Re-Escrituras del Cuento de Hadas En la Literatura Hispánica Contemporánea: Rosario Ferré, Carmen Martín Gaite, Luisa Valenzuela y Eliseo Diego

Re-writings of Fairy Tales in Contemporary Hispanic Literature: Rosario Ferré, Carmen Martín Gaite, Luisa Valenzuela and Eliseo Diego

This dissertation studies contemporary re-writings of fairy tales by selected authors from Latin America and Spain. It addresses the complexity of the project of rewriting through a discussion of the various definitions of the fairy tale and a consideration of the most important theories on re-writings, such as those of parody by Linda Hutcheon, hypertextuality by Gérard Genette, and intertextuality by Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes. My first chapter explores Rosario Ferré’s "La muñeca menor" and "La bella durmiente" (Papeles de Pandora 1976), as well as her cuentos maravillosos in Sonatinas (1989). It observes how Ferré uses the same literary tradition in two ways. First, she takes elements from fairy tales to draw parallels between the passive role they play in the most popular ones and the current role of women in society. Second, she writes her own fairy tales as a way to start her own tradition. The second chapter, on Carmen Martin Gaite, studies her novels Caperucita en Manhattan (1990) and, La reina de las nieves (1994), as well as her two marvelous stories "El castillo de las tres murallas" (1981) and "El pastel del diablo" ( 1985). Although each work is a different type of re-writing, in their own way they all show the importance of the very process of re-wTiting in order to achieve self-fulfillment. The third chapter, on Luisa Valenzuela's "Cuentos de hades" from her collection Simetrías (1993), draws parallels between the fairy tale and recent injustices in Argentina. In the process, she establishes a distance from the traditional fairy tale and also highlights its current relevance, as it helps to deal with contemporary issues. Finally, chapter four studies how the Cuban author Eliseo Diego tests the limits of intertextuality in multiple works of poetry as well as the short stories "Historia de la casa perdida" (1979), "Un regalo de cumpleños" (1975) and "El pastor de las ratas" (1975). The dissertation as a whole showcases the possibilities of the fairy tale as a medium that addresses many concerns, but that can notwithstanding also be re-defined to relate to new ones.