Los trazos del deseo: Inefabilidad y representación en la poesía de José Gorostiza
Open Access
- Author:
- Alvarez-Olarra, Silvia
- Graduate Program:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 21, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Dr Aida Beaupied And Dr Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Dr Aida Beaupied, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Mary Elizabeth Barnard, Committee Member
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Member
John Andres Ochoa, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Muerte sin fin
Contemporaneos
Jose Gorostiza - Abstract:
- The substantial amount of scholarly attention received by José Gorostiza’s poem Muerte sin fin (1939) has turned it into one of the most definitive and ambitious examples of the intellectual skepticism embraced by the Mexican avant-garde group known as Contemporáneos. Taking previous studies into account, this dissertation examines symbolic manifestations through which Gorostiza explores the principle of Desire, as well as the self-consuming/generating movement in which it exists. In chapter one, I offer a brief summary of this double and paradoxical characterization of desire as it was perceived in the twenties and thirties by some of the most well-known theorists of the Hispanic world. Chapter two is devoted to the analysis of the image of a glass of water that constitutes the essence of the first half of the poem, and serves as the root of three new contradictory sub-dichotomies: light/wakefulness/life versus darkness/ sleep/death. Chapter three focuses on the image of both the static and the tireless wanderer, frequently used by Gorostiza and the other members of Contemporáneos, as another representation of the tension that constitutes the essence of desire. Finally, chapter four explores the way in which Muerte sin fin attempts to make the reader conscious of language in order to show him the always tempting yet unquenchable thirst for regression contained in mythological and children’s literary discourses.