Hibridación lingüística y cultural en autores norteamericanos de origen español

Abstract

The subject of this thesis covers a gap in the existing criticism, due largely to the fact that the cultural field to which it refers, the Spanish residents in the United States, has not been so far been the object of a systematic study beyond rescue work and diffusion in different subprojects developed by Professor James D. Fernández at New York University. After the book by Rueda Hemanz (1993), which drew a first overview of the Spanish emigration to the United States, only the field of popular culture and mass media (institutions, performances, sociability, etc.) has been analyzed in the well known studies of Nicholas Kanellos on Hispanic culture in the United States. The thesis covers the topic of the first of the areas, the emigration, analyzing the work of Prudencio de Pereda, bom in New York of Spanish immigrants, and autor since 1933, of many Spanish theme stories and two novels, Fiesta (1953), set in Spain, and above all, Windmills in Brooklyn (1960), fictional recreation of the world of his childhood. As an emigrant, is also studied Felipe Alfau, creator of the term "Americaniard" transplanted in his youth in New York and author of Locos (1936) and Chromos (1990). The lack of studies about these authors is due in part to the lack of interest in the sociological context in which they are inserted, but also to the tendency of recent criticism to systematically include the authors of Spanish origin, without any qualifications, in the Hispanic US culture. However, if, unlike other groups of European immigrants, the Spaniards could integrate thanks to a supranational language culture as the "Hispanic", this does not imply, as this thesis seeks to demonstrate that cultural production has not kept a number of specific features. It has therefore faced three obstacles: first, the lack of previous work on the authors of Spanish origin and cultural and social space in which they reside; second, the limited critical attention they have received; and, lastly, a critical approach based on assumptions that we consider erroneous, or at least in need of a major overhaul. Under the background above, the thesis aims to define the cultural space of American literature written by authors of Spanish origin from the study of an apecto of the work of both authors that has been in the origin of the absorption of the specific cultural of Spaniards living in the United States by the "Hispanic" culture, which is the Spanish language, especially in regard to the interaction with the English and the relevance of present translation processes. The main objectives of the thesis is, first, to publicize the work of little known authors, especially in Spain, studying them not in isolation, but in terms of the presence in his work of a number of constants that characterize them as part of a specific cultural identity. The second main objective, derived from the above, is precisely the definition of that identity. As an essential body of the thesis is studied, along with stories, novels and translations of Prudencio Pereda, his novel Windmills in Brooklyn, deepening theoretical aspects and those related to the history of Spanish emigration to the United States, the relatioinship of the Spanish community with "Hispanic" culture and, more specifically, in the linguistic field, and finally the different effects produced in the literary text interaction between Spanish and English. Likewise the thesis deals with the study of Felipe Alfau Locos, in which the importance of language in defining the identity of the Spanish residents in the United States is also evident.