Aspects of Dead Protagonists’ Perspective in Spanish and Latin American Novels

by

Timothy E. Buckner, B.A., M.A.

A Dissertation

In

SPANISH

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved

Janet Pérez Chair of Committee

Genaro Pérez

Jorge Zamora

Idoia Elola

Peggy Gordon Miller Dean of the Graduate School

May, 2012

Copyright 2012, Timothy E. Buckner Texas Tech University, Timothy E. Buckner, May 2012

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project could never have been realized without the expertise, guidance, and support from Dr. Janet Pérez. Through many revisions and encouraging words this dissertation came to fruition. I will ever be indebted to her for the countless hours spent on my behalf. I am also grateful for the support of Drs. Genaro J. Pérez, Jorge Zamora, and Idoia Elola who have likewise spent much time to provide me with the precise advice at the precise moments that allowed me to complete this project. I express thanks to all of the faculty in the department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures who have ever shown support and expressed their confidence in me. I also gratefully acknowledge the support from Drs. Andrew Farley and Stephen Corbett in writing letters of recommendation. Also, I express appreciation for the Spanish professors during my undergraduate work, Drs. Cynthia Peña, Hector Garza, Jorge Nisguritzer, and Matias Martinez Abejión. Likewise, I thank my colleagues who brought inspired thoughts and superb insights that sparked my interest in many areas along with many memorable moments of laughter.

I am especially indebted to the AT&T endowment for the Chancellor’s Fellowship and the three years of financial support that provided me with the opportunity to begin this journey of my doctoral studies.

As I reflect on the road to this point in my life, I remember the words of my father that I could do anything I set my mind to. His advice has helped me through so many difficult times. In fact, all of my parents, Gerry and Shirley, and Leslie and Greg, consistently gave me the help I needed to complete this project. Most of all I thank my wife, Tara, and our four children, Aiden, Kaylise, Bransen, and Tyler, who have been my motivation and inspiration time and time again. Their excitement and inspiring words motivated me to continue through the highs and lows. It would not have been possible without them.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ii

ABSTRACT ...... iv

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. MARÍA LUISA BOMBAL ...... 9

III. ELENA QUIROGA ...... 29

IV. JUAN RULFO ...... 53

V. CARLO FUENTES ...... 77

VI. LUIS ROMERO...... 98

VII. RODRIGO RUBIO ...... 118

VIII. MIGUEL DELIBES ...... 141

IX. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ...... 160

NOTES ...... 181

WORKS CITED ...... 191

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ABSTRACT

Since the classical ages to the modern times the dead have received attention in literary works from Dante’s Divine Comedy (1308-1321) to O’Brien’s The Third

Policeman (1967) and from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1604-1637) to Zorilla’s Don Juan

Tenorio (1844). Many of these present dead characters in the literary works as though they were living. In contrast to these examples, many Neorealist novels in the mid-

Twentieth Century Spain employ dead protagonists in their works by means of secondary characters who supply memory and perspective. Analogously during the mid-Twentieth Century in Latin America several novelists employ dead protagonists from a first-person perspective similar to the aforementioned literary precedents.

This study seeks to actualize the use of dead protagonists in Spanish and Latin

American novels during the mid-Twentieth Century by analyzing the narrative perspective and the space within the following novels: María Luisa Bombal’s La amortajada (1938), Elena Quiroga’s Algo pasa en la calle (1954), Juan Rulfo’s Pedro

Páramo (1955), Carlos Fuentes’s La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Luis Romero’s

El cacique (1963), Rodrigo Rubio’s Equipaje de amor para la tierra (1965), and

Miguel Delibes’s Cinco horas con Mario (1966). The novels are studied in chronological sequence, which implies no ranking but allows the reader to examine similarities and differences over the approximately two decades in question.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The subject of death has been a preoccupation of man in every era. From

Philosophers to Artists, the topic can be perused and researched, yet it remains central in humankind’s concern. According to Barbara Brodman, within the Hispanic World community, death is given a special position of cultural importance which is manifest in

“the cult of death” (9). She argues that this cultural manifestation is evident in myth and literature from both Spain and Mexico during modern as well as ancient time periods.

Throughout the ages, to the modern times the dead have received attention in literary works from Dante’s Divine Comedy (1308-1321) to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930) and later to O’Brien’s The Third Policeman (1967) and from Shakespeare’s Hamlet

(1604-1637) to Zorilla’s Don Juan Tenorio (1844). Many authors present dead characters in their literary works as though they were living. In contrast to these examples many

Neorealist novels in the mid-Twentieth Century Spain employ dead protagonists in their works thanks to the perspectives of secondary characters through memory and recollection. Analogously during the mid-Twentieth Century in Latin America, several novelists employ dead protagonists from a first-person perspective similar to the aforementioned literary tradition.

In particular the Neorrealism that occurred during Francisco Franco’s dictatorship proved especially exemplary with several authors producing narratives with dead protagonists as main characters. Among such authors are Miguel Delibes, Elena Quiroga,

Luis Romero, and Rodrigo Rubio. By contrast, in Latin America some authors use a dead

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or immobile protagonist as an important element in the work. Among these are authors

María Luisa Bombal, Carlos Fuentes, and Juan Rulfo (and all of these works show an interest and concern for the society they represent and demonstrate at various levels typical injustices felt, received, or tolerated within that social sphere). Even though other works exist with dead protagonists, these seven authors figure prominently in this dissertation given the important role the dead characters play within the novels; furthermore, their roles extend beyond their deaths, providing a means to move the story forward. In other words, the dead characters in the novels chosen are not the motive of crime in a detective story or an act of violence; they form part of the cultural collective consciousness of their communities as evidence of the social concern of society. They form part of the literary evidence that supports the cultural, religious, and familial concern for their departed integrants throughout the Hispanic World.

Several critics have previously undertaken comparisons of some of the authors to be studied in this dissertation but none have considered all together nor have they embarked on a study of this magnitude, scale, or profundity. Among the critics of relevant Peninsular novels are Obdulia Guerrero, Brenda Jean Willis, Janet Díaz, and

Luis López Martínez. They have highlighted several similarities between those Spanish novels that portray dead protagonists. In 1967 Obdulia Guerrero outlined similarities between the protagonists of Cinco horas con Mario (1966) by Miguel Delibes and Algo pasa en la calle (1954) by Elena Quiroga. Although Guerrero’s study highlighted major similarities, it falls short by not covering all the similarities between these two novels of the neorealist movement in Spain.

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Later in 1971 Brenda Jean Willis realized the need to amplify, extend, enlarge, and focus more clearly the analysis done by Guerrero, and therefore conducted a study of these same two novels for her Master’s Thesis titled A Study of Algo pasa en la calle and

Cinco horas con Mario. In this study several technical devices are compared along with the principal and secondary characters in both works. In the same year Janet Díaz published a book on Miguel Delibes noting several similarities between three novels where the narration is centered on a dead character; these works include: La amortajada by María Luisa Bombal and the two novels studied by Willis and Guerrero mentioned above. This comment shows a similar interest in dead protagonists among authors from the Iberian Peninsula and Hispanic America or from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Later in 1974 Luis López Martínez published an article noting the points of convergence between the previously mentioned novels by Quiroga and Delibes and two other Spanish authors: Luis Romero and Rodrigo Rubio. López Martínez demonstrates that El cacique by Romero and Equipaje de amor para la tierra by Rubio are similar to the novels by Quiroga and Delibes by centering the narration around the wake and funeral services of the dead protagonists. Also, he highlights “una técnica evocativa” that is evidenced in the repeated remembering of the dead at the wake.

With respect to the Latin American novels, the majority of the critics focus on comparing Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo and Carlos Fuentes’s novel La muerte de

Artemio Cruz. Such critics include Carlos Monsiváis, Sharon Magnarelli, Santiago

Tejerina-Canal, Leo Pollman, Ana María Hernández de López, and Clelia Moure who compare differing aspects of the two novels (i.e. The Mexican Revolution, Desire, poetic

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elements, etc.). In 1976, Carlos Monsiváis classified the two aforementioned novels as delimiting distinct periods in Mexican Literature. He classifies them as exemplary this way: “Se delimitan las estaciones terminales: Pedro Páramo, la apoteosis y el fin de la novela rural; La región más transparente, la apoteosis y el fin de la novela citadina; La

muerte de Artemio Cruz, la apoteosis y el fin de las alegorías desmitificadoras” (195).

With the appellation of apoteosis, Monsiváis considers these authors and their novels

within the mainstream cultural world of Mexico.

Sharon Magnarelli, in 1981, compares the two novels with respect to female

characters along with the violence and sacrifice associated with such characters. She

summarizes that the dead or dying characters seek to control everything around them but

fail in their inability to obtain possession of their ideal female in both novels (np).

Further, this critic’s comparison points out that these dead or dying men left destruction

in their pathways as domineering caciques. In relation to Magnarelli’s comparison of the

supposed love life of the caciques, in 1987, Santiago Tejerina-Canal points out another

similarity between the two novels, noting that love and death bring permanence while

recognizing the similarity that exists between the death of Pedro y Artemio.

In 1989, Leo Pollman’s critical work combined numerous novels in connection with the nueva novela hispanoamericana. Among these he highlighted Pedro Páramo and La muerte de Artemio Cruz. He described the former as “la nueva novela más pura”

(82). Concerning Fuentes’s novel he classified it as “la historia de una traición a los ideales de la Revolución” (85). In the same year, Ana María Hernández de López presented her critical article on the two main characters of these novels as characters of

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the Mexican Revolution. In so doing, she concurred with Pollman in researching and analyzing the Revolution and various participants in these two excellent novels.

In 2000, Clelia Moure compared the differing poetic elements in Pedro Páramo and La muerte de Artemio Cruz. Her analysis focused on the distinct poetic styles used in these two novels along with El limonero real by Juan José Saer (1974). Moure concluded that the apparent realism within the novels is overshadowed by the use of poetic components, thereby infiltrating the narration (123). All of these critics have focused primarily on Rulfo’s and Fuentes’s novels, thereby excluding Bombal’s novel La amortajada either consciously or unconsciously, perhaps because of greater familiarity with Mexico and its novelists or lack of acquaintance with Bombal and her work.

Fewer critics have analyzed or compared Bombal’s novel to Rulfo’s and/or

Fuentes’s. Among these are Adriana Méndez Rodenas and Ana Miramonte. In 1996,

Méndez Rodenas compared Bombal’s dead/dying character in La amortajada to Rulfo’s

dead character, Pedro. Méndez noted the similar self-admiration through the image of

Narcissus. Further she explained that desire constitutes a major theme within the two

works. Similarly in 2004, Miramonte noted the lack of critical comparisions of Bombal’s work with both Rulfo’s and Fuentes’s. She explained that “no parece existir aún consenso

suficiente en medios académicos para plantearse una relectura de La muerte de Artemio

Cruz y de Pedro Páramo que implique una referencia necesaria a La amortajada” (494).

Despite the lack of critical attention to merit a re-reading of the novels through Bombal’s

work, the similarities found among them merit more serious attention and comparison.

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