"This is my place, Mama Nadi’s": espacios femeninos e identidad en "Ruined" de Lynn Nottage

Lynn Nottage’s Ruined (2009) takes place at Mama Nadi’s, a brothel in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the civil war. Female identities, both physical and psychical, are constantly threatened (about to crumble, about to be “in ruins”) by a masculine world of war and violence. The brothel as a business setting becomes a quasi-domestic setting and a sanctuary where identities can be, however feebly, defined and preserved within the unstable walls of feminine solidarity. The use and exploitation of the corporeal female space by clients of the brothel are described in spatial terms that replicate the exploitation of the rich mineral land in Congo. Ultimately, Ruined reminds us that the borders of one’s space, both in the physical world and when pertaining to one’s identity, are constantly subject to transgression, invasion, and ruin.Ruined (2009), de Lynn Nottage, se desarrolla en el burdel de Mama Nadi, en la República Democrática del Congo durante la Guerra civil. Las identidades femeninas, tanto físicas como psíquicas, se ven constantemente amenazadas (a punto de derrumbarse, de convertirse en “ruinas”) por un mundo masculino de guerra y violencia. El prostíbulo, un negocio, se convierte en espacio semi-doméstico y santuario donde es posible definir y preservar una identidad, acaso mínima, dentro de los muros inestables de la solidaridad femenina. El uso y explotación del cuerpo femenino por parte de los clientes del prostíbulo se describe en términos espaciales que recuerdan a la explotación de la riqueza mineral de la tierra del Congo. Ruined nos recuerda, finalmente, que las fronteras del espacio propio, en lo que respecta al mundo físico y a nuestra identidad, están constantemente amenazadas por la trasgresión, la invasión, y la ruina

Palimpsests of Identity: The Poetic Quest of Theodore Roethke

North-American poet Theodore Roethke has been endorsed as one of the most suggestive writers within the group of the so-called ‘Confessional Poets’. While acknowledging that most poetry is, in fact, a form of confession, Roethke examines himself and his surroundings with such a depth of perception as to plunge into those unlit regions of the self out of reach for the conscious mind. His oeuvre shows a substantial biographical streak, attempting to reconstruct his lifelong search for a stable identity, turning an obstacle such as his mental instability into a source for the poetic ciphering of his quest. This definition of personal identity is sought through a series of different metaphors: several masks, disguises and roles are used as symbols of the manyfold nature of the fractured self, which acquires a palimpsest quality in which identities unfold and proliferate. The stages of the construction of identity, documented in his lyric creation, run therefore parallel to the psychic process Roethke had to undergo, one which caused him years of suffering, confinement and disablement. Roethke's work provides a first-hand testimony on how writing can be a useful therapeutic tool to understand the pathological processes the self must sometimes submerge itself into

“Without Contraries There is no Progression”: Splitting and Multiplicity in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook

A key aspect in The Golden Notebook, by British writer Doris Lessing, is the analysis of how women in the 60s are forced to resort to an internal split to find an exit to their situation within the social and familial microcosm they inhabit. Rather than about simple split, we should talk about fragmentation, since we do not only find couples of characters representing the divided self of the main character, but rather groups of alternative and incomplete selves, where each element stands for a fragment that results from the splitting of the original self. Apart from the richness that this multiple split provides concerning the psychological analysis of the characters, the reader is witness to yet another reflection of multiplicity and fragmentation in Lessing’s work: the almost infinite variety of literary styles, points of view and voices that the writer employs to enrich the already suggestive subject of the fragmentation of the self, a self that will no longer be considered to be monolithic or homogeneous

Reseña: HENKE, SUZETTE A. Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women’s LifeWriting. Londres: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1998 (xxii+216). ISBN: 0-333-75485-9

Depto. de Estudios Ingleses: Lingüística y LiteraturaFac. de FilologíaTRUEpu

Reseña: Paul S. Derrick, Norma González and Anna M. Brígido 2006: La poesía temprana de Emily Dickinson: el primer cuadernillo. Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València. 104 pp. ISBN 84-370-6316-7

Depto. de Estudios Ingleses: Lingüística y LiteraturaFac. de FilologíaTRUEpu