MODERN  AND  MEDIEVAL  LANGUAGES  TRIPOS    Part II

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            Monday 1 June 2009     1.30 to 4.30

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            Paper Sp. 12

            LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE

Answer THREE questions, AT LEAST ONE from each section.  ONE OR MORE answers must contain substantial discussion of poetry.

Candidates for this paper may NOT draw substantially on material from their dissertations or material which they have used or intend to use in another scheduled paper.  Candidates may NOT draw substantially on the same material in more than one question on the same paper.

STATIONERY REQUIREMENTS

20 Page Answer Book x 1

Rough work pad

            Tags

You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent pages of this question paper until instructed that you may do so by the Invigilator

SECTION A

Topics in Latin American Culture

1          ‘La literatura de evasión no tardó en transformarse en literatura de exploración y de regreso.  La verdadera aventura estaba en América.’  In the light of this comment by Octavio Paz, discuss modernista poetry with reference to TWO OR MORE modernista poets.

2          Discuss the use of musicality, both thematically and stylistically, in poesía negrista, with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE poets.

3          ‘El poema debe ser creado en todas sus partes, como un objeto nuevo’ (Vicente Huidobro).  Discuss the relevance of this statement to the work of any TWO OR MORE avant-garde poets.

4          ‘In the narrativa de la tierra landscape becomes the inescapable terrain of memory, existential conflict and aesthetic struggle.  Place and being are fused.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE authors.

5          ‘La literatura proletaria habla un lenguaje que quiere ser común a todos los hombres’ (César Vallejo).  Discuss the applicability of this statement to the work of any TWO OR MORE political poets.

6          ‘The metropolis becomes a metaphor for the conflict between communal, cohesive modes of identity and the dissolvent power of money.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE urban narratives OR films OR BOTH.

7          ‘La lengua natal castra’ (Alejandra Pizarnik).  How applicable is this statement to the work of any TWO OR MORE Latin American women poets?

8          ‘Experimental writing, in revealing the constructed nature of its fictions, refuses the transparency of representation embedded within our concepts of “history”, “society” or “reality”.’  Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE writers.

9          ‘In its effort to configure part and totality, the Latin American short story fuses metonymy and metaphor, diachrony and synchrony, the mundane and the sublime.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE collections of stories by MORE THAN ONE writer.

10        ‘The work of these writers enacts a subtle linguistic displacement of masculine literary norms together with a perversion of the reproductive economy of sexual desire.’ Discuss with reference to texts by TWO OR MORE women writers.

11        ‘Everything urged me to believe that I should apply myself to displaying the world I carried within me . . .  a conscious daytime substitution of the phenomenon of dreams’ (Roberto Matta).  In the light of this statement, discuss the role of dreams, myth and fantasy in the representational strategies adopted by TWO OR MORE visual artists.

12        ‘The art of the Post-Revolutionary period in Mexico aimed to be both reflective and transformative, experimental and accessible.’  In the light of this statement, discuss the representational strategies of TWO OR MORE artists with detailed reference to a range of work.

            SECTION B

Writers and Artists

13        ‘In Rulfo’s work, all meaning, identity and language ultimately spring from the land.  Yet, paradoxically, the land becomes a metaphor for alienation, violence and dispossession.’  Discuss.

14        In one of his poems, Borges describes human vanity as ‘ese reflejo de sueños en el sueño de otro espejo’.  Discuss the applicability of this idea to the depiction of human value systems in EITHER his short stories OR his poetry OR BOTH.

15        ‘En las novelas de Alejo Carpentier, lo antiguo se codea con lo moderno, lo arcaico con lo futurista, lo tecnológico con lo feudal, lo prehistórico con lo utópico.’  Discuss.

16        ‘The tendency of certain critics to reduce magical realism to a kind of tropical exoticism is a travesty of the complex play on conflicting cultural systems and fictions of power which lies at the heart of García Márquez’s work.’  Discuss.

17        ‘Drama de la salvación – lúdica, perversa, a veces demoníaca, siempre surreal – pero salvación en fin.’  Discuss this characterization of the work of Julio Cortázar.

18        ‘It shows the complicity of fiction with the masks of power even as it painfully peels away the layers of language to reveal the raw wound of the real.’  Discuss this characterization of the work of Carlos Fuentes.

19        ‘Vargas Llosa’s work shows a preoccupation with time and space in order to explore new forms of fictional representation.’  Discuss.

20        ‘No writer is more acutely aware of language as an iteration of systems of power. Yet precisely in that iteration – in the imperfect replication of the words of power – Castellanos locates the (admittedly bleak) possibilities for resistance and social change.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE prose works.

21 ‘Hechizante, barroca, monumental; un film de Buñuel sobre un guión de Dostoievski.’  Discuss this characterization of the work of Ernesto Sábato.

22        In one of his poems, Octavio Paz talks of ‘la realidad cerrando puertas, poniendo comas, la puntuación del tiempo’. How representative is this phrase of the principal themes and stylistic features of his poetry?

23        ‘Vallejo’s poetry turns wilful misuse of language and linguistic slippage – the arbitrariness of signification – into a metaphor for existential and social alienation.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE collections.

(TURN OVER

24        ‘Apegadme los cuerpos como imanes.

Acudid a mis venas y a mi boca.

Hablad por mis palabras y mi sangre’ (Pablo Neruda).

            Discuss the relevance of this quotation from ‘Alturas de Macchu Picchu’ to any TWO OR MORE collections of the poetry of Pablo Neruda.

25        ‘El erotismo y la pasión informan toda la poesía de Rubén Darío, desde el esceticismo cosmopolita hasta sus meditaciones metafísicas, religiosas e incluso políticas.’  Discuss this assessment of Darío’s work with reference to TWO OR MORE collections.

26        ‘For all its “revolutionary” formal and stylistic play, Huidobro’s poetry upholds a traditional aestheticism.  Creation for creation’s sake is no different from art for art’s sake.’  Discuss.

27        ‘Frida Kahlo’s work struggles as well as plays with the gaze, perception and forms of representation.  It manipulates cultural and artistic codes and exposes the theatricality of self-portraiture and the melancholy pursuit of identity in art.’  Discuss with detailed reference to a range of work by the artist.

28        Write a critical commentary on the following poem.  You do not need to be familiar with the work of Alfonsina Storni, but if you are, you may, if you wish, compare this poem to other works by the poet.

Regreso en sueños Boca perdida en el vaivén del tiempo; detrás de los paisajes escondida; boca hacia atrás huyente en el espacio; boca muerta que fuiste boca viva: Torbellinos de rostros te apagaron, tú, que eras rosa ya palidecida; bloques de casas, cielos circulantes, telones fueron a velarte esquiva. Alguna vez la punta de la llama pintó en el aire la ligera estría de tu boca atersada a finos verbos: seda en la seda, flor más florecida. O levanté la mano para asirte en la nube traslúcida que lucía acuchillada del cuchillo mismo que parte en dos la ya palidecida. Y a veces, en el fondo de otra boca, flor de agua pura aun más verdecida, hube de hallarte.  Mas se abrió tu boca como la sal al viento en las salinas… Pero anoche, ¿de dónde regresaste? ¿De tumbas de agua?  ¿De raíz nutrida en anchos bosques?  ¿De trasmundos malva? ¿Qué cadenas de seres te fue guía? Cortaste los paisajes y los rostros, los circulantes cielos en huidas, bloques de casas, hojarasca de horas, y me hallaste no muerta, que dormida. Pájaro de aire, reposó la boca sobre la boca mía anochecida. Mas no era boca.  A musgo, macerado en los soles de Dios, se parecía.

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Alfonsina Storni

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