Identifier: TDX:566
Authors: Gutiérrez Pardina, Eva
Abstract:
The Four Sides of Hermes in Flavia Company's Narrative WorkThe purpose of this thesis is the study of Flavia Company Navau's narrative work written until the year 2000. In the introduction, her poetic work is also briefly mentioned, as well as two children's tales, one poetic prose book and another one of short stories published in the press.It answers a double goal: on the one side, to discover the main characteristic themes in the author's narrative work and, on the other side, to determine if it is possible to identify a clear division between the narrative work previous to the novel Melalcor and the ones written after it.The thesis is organized in a methodological introduction and an introduction to the subject ('Acercamiento biográfico y literario a Flavia Company', translated as 'Biographic And Literary Approach To Flavia Company'), followed by four chapters. Each one of them is related to four characteristics of god Hermes: his ability to lie, his role as the messenger of the gods, his relation with alchemy and his androgynous and/or hermaphrodite side.In chapter one, ('El rostro y la máscara' (Mundos ficcionales, estética de la recepción, verdad y mentira en la novelística de Flavia Company), translated as 'The Face And The Mask' (Unreal worlds, Reader-response Criticism, Truth And Lies In Flavia Company's Novels)) studies on hermeneutics, on reader-response criticism and theories about unreal worlds have been used on the study of the author's narrative work. In chapter two ('La carta en la producción narrativa de Flavia Company' translated as 'The Letter in Flavia Company's Narrative Works'), the bibliography is based on personal letters. To write chapter three ('Alquimia, mito y ritos de iniciación en algunas novelas de Flavia Company' translated as 'Alchemy, Myth And Initiation Rites In Some Flavia Company's Novels'), some sources have been consulted in the frame of the Eranos group which approach the analysed texts with a hermeneutic-symbolic focus or, according to other definitions, an anthropologic-imaginary focus. Studies on alchemy have also been used to approach these texts. In chapter four, ('La mariposa y el tábano: de Dame placer a Melalcor' translated as 'The Butterfly And The Horsefly: From Give Me Pleasure To Melalcor') theories on gender and the queer theory are applied on the texts, as well as specialised bibliography and novels which deal with subjects such as androgyny and/or hermaphroditism.In the conclusion of the thesis, the characteristic themes of Flavia Company's works are listed: strong confessional and intimist nature, reflections on love, the passage of time and death; lying, the defence of liberty and a call to tolerance, the abolition of a single point of view, the utopia, eroticism, the rupture of topics applied to male and female concepts, the interest to establish contact with her readers, the questioning of barriers which are supposed to divide real and fiction, dreams, the obsession for a painful past, the feeling of grieve for the lost paradise of childhood, the demolishment of the traditional concept of family, the lack of communication which defines the relationships between human beings and the inability to forgive others and to forgive oneself, the parody of Bible elements and the concept of chance opposite to destiny.Also in the conclusion, the existence of two stages in the author's narrative works is stated: one stage before Melalcor and the other after it. This statement is based on the greater realism which appears in this novel, together with a loss of the symbolic aspects which distinguish many novels of her first stage; the change from inner novels, based on the character's intimacy, to external novels, in which one can see an intense desire of reforming structures and social institutions; the desanctification of love and death, which causes (apart from a change from eroticism to a harder vision of sex, bordering pornography) a drop in plot's emotional intensity and a clear acceptance of quotidian. This acceptance, on its side, carries with it the idea to overcome the vital pessimism which characterized her latest novels. We can not talk, however, of a rupture of both stages, but rather of an intensification of those elements which were very secondary or were only implied in some precedent works.
Repositori URV