Publication:
Paradigms of postmodern presentism: towards the chicana decolonization of the imaginary

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Official URL
Full text at PDC
Publication Date
2018-10-01
Advisors (or tutors)
Editors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Citations
Google Scholar
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
Presentism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the tendency to interpret past events from a present-day perspective. Translated into the field of literary criticism, presentism means studying past works according to current values and parameters which do not match, in the majority of cases, those prevailing at the time these texts were published. The concept of presentism, though not excessively extended, seems to have gained popularity during these past years, thanks, for the most part, to academics Hugh Grady and Terence Hawkes, who in their works manifest the influences upon them exerted by the Frankfurt School and cultural materialism. In Shakespeare, Machiaveli & Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet (Grady, 2002); and Shakespeare in the Present (Hawkes, 2002) both theoreticians lay the foundations of presentism, which they consider a school of literary criticism arising as a response to the new historicist approaches and the impact of cultural materialism and new formalism in the field of theory during the 1980’s, though not necessarily in direct opposition. Presentism is thus based on the premise that it is impossible to study the past from a perspective other than the current one, and that any analysis of a past work must be carried out with a focus unavoidably framed and delimited by the present. Yet, this dissertation also follows scholars such as Cary DiPietro, who admits that the presentist school is still in an early stage of development and that it requires a more precise definition, perhaps linking to theories of aesthetic materialism...
De acuerdo con el Oxford English Dictionary, se entiende por presentismo la tendencia a interpretar hechos pasados desde una perspectiva actual. Esto, en el campo de la crítica literaria equivaldría a estudiar obras clásicas (y no tan clásicas) utilizando parámetros y valores propios de nuestros días que no coinciden, en la mayoría de los casos, con aquellos imperantes en el momento en que dichas obras fueron publicadas. El concepto de presentismo, si bien no demasiado extendido, parece haber ganado popularidad durante los últimos años gracias, en su mayor parte, a los académicos Hugh Grady y Terence Hawkes, ambos influenciados por la escuela de Frankfurt y el materialismo cultural. En sus obras Shakespeare, Machiaveli & Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet (Grady, 2002) y Shakespeare in the Present (Hawkes, 2002) ambos teóricos establecen las bases del presentismo, considerándolo una escuela de crítica literaria que surge como respuesta a las aproximaciones neo-historicistas y el impacto del materialismo cultural y del neo-formalismo en el campo de la teoría durante la década de 1980, si bien no necesariamente en directa oposición. Como punto de partida para la teorización del presentismo se da la premisa esencial de que es imposible acceder al pasado de forma puramente objetiva, y que todo análisis de una obra literaria ha de hacerse, irremediablemente, a través de una visión enfocada y matizada por el presente. Sin embargo, esta tesis bebe de académicos como Cary DiPietro, que admiten que la escuela presentista se encuentra aún en una etapa temprana de desarrollo, y requiere una definición más precisa que entronque con el materialismo estético...
Description
Tesis de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Filología, leída el 12/06/2017.
UCM subjects
Unesco subjects
Keywords
Citation
Collections