Female Mythologies in Contemporary Chicana Literature

Female Mythologies in Contemporary Chicana Literature PDF Author: Nadine Gebhardt
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638715817
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, language: English, abstract: In Mexican-American/ Chicano culture, feminine archetypes from the Mexican tradition play an important role for woman's subjectivity. Traditionally, such archetypes epitomize Catholic-patriarchal constructions of womanhood. Idolized by the figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Malinche, and La Llorona, the most prevailing representations of female sexuality and motherhood evolve around the passive virgin, the sinful seductress, and the traitorous mother. Along the lines of Chicana feminism, the traditional definitions of these feminine archetypes can be seen as promoting an image of woman that is detrimental to female subjectivity. Although there are three figures, these archetypes evoke a binary opposition that defines woman as either "good woman" or "bad woman," "virgin" or "whore." As such, they limit and circumscribe the Chicana's development of subjectivity. But these cultural icons may also epitomize feminine power, and hence provide the Chicana with possible feminist role models to back up her emancipation. Chicana feminists have employed creative writing to counter the Catholic-patriarchal discourse on the Virgin of Guadalupe, Malinche, and La Llorona. As they explore these cultural archetypes in their novels, short stories, and poems, Chicana feminists attempt to reveal the mechanisms by which the original images of these mythic figures have been subverted, disempowered, and distorted. But most importantly, they seek to deconstruct the virgin/whore dichotomy by rewriting the mythic figures. Through a revision of existing myths, Chicana writers are able to create a feminist mythology that is rooted in cultural tradition but simultaneously serves as an act of resistance to the dominant discourse. This Master's thesis will explore the mythic figures of Guadalupe, Malinche, and La Llorona in all

Female Mythologies in Contemporary Chicana Literature

Female Mythologies in Contemporary Chicana Literature PDF Author: Nadine Gebhardt
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638715817
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Get Book Here

Book Description
Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, language: English, abstract: In Mexican-American/ Chicano culture, feminine archetypes from the Mexican tradition play an important role for woman's subjectivity. Traditionally, such archetypes epitomize Catholic-patriarchal constructions of womanhood. Idolized by the figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Malinche, and La Llorona, the most prevailing representations of female sexuality and motherhood evolve around the passive virgin, the sinful seductress, and the traitorous mother. Along the lines of Chicana feminism, the traditional definitions of these feminine archetypes can be seen as promoting an image of woman that is detrimental to female subjectivity. Although there are three figures, these archetypes evoke a binary opposition that defines woman as either "good woman" or "bad woman," "virgin" or "whore." As such, they limit and circumscribe the Chicana's development of subjectivity. But these cultural icons may also epitomize feminine power, and hence provide the Chicana with possible feminist role models to back up her emancipation. Chicana feminists have employed creative writing to counter the Catholic-patriarchal discourse on the Virgin of Guadalupe, Malinche, and La Llorona. As they explore these cultural archetypes in their novels, short stories, and poems, Chicana feminists attempt to reveal the mechanisms by which the original images of these mythic figures have been subverted, disempowered, and distorted. But most importantly, they seek to deconstruct the virgin/whore dichotomy by rewriting the mythic figures. Through a revision of existing myths, Chicana writers are able to create a feminist mythology that is rooted in cultural tradition but simultaneously serves as an act of resistance to the dominant discourse. This Master's thesis will explore the mythic figures of Guadalupe, Malinche, and La Llorona in all

Reinventing the Myths

Reinventing the Myths PDF Author: Margaret A. Garza
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description


Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature

Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature PDF Author: Deborah L. Madsen
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570033797
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Exploring the work of six notable authors, this text reveals characteristic themes, images and stylistic devices that make contemporary Chicana writing a vibrant and innovative part of a burgeoning Latina creativity.

Culture Matters

Culture Matters PDF Author: Grażyna Zygadło
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Based on the author's thesis (Ph.D., University of aodaz).

Women Versed in Myth

Women Versed in Myth PDF Author: Colleen S. Harris
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476626081
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Throughout history, men have prayed to gods and poets have interpreted ancient myths for new audiences. But what about women? With sections on teaching and modern writing, this collection of new essays examines how modern female poets--including H.D., Louise Gluck, Ruth Fainlight, Rita Dove, Sylvia Plath and others--have subverted classical expectations in interpreting such legends as Persephone, Helen and Eurydice. Other mythological figures are also explored and rewritten, including Buddhism's Kwan Yin, Celtic Macha, the Aztecs' Coatlicue, Pele of Hawaii, India's Sita, Sumer's Inanna, Yemonja of the Yoruba and many more.

Women Singing in the Snow

Women Singing in the Snow PDF Author: Tey Diana Rebolledo
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816515462
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This first book-length analysis of the Chicana literary tradition traces the development of Chicana literature from 1848 to the present. Rebolledo discusses major writers' works, important myths and archetypes, and key theoretical issues; she then shows the ways in which Chicana writers explore subjectivity and identity in their writing, the struggle Chicana writers have faced in finding their voices and developing a strong and ethnically tagged language, and the ways they have broken taboos by transgressing into traditionally male spaces.

Encarnación

Encarnación PDF Author: Suzanne Bost
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823230846
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Encarnaci+n takes a new look at identity, following the contemporary movement away from the fixed categories of identity politics toward a more fluid conception of the intersections between identities and communities. The works of Gloria Anzald+a, Cherr+e Moraga, and Ana Castillo enable us to examine how identities shift and intersect with others through processes of incarnation. Since the 1980s, critics have come to equate these writers with Chicana feminist identity politics. This critical trend, however, has been unable to account, as does Encarnaci+n, for these writers' increasing emphasis.

Chicana Sexuality and Gender

Chicana Sexuality and Gender PDF Author: Debra J. Blake
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822381222
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Since the 1980s Chicana writers including Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Alma Luz Villanueva have reworked iconic Mexican cultural symbols such as mother earth goddesses and La Llorona (the Wailing Woman of Mexican folklore), re-imagining them as powerful female figures. After reading the works of Chicana writers who created bold, powerful, and openly sexual female characters, Debra J. Blake wondered how everyday Mexican American women would characterize their own lives in relation to the writers’ radical reconfigurations of female sexuality and gender roles. To find out, Blake gathered oral histories from working-class and semiprofessional U.S. Mexicanas. In Chicana Sexuality and Gender, she compares the self-representations of these women with fictional and artistic representations by academic-affiliated, professional intellectual Chicana writers and visual artists, including Alma M. López and Yolanda López. Blake looks at how the Chicana professional intellectuals and the U.S. Mexicana women refigure confining and demeaning constructions of female gender roles and racial, ethnic, and sexual identities. She organizes her analysis around re-imaginings of La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Llorona, indigenous Mexica goddesses, and La Malinche, the indigenous interpreter for Hernán Cortés during the Spanish conquest. In doing so, Blake reveals how the professional intellectuals and the working-class and semiprofessional women rework or invoke the female icons to confront the repression of female sexuality, limiting gender roles, inequality in male and female relationships, and violence against women. While the representational strategies of the two groups of women are significantly different and the U.S. Mexicanas would not necessarily call themselves feminists, Blake nonetheless illuminates a continuum of Chicana feminist thinking, showing how both groups of women expand lifestyle choices and promote the health and well-being of women of Mexican origin or descent.

Blood Lines

Blood Lines PDF Author: Sheila Marie Contreras
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292782527
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
2009 — Runner-up, Modern Language Association Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies Blood Lines: Myth, Indigenism, and Chicana/o Literature examines a broad array of texts that have contributed to the formation of an indigenous strand of Chicano cultural politics. In particular, this book exposes the ethnographic and poetic discourses that shaped the aesthetics and stylistics of Chicano nationalism and Chicana feminism. Contreras offers original perspectives on writers ranging from Alurista and Gloria Anzaldúa to Lorna Dee Cervantes and Alma Luz Villanueva, effectively marking the invocation of a Chicano indigeneity whose foundations and formulations can be linked to U.S. and British modernist writing. By highlighting intertextualities such as those between Anzaldúa and D. H. Lawrence, Contreras critiques the resilience of primitivism in the Mexican borderlands. She questions established cultural perspectives on "the native," which paradoxically challenge and reaffirm racialized representations of Indians in the Americas. In doing so, Blood Lines brings a new understanding to the contradictory and richly textured literary relationship that links the projects of European modernism and Anglo-American authors, on the one hand, and the imaginary of the post-revolutionary Mexican state and Chicano/a writers, on the other hand.

Infinite Divisions

Infinite Divisions PDF Author: Tey Diana Rebolledo
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816513840
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Offers examples of oral narratives and literature from the nineteenth century to the present