Date of Award

5-2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Spanish and Latino Studies

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Diana Guemarez-Cruz

Committee Member

Linda Gould Levine

Committee Member

Vicenzo Bollettino

Abstract

Every writer has a history behind his work. Most of the time, his personal life becomes part of his literature. His life becomes transparent through his literary work as well as through his personal writings, in this case, in his personal letters to family members and friends and also in his memories. It is through these letters that we get to know the person, his life related to history as well as their worries of his literary performance towards society. Due to this, I have found imperative the need of the study of the letters of Federico García Lorca and memoirs of Pablo Neruda. Both of these writers had a literary and political impact on the Spanish and Latin American political and cultural arenas. Their works, also, represent the scream to a society that does not respond to their personal lives and dreams.

One part of my thesis will be based on the letters of Federico García Lorca and how the letters in Epistolario completo of Federico García Lorca portray a young artist during the beginning of the 20th Century. The importances of the letters become examples of his poetical work in which he presents his worries toward the publishing of all his literary work. The letters also serve as autobiographical text where Lorca is presented as a student looking for his personal integrity as well as his personal literary technique. To best portray his literary technique, I will base a part of the thesis on Lorca’s book, Poeta en Nueva York, in which he implemented the surrealist technique throughout the book, to best explain his personal experience in New York. It is through Poeta en Nueva York where the importance of the self, the I, becomes transparent and a new writer is born.

Simultaneously, in this thesis, I will study Confieso que he vivido of Pablo Neruda to best explain the importance of the memoirs and how they portray the writer in both literary and personal level. The exploration of these memoirs also could be seen as a reflection of an era, in different aspects, where the writer is free to explain his personal views and worries towards the changes society was trying to overcome. It is through the memoirs that I will show how Neruda is constructed his private and public persona. The truth of the memoirs becomes the examination of the text where now the technique used in the memoirs become questionable at the autobiographical level. Still, the examination of the technique used in the making of the text becomes the important part towards the examination the literary technique of the writer. Also, Confieso que he vivido will serve as the text where the personal integrity and the “I” is best explored.

Continuously, I will show the connection between the two writers through the examination of the two texts, Epistolario completo of Federico García Lorca and Confieso que he vivido. I will show how the content of these two books have both a personal and intellectual connection and how the importance of the texts is similar through the literary analysis. Finally, but nevertheless important, I will show how both text could be used to best study the difference of the literary genres in Latin America and Spain at the beginning of the 20th Century.

File Format

PDF

Download

Share

COinS