MODERN  AND  MEDIEVAL  LANGUAGES  TRIPOS    Part II

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            Wednesday 26 May 2010     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       ‘En el modernismo, la apertura hacia la innovación y la forma rara vez estuvo disociada de una intensidad espiritual y vivencial.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE modernista poets.

2       ‘En su poesía la sensualidad se emplea no como estereotipo tropical, sino como un elemento de exceso, capaz de desmantelar las estructuras del poder racial.’  Discuss this characterization of poesía negrista with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE poets.

3       ‘Latin American avant-garde poetry is caught between a desire to affirm art as an autonomous zone of free play and a desire to shatter this autonomy so as to enable some final, eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with the real.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE poets.

4       ‘The narrativa de la tierra persistently picks away at its own foundations, transgressing the norms of gender that it promotes, deconstructing the notions of heroism and ownership that sustain it, and disorganizing the traditional straight line of narrative until its readers feel as lost as its protagonists.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE authors.

5       ‘La poesía política desarticula el concepto burgués de la estética, para transformar el arte poético en auténtica expresión del pueblo.’  Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE political poets.

6       Examine the importance of THREE of the following in TWO OR MORE urban narratives or films:

(i)    family;              (iii)  social networks;         (v)   the representation of space;

(ii)   power;              (iv)  money;                         (vi)  history.

7       ‘For these poets the body is a prison and language is the gaoler who smirks outside rattling the keys.’  How applicable is this characterization to the work of TWO OR MORE female poets?

8       ‘El desdoblamiento, los monstruos y mundos paralelos apuntan a una resquebrajadura fundamental en la máscara de la civilización.  La tarea del escritor es entreabrir esta grieta para dejar vislumbrar la verdad escondida detrás de la máscara.’  Examine the relevance of this quotation to the work of TWO OR MORE writers of experimental narrative.

9       ‘El cuento latinoamericano quiere decirlo todo, pero callándose.’  Discuss with reference to collections of short stories by TWO OR MORE writers.

10     ‘Far from helping to compose new forms of feminine identity, their writing seems to unravel identity, desire and language itself.’  Discuss with reference to texts by TWO OR MORE women writers.

11     ‘The remapping of personal geographies by the unfettered mind characterizes the emphasis on interior visions, revelations and fantastic spaces of non-realist art in Latin America.’  Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE artists.

12     ‘The complex construction of visual identities in post-revolutionary Mexico espoused a narrative of collective culture and association which regarded art as both inclusive and transformative.’ Discuss with reference to work by TWO OR MORE artists/photographers.

SECTION B

Writers and Artists

13     Examine the use and/or subversion of mythical, religious and social structures in the work of Juan Rulfo.

14     ‘Borges’s writing propounds the absolute relativism of human belief systems and of societal structures.’  Discuss with reference to the prose AND/OR poetic works of Jorge Luis Borges.

15     ‘En las novelas de Alejo Carpentier, la historia se repite, primero como tragedia y luego como farsa.’  Discuss.

16     ‘La obra de García Márquez es más bien política que mágica.’  Discuss.

17     ‘A dual sense of alienation from and desire for reconciliation with the “human family” presides over the work of Julio Cortázar.’  Discuss.

18     ‘La apariencia exterior de las palabras era sólo el velo de otro significado, para el cual las palabras eran un puente: la segunda historia se contaba atrás, en silencio, en una segunda realidad’ (Cambio de piel).  Discuss the relevance of this quotation to any TWO OR MORE texts by Carlos Fuentes.

19     ‘The interlocking worlds in Vargas Llosa’s work are more than just an entertaining device. They show the complexities of interrelation at work even in the minutest of social phenomena.’  Discuss.

20     ‘The critique of gender and race in Castellanos’s narrative fictionalizes testimony whilst deliberately compromising her very project of writing against the grain of prejudice, repression and silence.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE prose works.

21 ‘No es casualidad que me acercara al surrealismo cuando culminó mi cansancio y hasta mi asco por el espíritu de la ciencia’ (Sábato).  In the light of this quotation, discuss the relationship between the rational and the irrational and/or the representation of modernity and atavism in the work of Ernesto Sábato.

22     Evaluate the importance of TWO OR MORE of the following in the poetry of Octavio Paz:

(i)    epiphanies;                               (iii)  time;                    (v) eroticism.

(ii)   language (as a theme);           (iv)  poetic form;

(TURN OVER

23     ‘What we take to be stable truths are in fact a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically’ (Friedrich Nietzsche).  Discuss the relevance of this quotation to the poetry of César Vallejo with reference to TWO OR MORE collections of his work.

24     ‘Neruda combina en un solo nudo la presencia y la ausencia, lo social y lo espectral, lo político y lo telúrico, la civilización y el atavismo.  En suma el signo de su obra es la dialéctica.’  Discuss some of the characteristics mentioned in this quotation with reference to TWO OR MORE collections of Neruda’s poetry.

25     ‘La imaginación de Darío tiende a manifestarse en direcciones contradictorias y complementarias y de ahí su dinamismo.’  Discuss this assessment of Darío’s work with reference to TWO OR MORE collections.

26     ‘Huidobro explores the very limits of language, whether it be the interface between speech and music, or between words and images.’  Discuss.

27     ‘Frida Kahlo’s paintings popularize and de-familiarize the figurative self through cultural display, theatre, and costume in which nature is also a designed scenario and prop.’  Discuss with detailed reference to a range of work by the artist.

28     Write a critical commentary on the following poem.  You may, if you wish, compare it to other poems by Borges:

El laberinto Zeus no podría desatar las redes de piedra que me cercan.  He olvidado los hombres que antes fui; sigo el odiado camino de monótonas paredes que es mi destino.  Rectas galerías que se curvan en círculos secretos al cabo de los años.  Parapetos que ha agrietado la usura de los días. En el pálido polvo he descifrado rastros que temo.  El aire me ha traído en las cóncavas tardes un bramido o el eco de un bramido desolado. Sé que en la sombra hay Otro, cuya suerte es fatigar las largas soledades que tejen y destejen este Hades y ansiar mi sangre y devorar mi muerte. Nos buscamos los dos.  Ojalá fuera éste el último día de la espera.

5 10 15

Jorge Luis Borges

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