Date of Submission

Spring 2014

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Division of Languages and Literature; Literature

Project Advisor 1

Nicole Caso

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This project attempts to address the way that Rafael Trujillo impacted the people of the Dominican Republic and how his memory continues to do so fifty-three years after his death. In my first chapter I demonstrate how in The Feast of the Goat, published in 2001, Vargas Llosa portrays Trujillo as a manipulative and theatrical tyrant who presents a persona to his subjects so grandiose that he seems a larger than life. However, through descriptions of Trujillo’s ailing body and passages of the dictator’s inner thoughts Vargas Llosa is able to deconstruct the mighty figure and myth that surrounds Rafael Trujillo. In the second part of my project I address the way that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, published in 2006, engages with myth in order to grapple with and understand how Trujillo’s memory continues to haunt the people of the Dominican Republic in the present day. In the third portion of my project I explore the way that both novels engage with the silences that were left behind as a result of the Trujillo regime and how speaking, writing, and story telling serve to move beyond said silences.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Bard Off-campus Download

Bard College faculty, staff, and students can login from off-campus by clicking on the Off-campus Download button and entering their Bard username and password.

Share

COinS