MODERN AND MEDIEVAL LANGUAGES TRIPOS Part II
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SAMPLE EXAMINATION PAPER
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Paper Sp. 13
CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE
Answer THREE questions, AT LEAST ONE from each section. ONE OR MORE answers must contain substantial discussion of literature.
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
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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
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SECTION A
Topics in Contemporary Latin American Culture
1 ‘The oneiric, visionary and hermetic elements in these works insist on
transcendence and escape from the strictures of realism and the horrors of
the real.’ Discuss with reference to AT LEAST TWO visual artists or photographers.
2 ‘The Post-Boom detective novel is concerned as much with social and political injustice as it is with a revision of elite aesthetic practices.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts by different authors.
3 ‘The novela de la dictadura dissects and deconstructs power while interrogating the complicities of writing and literature itself. It is markedly self-referential.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts (by different authors).
4 ‘Queer writing in Latin America is less interested in defining a specifically Latin American queer aesthetic than in rethinking identity as it is refashioned by multiple processes of cultural infection and transmission.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts by different authors.
5 ‘The exploration and representation of the urban in literature and film, takes as its opening premise the problematic nature of this undertaking.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE urban narratives OR films OR BOTH.
6 ‘Historical fiction post-1970 is not so much engaged in popularising national history, as in exposing historical myths and mythmaking.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE works (by different authors).
7 Discuss the role and significance of TWO OR THREE of the following in TWO OR MORE post-dictatorship Argentine films (by different directors):
(i) trauma; (iv) narrative technique; (vii) cinematography;
(ii) complicity; (v) authority; (viii) politics;
(iii) subjectivity; (vi) spectatorship; (ix) humour.
8 ‘Escritura femenina is often exercised by the oscillation between a critique of silence and marginalisation, and the need for exile and separation.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts (by different authors).
9 ‘Much literary experimentation after the Boom can be read as a funereal lament for the lost aura of the literary.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE writers.
10 ‘Literature’s interaction with multiple forms of contemporary popular culture combines irony with an often covert pursuit of authenticity.’ Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE writers.
11 ‘Testimonial literature is predicated on a perception of cultural inequality that aims to liberate the suppressed voice of the other.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts (by different writers).
12 ‘Contemporary engagements with landscape and autochthony in literature and the visual arts translate misplaced anxieties about globalization and the loss of cultural identity.’ Discuss in relation to TWO OR MORE writers and artists.
(TURN OVER
SECTION B
Writers and Artists
13 ‘The power of the erotic and the erotic nature of power are inextricably
linked in the work of Cristina Peri Rossi.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts.
14 ‘Piglia afirma la imposibilidad de pensarse la nación sin la alteridad que la sostiene. Lo que está en juego no es un argumento liberal, al estilo del “melting-pot” multiculturalista norteamericano, sino más bien un desenmascaramiento de lo puro, lo propio, en cuanto ficción impropia, impura, extranjera por excelencia.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts.
15 ‘Valenzuela’s fiction is obsessed with de-centering patriarchal codes – so much so that it may risk suggesting their insurmountability.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR
MORE texts.
16 ‘The work of Diamela Eltit offers the greatest exploration to date of the rise of the fourth world in Latin America.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts.
17 ‘La obra de Roberto Bolaño se centra en una contradicción. Al mismo tiempo celebra la libertad radical del poeta y condena su complicidad con el lado más oscuro del poder político.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts.
18 ‘Los textos de Manuel Puig demuestran que el inconsciente tiene la estructura de un folletín.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts.
19 ‘Laura Restrepo’s work treats two forms of displacement: the forced migration of populations for political or socio-economic reasons; and the displacements of subject and object positions inherent to the psychic machinations of desire.’ Discuss.
20 ‘César Aira es más que todo un fenómeno literario – un inventor de mundos infinitos y de una obra sin fin.’ Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts.
21 ‘Solanas’s films are formally complex but politically simplistic.’ Discuss with reference to AT LEAST THREE films by Solanas.
22 ‘Displaced is the most precise word to describe the position of the contemporary artist. It is a position that generates tension and conflict, but it is from that same position that art derives its most powerful expression’ (DORIS SALCEDO). Discuss.
23 ‘En estos textos vienen a parar todo tipo de fantasmas. Éstos a veces vienen en nombre de la historia; otras veces hacen de la historia una charada, una puesta en escena.’ Discuss with reference to AT LEAST TWO works by Fernando Vallejo.
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