Affective Narratology and Revolutionary Discourse in Spain (1931-36) and Cuba (1955-61)

The dissertation investigates whether affective narratology, as defined by Patrick Colm Hogan, can be useful in identifying underlying ideologies in Hispanic argumentative prose, how these ideologies conform to the concept of revolutionary discourse by Michel Foucault, and finally investigates whether those revolutionary discourses are predominantly modern or traditional, according to cultural complexity model adapted from Ulf Hannerz. The question the dissertation answers is how can Hispanic intellectuals representing opposing political views claim a revolutionary identity and appeal to violence? This question is relevant because these texts were read by those who later engaged in revolutionary violence. Deep readings were conducted on verbal art published by Republican Spain intellectuals before the coup d’état of Francisco Franco and by Cuba intellectuals after the coup d’état by Fulgencio Batista. This included the isolation of systems of the emotion that drive the heroic tragicomedy in order to identify underlying ideologies. Ideologies were analyzed as part of the revolutionary discourse archive, and finally the complexity of the ideologies within an autocratic-modern paradigm was examined. The conclusion of the dissertation shows that cognitive cultural studies extend productively to Hispanic cultural studies in the first half of the twentieth century. They contribute to the expansion of the study of the Hispanic essay and demonstrate that the Hispanic revolutionary discourse of that era contains politically modern views, but it equally contains culturally autocratic traditions.