Imagenes del poder; tres versiones complementarias: Conrad, Lawrence y Valle-Inclan

Teresa Huerta, Purdue University

Abstract

This study compares and contrasts images of power generated by three European novels of the early twentieth century: Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (1906), Ramon del Valle-Inclan's Tirano Banderas (1926), and D. H. Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent (1927). These works recreate imaginary Hispanic American republics in which governments, socio-political institutions, peoples, and individuals experience a permanent state of crisis. Such crisis is made apparent through discrepancies between human ideals and the realities depicted, that is, through a lack of correspondence between people's expectations and needs and the strategies and ends of those who exercise authority. The novels discussed, which can be labeled as political because of the underlying ideological content of their discourses, exemplify a pyramidal hierarchy of power in which those entities and social strata that own the wealth occupy the highest level of authority, having control over the dictatorial governments that administer these republics, and over the peoples that inhabit them. Ironically, the tip of the power pyramid is located outside the domain of these nations, in areas of influence which are controlled by foreign economic interests. The novels compared provide a comprehensive vision of the power hierarchy described above, because each of them highlights a different aspect of the structure of power, supplementing the approach of the others. Nostromo concentrates on the effects of material interests on society and the individual, and on the moral quality of those who contribute to their development, Tirano Banderas directs its gaze towards the despotic authority of the tyrant, while The Plumed Serpent explores the foreign ideologies that cause instability and violence in the institutional life of these nations. The republics represented, which are shown as being indiscriminately exploited by colonizing agents, illustrate Foucault's notion of power as a control strategy exercised by those who own the wealth; the tactics developed by the latter produce an uneven interplay of forces in the societies of these nations, that gives rise to recurrent violence. Within these unstable universes, the wealthy are depicted as dehumanized, because of their growing attachment to material wealth, and because of the moral degradation their greed has led them to.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Hart, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Comparative literature|Literature

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