La modalidad fantastica en el cuento dominicano del siglo XX.

Item

Title
La modalidad fantastica en el cuento dominicano del siglo XX.
Identifier
AAI3047214
identifier
3047214
Creator
Estevez, Angel Luis.
Contributor
Adviser: Malva E. Filer
Date
2002
Language
Spanish
Publisher
City University of New York.
Subject
Literature, Modern | Literature, Latin American | Literature, Caribbean
Abstract
In my dissertation, I sustain that the fantastic Dominican short story of the twentieth century does not fit into the model of the traditional fantastic. In order to carry out my investigation, I begin by explaining the differences between the Marvelous Real and Magic Realism, and how the Fantastic differs from both of these modes of writing. My theoretical approach is principally based on the works of Tzvetan Todorov, Amaryll Beatrice Chanady, Susana Reisz, Rosemary Jackson, and Jaime Alazraki.;The body of my analysis includes the works of four Dominican writers: Juan Bosch (1909--2001), Virgilio Diaz Grullon (1924--2001), Jose Alcantara Almanzar (1946-- ), and Diogenes Valdez (1941-- ). The analysis of fourteen short stories by these authors reveals that, in fact, the fantastic modality practiced today in the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere in Spanish America, does not fit into the model of conventional fantastic short story writing. The focus of my analysis centers upon the intention with which these authors have written their stories. I demonstrate that the modern Dominican fantastic is no longer used to terrify the reader---hence its distinctiveness---but rather the fantastic is used as a vehicle to express the writers' concern with the social, psychological, and political issues of their time. Furthermore, I show that the use of the fantastic in some of the stories analyzed has served as gunpowder to dynamite, take apart and demystify certain social structures, which have long remained unquestioned, such as the subordination of women with respect to men, [in Alcantara's]. In this respect, I regard the fantastic as a literature of subversion. (R Jackson).;I arrive to the conclusion that: (a) there exists, in fact, a fantastic modality in the long-neglected Dominican literature; (b) that the new way of approaching the fantastic [Neo fantastic] (J. Alazraki) differs a great deal from the fantastic of the nineteenth century: the supernatural is no longer a ghost or strange being but a crisis generated from within the character him/herself; and (c) that the answer to man's conflicts, as these authors suggest, may not be found in our empirical reality but in a reality "other."
Type
dissertation
Source
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
degree
Ph.D.
Item sets
CUNY Legacy ETDs