Characters and characteristics in literature

In Latin America, wet nurses and nannies have played a relevant role in the transmission of legends, myths, medicinal knowledge, popular beliefs, and the religious practices of marginalized groups. This historical reality also ties them closely to the vitality of the marvelous real in Latin American culture and history as theorized by Alejo Carpentier. This dissertation focuses on examining the characters of wet nurses and nannies, especially in connection with the expression of the marvelous real in Latin American novels published in the second half of the twentieth century.
Employing primarily Alex Woloch’s theory of characterization, this dissertation explores the character space and position within the character system of la Vieja in El acoso (1956) by Alejo Carpentier, Peta Ponce in El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970) by José Donoso, and Petra Avilés in La casa de la laguna (1996) by Rosario Ferré. They serve as marvelous agents introducing elements of the marvelous real in the narrative. These characters are at the center of an extensive network of cultural codes that signify different sources of the marvelous real in Latin American culture. The marvelous network they establish functions as a vindicating mechanism that leads to the penalization of the families that hire their services, who represent a decadent and oppressive social system, whereas the wet nurses or nannies embody the oppressed groups in society. This is a literary strategy to impart, at a symbolic level, the justice that traditionally has been denied, both textually and socially, to these women.

Science fiction identifies three characteristics as definitive of and essential to humanity: 1) sentience or self-awareness, 2) emotions, and 3) most importantly, the capacity for sociability. Through the vital possession of these three traits any entity can come to be called human. In the first chapter, I examine Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain" and Samuel R. Delany's "Aye and Gomorrah...," two stories in which human subjects become Other than human. In the second chapter, I explore the prospect of creatures, not biologically human who gain human status through an analysis of Smith's "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the third chapter, I investigate the uniquely science fictional notion that "humanity" does not require biology through a comparison of H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau and William Gibson's Idoru.

The genre of the "picaresque" (romances of roguery), which were popular in sixteenth-century Spain, contain the literary type of the "picaro" or rogue, which can appear at times as a "student." The current work presents the historical context of the Spanish university and of the student's life as well as the representation of the "student" in several picaresque novels, namely, Mateo Aleman's El Guzman de Alfarache, Vicente Espinel's Marcos de Obregâon, Jerâonimo de Alcalâa y Yâanez's El donoso hablador, and Francisco de Quevedo's El Buscâon, in order to contrast the social reality of the student and its literary representation. The literary character of the "student" does not depart only from its reality. Its characteristics are based on the student stories from the oral medieval tradition, a residual cultural elements, as described by Maxime Chevalier, as well as the emerging picaresque narratives.