the Traumatic Past in Postdictatorial Argentina: The Photo Album as Metaphor in Ana María Shua’s El libro de los recuerdos
Rosana Díaz Zambrana : Los territorios liminales en La multitud errante de Laura Restrepo
Dawn Slack : An Exploration of Uncanny Connections in Pat Mora’s The Houses
of Houses
Book Reviews
Josefina C. López : Medea en la literatura española medieval by Aníbel Biglieri
Sandra D. Merrill : A contraluz: Poéticas y reflexiones de la poesía mexicana by Rogelio Guedea y Jair Cortés
Franklin Rodríguez : Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño
Reyes Coll-Tellechea : Ideologies of Hispanism: Hispanic Issues by Mabel Moraña, Ed.
Salvador A. Oropesa : Las huellas de la Guerra Civil. Mito y trauma en la narrativa de la España democrática by Carmen Moreno-Nuño
ABSTRACTOS
Luz-Mary Rincón , Texas A&M University-Texarkana.
The Use of Discourse Markers in the Spanish of Bucaramanga, Colombia
This article examines the variability in the use of discourse markers of the Spanish spoken in the city of Bucaramanga, the largest urban center in an area covering 13% of northeastern Colombia. Bucaramanga is characterized as a middle-class center where, in contrast to other Colombian cities, extremes between rich and poor are not so prevalent. Speakers for the study were chosen from selected neighborhoods to represent the speech of the middle class. Considering that the city is typically characterized as middle class, the speech of this social group was taken to represent the speech of the city. The study shows that the discourse markers most commonly used by this community are pues ( well/so),entonces (then), and o sea (that is/I mean). The application of the Chi Square test, χ², to the variants produced by speakers grouped by age showed a significant correation (p £ .001) indicating that younger and middle-aged speakers favor the use of pues and o sea, while older speakers prefer entonces . This may be an indication that pues and o sea are displacing entonces.
Natalio Ohanna ,McGill University
Traducción de la memoria: El entenado, de Juan José Saer
A lo largo de la novela El entenado, de Juan José Saer, se esboza un concepto de traducción cultural. Este artículo presenta, rastrea y analiza dicho concepto. Siguiendo tal objetivo indaga en momentos que funcionan como indicadores de un proceso de asimilación y adopción de la alteridad por parte del narrador y protagonista de la novela, e indicadores o síntomas, también, de los efectos de este fenómeno en el momento de la memoria y el ejercicio de la escritura.
David W. Bird , St. Mary’s College of California
Arendtian Banality and Irony in Francisco Umbral’s Leyenda del César visionario (1992)
This study examines Spaniard Francisco Umbral’s 1992 novel Leyenda del César visionario in terms of German philosopher Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. In this novel, Umbral presents the banal reality behind the “crusader” figure Francisco Franco that the dictator attempted to portray during and after the Civil War. In reality, this novel observes, Franco was more a bureaucrat than a “visionary Caesar.” Arendt’s understanding of the development of dictatorships and totalitarian societies permits a reading of Umbral’s novel that, while detracting nothing from its highly charged poetic prose, can examine the philosophical issues underlying it.
John P. Gabriele , The College of Wooster
Memory, Trauma, and the Postmodern Self in Alfonso Vallejo’s Panic
In Panic (2001), Alfonso Vallejo uses the concepts of memory and trauma in conjunction with his protagonist’s comatose state allow to challenge the limits of theatrical representation and to capture the protean quality of life. By relying on the shattering effect of trauma, the involuntary intrusion of the past into the present, and a protagonist who hovers between life and death, Vallejo creates a work that is both textually and contextually fragmented and self-referential.
Joann McFerran Mount , University of North Carolina Wilmington
Neruda: The Offerings of Strangers
This article treats four autobiographical selections from Pablo Neruda’s prose works and shows how the experiences recounted in “Infancia y poesía,” Confieso que he vivido: memorias, and “Hacia la espléndida ciudad” relate to the Chilean poet’s personal and professional development. Taken together, the four episodes form a unit that reveals a progression of self-knowledge through the life stages of childhood, youth, young adulthood, and mature adulthood. Moreover, the episodes elucidate Neruda’s commitment to human solidarity and his duties as poet of the people.
José Luis Venegas , The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
El “Principio de Incertidumbre” de Heisenberg y la Narración Intersticial de “Axolotl” de Julio Cortázar
El presente artículo establece un marco interpretativo para “Axolotl” de Julio Cortázar fundado en los avances científicos en física cuántica (especialmente el “Principio de Incertidumbre” de Heisenberg). La lectura de “Axolotl” que aquí se propone analizar el uso narrativo que Cortázar hace de los conceptos de la “física de lo infinitamente pequeño”, que tanto cautivaron su imaginación. La incertidumbre de Heisenberg permite desarrollar un modelo estructural y temático que ilumina tanto la organización narrativa del texto como sus implicaciones filosóficas. Partiendo de este modelo, se demuestra que la focalización narrativa del cuento justifica un correlato con el comportamiento cuántico de las partículas subatómicas. Asimismo, se prueba que esta tematización de la incertidumbre cuántica como principio de escritura opera en el lector una dislocación intersticial de lo racional (motivo recurrente la narrativa cortazariana) equivalente a la del físico que observa el comportamiento de tales partículas cuánticas.
Frederick B. Mills , Bowie State University
Moments of Decision in Mario Bencastro’s Disparo en la cathedral
This is an existential interpretation of Mario Bencastro’s portrayal of the assassination of Oscar A. Romero (Archbishop of El Salvador) and its impact on the fictional protagonists, Dominguez, Lourdes, and Rogelio. The essay combines three levels of analysis to accentuate individual choice in Disparo en la catedral: news reports and homilies by Romero (objective context); the personal stories of the protagonists; and a description of the façade of neutrality assumed by most Salvadorans. This analysis shows that as the atrocities chronicled in Romero’s homilies multiplied, the protagonists faced increasingly more difficult choices and the façade of neutrality lost its efficacy to shield them from violence. Disparo represents the crisis of decision faced by thousands of Salvadorans in the months preceding and during the civil war in El Salvador.
Rebecca J. Atencio , University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Remembering the Traumatic Past in Postdictatorial Argentina: The Photo Album as Metaphor in Ana María Shua’s El libro de los recuerdos
This article examines how Ana María Shua’s novel El libro de los recuerdos employs the family photo album as a metaphor for engaging with certain polemics that have surfaced in postdictatorial Argentina, such as the heated debates pertaining to the “ownership” of memory, the role of invention and selectiveness in remembering, and the possibility of “storing” memory in physical objets and sites. Shua suggests that it is the act of debating itself, not any one position debated, that brings us closest to the truth of “what really happened” and preserves memory.
Rosana Díaz Zambrana , Rollins College
Los territorios liminales en La multitud errante de Laura Restrepo
En el siguiente ensayo, hacemos una lectura de la novela de Laura Restrepo, La multitud errante (2001) a partir del concepto de liminalidad acuñado por Víctor Turner en que se alude a la fase intermedia en los ritos de iniciación de las sociedades primitivas. Discutimos cómo la caracterización de los espacios y los desplazados se vale de un ‘discurso de lo transicional’ en que prevalece la indefinición, la ambigüedad y la negación. Debido a la condición neutra del desplazado, la novela propone una recategorización de los espacios familiares e históricos, y una redefinición del diálogo con la otredad y la memoria afectiva. Sostenemos que a pesar de la inadecuación social y física del desplazado, hay una posibilidad de recrear un espacio de reconocimiento y sosiego que parta de la identificación en la errancia y en la solidaridad que, en última instancia, consiga superar la condición ambivalente del sujeto liminal.
Dawn Slack , Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
An Exploration of Uncanny Connections in Pat Mora’s The House of Houses
The manner in which Chicana author Pat Mora uses elements of the uncanny to explore the nature of family, cultural heritage, and identity, as exemplified in The House of Houses (1997), is explored in this article. The relationship between these elements is one that is culturally-imbued and generation-based. The motif of borderlands, which can be physical, educational, and narrative, is examined based on approaches from the fields of Family Relations Theory, borderland analysis, and grief / acceptance theory.