MODERN  AND  MEDIEVAL  LANGUAGES  TRIPOS    Part II

 

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            Monday 4 June 2001     9 to 12

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            Paper Sp. 12

 

            LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE

 

 

Answer THREE questions, including AT LEAST ONE from Section A.   You may, if you wish, restrict your answers to Section A. 

 

Candidates’ scripts as a whole must include ONE OR MORE answers that relate to poetry.

 

Do NOT draw substantially on the same material for more than ONE answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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            ‘Revolucionar periódicamente la sensibilidad y romper los modos convencionales de percepción y valoración.’  Discuss this characterization of modernista poetic practice with reference to TWO OR MORE poets.

 

2          ‘Una poesía con base en los ritmos de la música y del baile.’  Discuss this characterization of negrista poetry with reference to TWO OR MORE collections.

 

3          ‘Avant-garde poetry shifts its subject matter away from the real world in order to look inwards at the workings of language and poetic form.’  Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE poets.

 

4          Discuss the interplay of TWO OR MORE of the following in the work of  TWO OR MORE socially-committed poets:

 

(i)  ideology;                        (iii) identity;                        (v)  love;

(ii) history;                        (iv) transgression;                        (vi) poetic vocation.

 

5          ‘The delicate balance between ethical responsibility and æsthetic innovation is nowhere more acutely felt than in writing dealing with dictatorship.’  Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE novelists.

 

6          ‘Thinly veiled and often paradoxical allegories of the nation in which untamed nature, women, authority and migration constitute the greatest threats.’   Discuss this description of the novela de la tierra with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE writers.

 

7          ‘El realismo mágico congela lo “latinoamericano” como santuario de la naturaleza premoderna y sublima a este continente como el lugar en el que la violencia social es transformada en magia.’   Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE writers.

 

8            ‘Literary and filmic representations of the City are particularly attuned to the intensified relationship between time and space which is experienced by its inhabitants.’   Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE writers or film directors dealing with urban themes.  

 

9          ‘Cada mujer es una isla de monólogos sin eco.’  Discuss this statement with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE Latin-American women poets.

 

10        ‘Self-reflexivity and irony dominate and effectively circumscribe the scope of experimental narratives.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE Latin-American writers.

 

11        ‘La literatura nos enseña que la historia es ficción.’  Discuss the relevance of this statement to TWO OR MORE historical texts.

 

12        ‘The Latin-American short-story offers a subversive alternative to the realist tradition and the grandiose ambitions of the totalizing novel.’   Discuss with reference to the works of TWO OR MORE short-story writers.

 

13            ‘Argentine film-makers of the late twentieth century regard it as their task to brush history against the grain.’  Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE film directors.

 

14            ‘Women writers found a more open, fluid form in which to write, with less rigid adherence to syntactical and thematic coherence, blurring the accepted hierarchical divisions of genre.’  Discuss with reference to texts by TWO OR MORE writers.

 

15              ‘Recourse to forms of popular culture by Latin-American authors provides a formal rather than thematic expression of rupture and innovation.’  Discuss with reference to the works of TWO or MORE writers.

           

16        ‘Even testimonial literature cannot escape from the fact of its own constructedness.’   Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE works.

 

17             EITHER (a) ‘Women artists did not preach Mexicanism the way the grandiloquent plastic discourses of Orozco, Rivera and Siqueiros did.’  Discuss with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE artists (who may include photographers).

 

            OR (b) Discuss the treatment and significance of TWO OR MORE of the following binaries with reference to the work of TWO OR MORE artists ( who may

include photographers):

 

(i)        self and other;        (v)        essence and appearance;

(ii)        history and myth;        (vi)      the profane and the sacred;

(iii)        culture and nature;        (vi)        solitude and solidarity;

(iv)        modernity and tradition;        (vii)        centre and periphery.

 

SECTION B

 

Poetry and Commentary

 

18        Answer ONE of the following questions:

 

            (a) ‘La obra de Octavio Paz realiza el viejo sueño de ver unidos poesía, amor, y libertad.’  Discuss.

 

            (b)    ‘The poetry of Rubén Darío is a flight into irrelevance for it sacrifices intellectual content and social observation to aesthetic effect and self-gratification.’  Discuss.

      

            (c)            ‘En lo más hondo, la poesía de Pablo Neruda es la lucha con las palabras, la lucha por darle sentido a un mundo informe y violento.’  Discuss with close reference to TWO OR MORE collections of his poetry.

 

 

(TURN OVER for the continuation of Question 18)

            (d)  Write a critical commentary on the following poem (it is not necessary for you to be familiar with other work by this poet):

           

            Croquis en la arena

 

La mañana se pasea en la playa empolvada de sol.   Brazos. Piernas amputadas. Cuerpos que se reintegran. Cabezas flotantes de caucho.   Al tornearles los cuerpos a las bañistas, las olas alargan sus virutas sobre el aserrín de la playa.   ¡ Todo es oro y azul!   La sombra de los toldos. Los ojos de las chicas que se inyectan novelas y horizontes. Mi alegría, de zapatos de goma, que me hacen rebotar sobre la arena.   Por ochenta centavos, los fotógrafos venden los cuerpos de las mujeres que se bañan.   Hay quioscos que explotan la dramaticidad de la rompiente. Sirvientas chue- cas. Sifones irascibles, con extracto de mar. Rocas con pechos algosos de mari- nero y corazones pintados de esgrimista. Bandadas de gaviotas, que fingen el vuelo destrozado de un pedazo blanco de papel.   ¡ Y ante todo está el mar! ¡El mar! ... ritmo de divagaciones. ¡El mar! con su baba y con su epilepsia.   ¡El mar! ... hasta gritar                                     ¡Basta!                                                 como en el circo.

5               10             15             20

Oliverio Girondo

 

 

            (e)            ‘Despite its linguistic and formal complexity, César Vallejo’s poetry is little more than a reworking of the old dichotomy between body and soul, nature and culture, the material and the intellectual.’  Discuss.

 

            (f)            ‘A veces la sustancia autobiográfica, la personal, está desaparecida por los accidentes que la encarnan y es como corazón que late en hondura’ (Jorge Luis Borges).   Discuss with reference to the poetry of Jorge Luis Borges.

 

            (g)   Discuss the notions of faith and engagement in the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal.

 

            (h)   ‘Para Lezama, lo nacional llega a determinar la elaboración de su poética.’  Discuss with reference to the poetry of José Lezama Lima.

 

            (i)            Compare the problematization of the role and subjects of poetry in the work of TWO OR MORE Latin-American poets.

            SECTION C

            Narrative

19        Answer ONE of the following questions:

 

            (a)            ‘Para Juan Rulfo la historia, por lo pronto, no existe, y si existe carece de dinamismo.’  Discuss.

 

            (b)            ‘Carpentier’s texts emphasize temporal displacement, social dislocation, and cultural hybridization.’  Discuss.

 

            (c)            ‘Decir “borgeano” es inmediatamente despegar de la rutinaria realidad racional y acceder a una fantástica, una rigurosa y elegante construcción mental, casi siempre laberíntica, impregnada de referencias y alusiones librescas.’  Discuss  this statement with reference to the stories of Jorge Luis Borges.

 

            (d)            Compare and contrast the narrative techniques used, and assess their significance, in TWO OR MORE texts by Mario Vargas Llosa.

 

            (e)            Discuss the treatment of national identity and cultural expression in the work of Carlos Fuentes.

 

            (f)            ‘Soledad, incesto, amor frustrado, corrupción, pobreza, megalomanía: las obras de García Márquez se hunden en el fatalismo y el pesimismo social.’  Discuss.

 

            (g)  ‘En la obra de Cortázar lo maravilloso y lo terrible no se refugian en lo extraordinario sino que permanecen ocultos en lo inmediato, aguardando una mirada atenta que los descubra.’  Discuss.

 

            (h)            ‘Puig es casi el primer autor entre nosotros a tomar en serio el poder de la cultura massmediática, a entender el uso que de ella hacen las clases populares.’  Discuss.

 

            (i)   ‘La espada de la injusticia es una espada de dos puntas y hiere tanto al que la empuña como al que se encuentra en el extremo contrario’ (Rosario Castellanos).  Discuss with reference to the narratives of Rosario Castellanos.

 

            (j)            ‘Traba creates a dichotomy between her characters’ experiences and their ability to objectify and express them in language.’  Discuss with reference to TWO OR MORE texts.

 

 

END OF PAPER