Showing papers in "Hispania in 1980"

La novela colombiana : planetas y satélites

Abstract: Analisis y sistematizacion de informacion: Alejandra Laverde Roman, estudiante de la Maestria en Literatura Colombiana en formacion investigativaProyecto: Los procesos de canonizacion de la novela colombiana en la historiografia literaria nacional (2005-2007) Investigadora principal: Olga Vallejo MurciaInstitucion: Universidad de Antioquia: Facultad de Comunicaciones, Grupo de Estudios Literarios

Observations of Present-Day "seseo" and "ceceo" in Southern Spain

Abstract: T WO of the most interesting dialectal features of Spain are the seseo and ceceo of the eight southern provinces that comprise Andalucia (Almeria, Cadiz, C6rdoba, Granada, Huelva, Ja6n, Malaga, and Sevilla). Supposedly seseo speakers do not pronounce the interdental slit fricative phoneme / / found in the national standard dialect castellano, and ceceo speakers do not pronounce its alveolar groove fricative phoneme I/s/. Thus, where castellano speakers contrast these two sounds for the letters z, c + e, i and s, x, respectively, in all positions, as in "cierra"-"sierra,'" "caza"--"casa," "Velizquez"-"Velasco," and "vez"--"ves," seseo speakers pronounce all these words with / s / and ceceo speakers with /0/. The chronology and development of seseo and ceceo, along with that of /0/ itself and the various realizations of / s /, is a complicated and controversial question in Spanish historical linguistics. In the present study, however, we will treat these matters mainly from a synchronic point of view. Castellano, the national standard dialect,' is taught in schools, is heard on radio and television and in films, and is used all over the country in offices, stores, and public places in general, often sideby-side with other dialects of Spanish and even other languages, such as catalkn. Castellano is characterized by its own unique intonation and several other prominent sound features, including the above-mentioned contrast between / s / and / 0/ (hereafter referred to as distinci6n) and a sibilant sometimes called impressionistically "s gorda" or "s espesa. " This sound, represented as [s], is articulated by raising the tongue tip to the alveolar ridge, with slight retraction and sometimes even retroflexion. Its acoustic quality is quite noticeable to foreigners and often sounds to them somewhat like the palatal [9] of English 'ship.' The use of this particular sibilant [s] is not in itself a distinctive feature of the dialect castellano since not all speakers use it exclusively, and it can also be found in other dialects of peninsular Spanish and in another language, cataldn. Nor is distinci6n exclusive with castellano since it can be found in other dialects of peninsular Spanish. Thus, when a speaker from Granada, for example, makes a phonemic ontrast between /Is/ and /0/, he will be categorized in this study as having distinci6n but will not be considered a speaker of castellano. However, when an individual makes distinci6n, uses the apicoalveolar [s], and possesses certain other phonetic features not discussed here, he is probably from central or northern Spain and is thus a speaker of the dialect casteliano. Not all speakers from Andalucia can be characterized as having seseo or ceceo. Many, although they do not speak the specific dialect castellano, nonetheless make the distinci6n. Dialectal studies have shown that not only well-educated people, particularly in the cities of Granada and Sevilla, distinguish but also many rural and uneducated speakers from Almeria, Ja6n, C6rdoba, and Huelva.2 Nevertheless, the majority of Andalusians, regardless of educational level and social status, are said to be seseantes or ceceantes. Both these modes have their origin in the modifications of the medieval dental sibilant (now / 0/) and the subsequent loss of the apico-alveolar phoneme / s /. These modes are really statistical tendencies, as we shall see, rather than absolutes. A great many Andalusians exhibited in the past, and, as our experience has shown, still exhibit in the present a sibilant mode that lies at some undetermined point between the theoretical extremes of seseo and ceceo. This "inbetween" variation still lacks a standard or widely accepted label and is the subject of analysis in the present study.

Santa Teresa and the Problem of Desire

Abstract: SANTA TERESA of Avila has always been ranked as one of the great figures of Spanish literature. Yet her position as a writer, as opposed to an icon, has been consistently problematical. Many years ago, in a seminal article, Am6rico Castro remarked that Teresa's readers and commentators were either her pious devotees, philologists interested in her colloquial style as a specimen of sixteenth-century Spanish language, or psychologists who considered her writings as a psychopathological case history.' With the exception of Castro's article and perhaps one or two other studies,2 this situation still prevails. As a result, Teresa's texts function primarily as pretexts for discourses on one or another phenomenon that is basically extrinsic to her own discourse.3 Teresa's most widely read text, the Libro de su vida, will be studied to reveal its fundamental literary expression. It will be seen that Teresa's selection of incidents, her ordering of these, and her imagery in general are tailored to the solution of a fundamental and difficult human problem. In this regard, Castro's most judicious insight into her writings serves nicely as a preface to my own reading of her text. In Castro's opinion, Teresa's most valuable contribution as a writer was to insert into a well-established fund of mystical discourse her own feminine temperament "que no renuncia a nada, cuando pretende renunciar a todo."4 In this essay I will illustrate how and why this process functions in her autobiography. As a confessional autobiography, Santa Teresa's Libro de su vida seems vague. The reader who turns to Teresa's text expecting the type of revelations found in other works of the same genre-those of Saint Augustine or Rousseau, for example-is bound to be disappointed. While Teresa is fond of berating herself for her sins, she gives the reader few specific examples that would justify her bad conscience. In view of the fact that her Life is divided roughly into two sections, the chapters which deal with her life previous to her divinely inspired conversion on the one hand, and those that describe her new life of grace on the other, it is surprising that she does not take the opportunity to utilize the first section as an exemplary catalogue of sinful activity. On the contrary, those chapters which concern her life before taking up her religious vocation are the vaguest of all. Even though we are given to understand that the life described in the first nine chapters of the text is ridden with sin, Teresa's ambivalence about such sins is remarkable. She repeatedly implies that she was not to blame for those sins, and shifts the culpability elsewhere: to her cousins, to books of chivalry, to her father, and to her confessors. While on occasion Teresa does admit responsibility for one sinful lapse or another, most of the time such admissions are followed by a retraction. For example, she may declare, ". .. y no debia ser suya la culpa, sino mia" only to tell us later in the same paragraph: "Y pues nunca era inclinada a mucho mal, porque cosas deshonestas naturalmente las aborrecia . . . mds puesta en la ocasi6n, estaba en la mano el peligro " (Vida 11, 65, my emphasis). Although Teresa tells us that she resists complaining about her parents, "porque no veia en ellos sino todo bien y cuidado de mi bien" (Vida I, 8) she promptly complains about them for allowing her to fall prey to temptation. In this vein Teresa implicates her parents in an incident which she insists was largely r sponsible for her youthful life of sin (Vida 11, 2). While Teresa typically gives us no details about the incident, other than to say that her cousins were involved, she does conclude her reflections on her sin with an indirect reproach of her parents: "Si yo hubiera de aconsejar, dijera a los padres que en esta edad tuviesen gran cuenta con las personas que tratan sus hijos; porque aqui estai mucho mal que se va nuestro natural antes a lo peor que a lo mejor" (Vida 1n, 3). This Teresian ambiguity, which arises out of her refusal to accept full responsibility for her acts even as she recognizes these as constituting part of her being, is tantamount to a fundamental denial. While Teresa ruefully realizes that her desire is "sinful," she is not willing to give up. This