If different societies encode their communication according to their socio-historical context, it makes sense to postulate that satire resides in the no-man's-land that sprawls between what an individual claims to be and the reality revealed by his actions. Thus, satirical caricature, as graphic and scenic art, results in the indictment of collective or individual vices through irony, sarcasm and farce. This study examines the Spanish-American War of 1898, and the "disaster" brought about by the defeat of Spain and the loss of its colonial empire, through the lens of the caricatures published by three satirical magazines—Don Quijote (Madrid), La Campana de Gracia (Barcelona) y El Hijo de El Ahuizote (Mexico)—between January and December, 1898. These magazines provide a many-splendored set of facets depicting a scathing and hard-hitting campaign supporting the war and the demonization, management, and suppression of the other through the use of symbols. While in the peninsular press Spain is represented as a raging bull, a lion, or a virgin maiden, Cuba as an empty container or a black and ignorant peasant and the United States as imperialist pigs and a treacherous thieves, the Mexican magazine views the Spanish as the usurpers, pirates and traitors, the United States as liberator, and the annexed populations as respectable and noble societies to be freed from the Spanish colonial yoke.

Whether motivated by internal ideological confrontations or in opposition to external threats, the use of graphic representation as a political weapon considerably enriches the meaning of symbols. Satirical caricature represents a categorical instrument for the definition of national identity. The creation and dissemination of unified stereotypes—images assumed to be identical for all recipients—generates the development of a powerful national imaginary, both abstract and highly accessible to the reader, fomenting the manufacture of "public opinion". It is precisely here where its great semiotic power lies, because caricature achieves its maximum expression when it veers toward the symbolic rather than the discursive, delivering its content in an abstract and unlimited fashion, and spreading its effects through time and all the different socio-cultural contexts it may find along the way.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the materiality of a unique text, Random House and The Illustrated Modern Library’s 1946 Don Quixote, illustrated by Catalonian painter Salvador Dalí. It analyzes Dalí’s classical trajectory, how Dalí and the text were received in mid-twentieth century North America, and how they both fit into the print history of illustrated editions of Don Quixote. Each is revealed to be unique in comparison with the history of the genre due to the publishing house’s utilization of Dalí’s high-quality illustrations in a small-sized text. Lavish illustrations traditionally have been reserved for larger, collectible editions. The contemporary material significance of the 1946 edition is revealed by examining organizations, people, and circumstances that were necessary for its production in the United States, and by contextualizing the text’s reception by North American popular culture, high art echelons, and art critics.

The overarching history of illustrated editions of Don Quixote is examined, comparing Dalí and his illustrations with important thematic and methodological benchmarks set by illustrators within this 400-year period, especially regarding renderings of reality and fantasy. Analyses of the first three watercolor illustrations of Dalí’s 1946 Don Quixote reveal how the painter forms mythological imagery and composes the quixotic dichotomy of reality and fantasy through the metaphoric gaze of an inanimate figure representing the protagonist. Dalí at times renders the “real” Don Quixote as incapacitated, omitting from his illustrations universalized iconography utilized in previous centuries achieved by rendering Don Quixote’s perspective, gaze, and heroic interpretation of events. In these three illustrations, Dalí forms Don Quixote as a deflated figure based in burla (mockery) and engaño (self-deception) by negating Don Quixote’s gaze within the compositions, without compromising the painter’s trademark surrealist style.

The text therefore challenges the genre’s print history while Dalí challenges French and German Romantic illustrators’ universalized iconography that traditionally highlights the nobility of the knight errant. By focalizing fantastic madness as interacting with burlesque reality, Dalí creates a new episteme within the genre of illustrated editions of Don Quixote, establishing his unique niche as an illustrator in this genre.

This dissertation focuses on the study of Western esotericism in European culture and forms a method of discovering esoteric topics in cultural artifacts. Using the definition as a corpus of knowledge historically divided between esoteric, reserved for the intellectual and power elite, and exoteric, available for everybody, I argue that esotericism represents the knowledge that always accompanied the cultural production of the Mediterranean zone, adding a spiritual meaning to any visual or written work of art. The contemporary novels of the past decade by the Spanish author Javier Sierra are fully based on a historical investigation, in which esotericism appears as a nuclear topic, revealing the great interest of the public in the mysteries of the past. Through the postmodern cultural theories, together with sociological and historical methods, the dissertation explores the cultural processes that lead to the shift of esoteric knowledge in the 20th century from secretive to publically available. The study defines the purpose of recreating the European past and investigates the secrets of European cultural formation. Through an insider-outsider perspective, it analyzes the cultural artifacts, that appear in the novels in the form of reference or as a nuclear part of the plot. It presents the scope of esoteric currents, that are divided between the discipline of religion, science, and philosophy, which form the tetrahedron of knowledge as a theoretic model for this study. The constructed model reveals the interaction of the three disciplines throughout the history and examines the reasons for the religious disenchantment of the 20th century, proven through Digital Humanities’ research as the predominance of science over the Catholic Church, which allowed the esoteric knowledge to reappear. The study explores the affiliation of esotericism with science through the scientific-cultural inquiries between the ancient myths and reality, by showing that man’s consciousness had always been dependent on the scientific perception of the world. It explores the pagan symbolism that is mixed with Christian traditions and reveals the stories, hidden behind the representation of the greatest works of art, by combining and analyzing the wisdom of the past and the contemporary spiritual inquiries in their philosophical meaning.

Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the history of emotions has engaged much scholarly interest. This project draws from the historical, sociological and philosophical research on emotions to analyze the representation of emotions in narratives from Argentina and Chile. This historical investigation posits that socio-political, cultural and economic forces, which are represented in literature and film, shape emotions and emotional standards. The analysis of Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar and Raúl Ruiz’s Tres Tristes Tigres (1968) is centered on the impact of Existentialism, capitalism and modernity on the construction of emotional standards in urban societies. The impact of militant groups in the shaping of collective emotions in Latin America during the 1960s and 70s is examined in Reina Roffé’s novel Monte de Venus (1973) and Aldo Francia’s film Ya no basta con rezar (1972). The analysis of Alberto Fuguet’s Las películas de mi vida (2002) and Pablo Larraín’s No (2012) sheds light on the paradigmatic shift in the construction of emotional standards resulting from the implementation of neoliberalism through dictatorships as well as the insertion into the globalized consumerist culture by way of technology and media. Finally, this project encourages future research of the emotions in literary and cultural studies of Latin America.

In this work we review certain biographical and historical data concerning Sor Juana and María Luisa, Condesa de Paredes. In addition, we have chosen Ovillejos 214, Romance 61, Redondillas 90 and 91 as poems that provides important insight into their relationship of patronage and friendship. In order to delineate theoretically both aspects of this relationship --the public and the personal-- we make use of the concept of ekphrasis proposed by Frederick de Armas. This concept is applied to the analysis of Romance 61, which is in the tradition of the lyrical Petrarchan portrait. Redondillas 90 and 91 are examined from the theoretical perspective of Cicero's amicitia, which serves to define an alternative model of feminine amicitia. In constructing this model, we review the written criticism surrounding María de Zayas' comedy, La traición en la amistad (1635). This criticism insists on a certain configuration of feminine friendship necessary for understanding the relationship between the two women. As is demonstrated in the analysis of the poems, the two women developed a mutual and permanent affection for one another until the death of Sor Juana in 1695. The Condesa de Paredes also provided practical support to Sor Juana for the publication of her first book, Inundación castálida (1689), which launched her to literary fame. To date there have been no critical studies that apply the concepts of ekphrasis and feminine friendship to the study of anecdotal clues found in the poems of Sor Juana for analyzing the nature of her relationship with the Condesa. This is the contribution of the present work.