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Diachronic research has often made use of metalinguistic remarks made by "prestigious" speakers as a way to reconstruct past stages of a given language. The question arises as to what point these remarks can be considered objective. This issue is addressed here by paying attention to the time span between 1940 and 1960 and to Emilio Lorenzo's remarks about the evolution of Sp. o sea. Lorenzo's intuitions can be (dis)confirmed by checking them against the rae CORDE corpus. Building on the conclusions extracted from o sea, the last part of this paper establishes some methodological remarks regarding the diachronic study of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of no obstante ('notwithstanding') has been affected by some theoretical preconceptions, which have influenced both the explanation of its emergence as a grammatical device in Castilian language and its description in contemporary Spanish. These misguided descriptions have been motivated by the use of our current grammatical intuition, which considers no obstante the result of a Latin heritage. The entailment to Latin has supported, also, the description of no obstante + NP as an absolute construction. Moreover, the influence of the Theory of Grammaticalization, which usually does not pay much attention to the textual conditions of grammatical forms production, has favoured the neglect of textual contexts that give rise to the Castilian discourse marker no obstante. In this paper, we try to demonstrate that, in the sequences no obstante + NP and no obstante que, no obstante has been reanalyzed as being only a grammatical element with a prepositional function. Further, we deal with the evidence that, in spite of its Latin form, no obstante was introduced into Castilian language via Catalan or Aragonese languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I propose a review of two metalinguistic categories: [+/- innovative] and [+/- grammaticalized]. On the basis of some analogies in theiruse by different frameworks of historical linguistics (a traditional one, the comparative-historical method, and a modern one, the grammaticalization theories), I argue that both of them can be described in terms of "sequential models" and I deal with the way this kind of model takes account of language change. Historical evidence is brought in from several well-known Romance structures, and in particular, from the development of present perfects in Spanish and French, in order to point out to some of the methodological limits of the models: firstly the existence of mismatches between the sequential structure and empirical data, due to a high level of generalization in hypothesis, and secondly, what I will call the "stage 0 fallacy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new framework for the grammaticalization of the Old Spanish manner adverb sí so / yes' as a positive polarity item. My proposal is that Old Spanish and Modern Spanish display different syntactic structures to convey positive polarity; in Old Spanish it involves not only the adverb sí, but it is related to verb movement, focus, clitic placement, VP-ellipsis and the properties of the Po/(arity) Head. I claim that the restructuring of the Left Periphery in Renaissance Spanish set the scenario for the reanalysis of sí as a polarity item and led to the emergence of previously unknown syntactic structures related to the expression of positive polarity, such as sí que or bare sí. Since the strong or weak features of the Pol Head is what regulates whether sí was a polarity item or not, strong features of Pol appear to be the underlying factor which determines the syntactic properties of positive polarity in Old Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistics has become more and more technical, digitalized and experimental in the last years. Without denying the technical and methodological advantages of these evolutions, the present paper postulates that the initial base of linguistic research should be human empathy: language should not only be observed from outside, as it were a natural object. The researcher should rather take profit from the possibility of assuming the object departing from Its own configuration, re-creating it within his own mind in order to understand its real essence. It will be argued that linguistics ought to be empathic in studies of current languages as well as in diachronic research since linguistic creativity allows also for Intuitions on previous states of a language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Holmberg is -along with Waleis- the most important Argentine author of detective fiction of the nineteenth century. Critics have noticed quite enough his first two detective stories, La bolsa de huesos (1896) and La casa endiablada (1896), of the five that make up the whole; only two recent articles analyze his last two detective stories ("Don José de la Pamplina", 1905; “Más allá de la autopsia", 1906). In this paper I investigate Nelly (1896), his third detective story, never analyzed in relation to this genre. I try to demonstrate that these three first narrations form a trilogy and they jointly allow us to notice Holmberg's fluctuations on his first approach to detective fiction. I hold the view that it is possible to note in Nelly elements of the Kriminalnovelle and a perceptible distance from the state law and the related paradigm of scientific culture. All three stories can be characterized as fantastic detective novels, and they promote a model of culture and nation that incorporates the foreigner and contrasts with the texts of contemporary Argentine naturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tries to analyze this short story's iconographic version for the Biblioteca Mignon edition. The methodological approach follows the study of the topic and technical elements wich provide the peculiarities of the story that had not been examined previously. Subsequently, it comes to the icons analysis itself, from the drawer's interpretation. As conclusion, the iconographic version seems to be reduced to the external aspects and the impossibility for a deep text interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Luisa Carnés' novel Tea Rooms (1934) in the context of novels from the same decade, revealing the paradoxes of work by female authors in the Second Republic. It also examines the concept of 'denouncement', and how the particular proposition of Carnés -influenced by a communist perspective- represents an innovative and unexplored side of this narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In these pages, some contrastive aspects of Japanese Grammar characterized by a special contrastive interest in regard to Spanish Grammar and that can be considered as difficult to be understood from the point of view of Spanish speaking people, are introduced. In order to approach these problems, some concepts of Cognitive Linguistics are applied, because they are considered useful as a tool to understand these problematic aspects. These concepts are cognitive paper, semantic role, canonic transitivity and construction. For the selection of contrastive aspects it has been made a search of the problems showed in grammars and learning books of Japanese as a Second Language, and a corpus of examples of mistakes produced by foreign students of Japanese as a second language has also been analyzed. This kind of study has obvious practical applications, as the description of languages in contrast, teaching of second languages, or understanding and correction of mistakes, lexicography, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine, in light of the letters written by the Tuscan ambassadors posted in the Court of Madrid in the seventeenth century, the effects of the war between France and Spain, which began in early 1635, on the court theatre of the Buen Retiro -which used to follow a fixed dramatic schedule- and specifically on the premiere of Calderón de la Barca's El mayor encanto, amor, a mythological play originally planned to celebrate the night of St. John, although postponed because of the war; the first performance has been controversial among specialists who have studied the work in recent years. There is no evidence that there was more than one performance in the summer of 1635, or that further performances did not take place because of the hypothetically critical content of the play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a reflection on the relations of the female characters of Argenis y Poliarco with the power and shows the remarkable and unusual independence of some of them. Based on various passages of the play, this work will consider the technique with which the dramatist gives some women some privileges without cause at any time a violation of the laws of decorum and verisimilitude. The uniqueness of their lives and their status makes them examples of virtue and justifies the high degree of independence of many of them in specific situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Caribbean Islands were conquered, there began a time of contact between the Spanish language and consolidated native languages, which would result in the linguistic settlement in the American continent. This paper focuses on the analysis of a selection of works dating between 1518 and 1559, and which have been selected on the basis of the following variables: the author's level of experience in the Indies and the use of communicative strategies in each document. This study is centred on analyzing quantitatively the words included in the chronicles, the tendencies observed, and their interpretation. The resulting textual types show a direct relationship with both the addition of indigenous neologisms and the authors' field of knowledge, through which they filter their personal experience and add the new words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following paper we propose to clarify, from a terminological point of view, certain aspects of the limits established within the set of investigations and studies included in what we call text and discourse linguistics, that is, text linguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, etc. For this purpose, we have confronted several of the most important contributions to text theory, mainly during the 1970's and 1980's, provided that this is the period in which foundations are laid for text and discourse theories, and also the 1990's, with definitions found in various dictionaries of linguistic terminology, specially those pertaining to its object of study, i. e. text or discourse. Said definitions have been established following the developments in these fields of research. Close observation and analysis of such definitions reveal the evident difficulties encountered by researchers when applying these concepts and using this specialised terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores three aspects of the philosophical thought of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger present in the novels and essays of the Argentinean writer Abel Posse. The Heideggerian elements to be discussed are: pilgrimage as a path of questionioning, the question concerning technology and The Open. It then articulates how the Argentine writer utilizes these concepts in order to formulate a critique of Western modernity while at the same time exploring questions concerning Latin American identity from a situated perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the meaning and connotations of the title of Lope de Vega's discourse. For so doing, we compare it with the one presented in other poetic treatises from the Classical period and Renaissance Humanism, pointing to the contrast between art and nature and between classical art and contemporary creation. We argue the value and the ambiguous nuances of the notion of novelty in the people of the 17th century, and pay attention to the presence of the concept of new art in the practical treatises in the context surrounding the work of Lope de Vega as well as the growing importance of this notion at the time of the "novatores" and the Enlightenment -except from issues related to aesthetic questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research about Agustín Moreto's work have evidenced the need to do away with, or at least thoroughly revise, the idea that the playwright from Madrid limited himself to plagiarize somebody else's plays. The present paper analyses how Moreto worked with diverse motifs such as the events of recent history, the Bible, or fiction when writing, alone or co-authoring a) El bruto de Babilonia, b) La cena del rey Baltasar and c) De fuera vendrá from other writers' plays. In this work, we can observe techniques which go far beyond the mere copy. The author selects his antecedents following dramatic criteria, but also considering current biographic interests. He does not hesitate to turn to sources previous or alien to his literary antecedent to improve, update, or adjust the plot to his own desires. Finally, the author does not discard the motifs, but he re-uses them creating suggestive intertextuality within his own production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a review of the editions made in Gerona (1628) of Quevedo's Discurso de todos los diablos, in order to argue which one is the princeps. The writer's personal circumstances at the end of 1628 and the beginning of 1629 - unattended by the most recent editors of this satire in their analysis of this question-- seem to support the hypothesis that the first edition is the one that contains Cuento de cuentos in ten unnumbered pages at the end of the book (DG1 in the abbreviations used by Marañón Ripoll, C in the ones by Rey). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Error Analysis is applied to the teaching of writing in Spanish as a first language. As the main theoretical bases we have followed Eugenio Coseriu's model, which establishes three levels of linguistic competence: general linguistic competence, particular linguistic competence and textual competence. We have analyzed and classified errors taken from 138 texts written by 46 students belonging to the last course of Secondary School (second course of Bachillerato). Our aim has been to discover the set of correlations among errors and textual sequences (narrative and argumentative). Therefore we have checked in the corpus to what degree some types of error are independent of textual sequence, whereas in others, sequence is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the functioning and evolution of the adverbs demás, además, and encima from the first existing texts until the 15th century. Our purpose is double: on the one hand, to describe the process that conforms the adverbs into discourse markers specialized in an additive meaning; on the other hand, to contribute to their lexicographical description in a historical dictionary. We analyze their grammaticalization processes and verify in texts the loss of demás, the advance of además--which will become the prototype item of this sort of connectors--, and the acquisition by encima of a subjective meaning --the most important feature as an additive connector--, may be connected with the meaning of the substantive cima in certain contexts during the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive panorama of the different approaches to verbal impersonality in the Spanish grammatical tradition, from very primitive testimonials of the Latin-Romance scholastic grammar to the end of the Spanish "Siglo de Oro". Once the specific phenomena of verbal impersonality are collected and interpreted, results about the linguistic conception underlying the analyzed grammars will be generated. It is particularly interesting to know how an adequate terminology was being the semantic and morphosyntatic maps of language was studied in-depth. At the same time, the difficulties of some grammarians to establish a Latin independent grammatical model are confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the different ways of self-representation that have been used by comic creators through the analysis of Art Spiegelman's Portrait of an Artist as a Young %@&*!, where he offers an extensive range of possibilities of self-portraits based on a fragmented narrative structure. This fragmentation allows new ways of autobiographical expression through the use of a specific artistic language which is the comic. We can gather from that not only narrative poetics but interesting insights on selfportrait and the graphic representation of the self. Spiegelman's Portrait is as much a memory act as an intertextual exercise with his own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The autobiographical text is the result of a personal representation project. It is, therefore, a suitable method to analyze the concept of subjectivity and how it is perceived in different socio-cultural contexts. Over the centuries studies on printed verbal figures from the perspective of personal writing have demonstrated that the autobiographer looks for the confirmation and understanding of the self, by revealing an identity that is in line with the cultural structure. This paper reviews the construction of the aesthetic discourse of the self in the postmodern era. It argues that the aesthetic discourse of the self is contradictory in a way it repeats pre-existing cultural models, but is driven by a desire to deviate from the norm, and a need to stress the uniqueness of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the least studied episodes in the scope of Hispanic-American literature is the one defined by Enrique Anderson Imbert as: “parenthesis about pirate matter". This is a series of writings, mainly historical novels, published along the 19th century. In them, those corsaries, buccaneers and filibusters who domineered in the Caribbean Sea, are recreated as protagonists or deuteragonists in a novelistic action. In that text corpus, the narrators of this early Hispanic America are immersed in a stage of political reconstruction after the processes of Independence. Because of this, they extol the seditious actions of the pirates in order to construct metaphors regarding national destiny. Underlying them, a strong critic against the Spanish hegemony exerted in the continent during three centuries, may be noted. The exception confirming the rule is: Los piratas en Cartagena by Colombian writer Soledad Acosta de Samper. This quintette of narrative pictures vindicates the Spanish civilizing undertaking in America. The romantic bond between piratic fiction and a patriotic project regarding the future, can be seen in Acosta under a singular aspect: the resource of the apologue to transmit her exonerating message. This paper proposes the reading of Los piratas en Cartagena as a set of fables (in the classical sense) converging into a master moral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Inconfidencia (El Aleijadinho) (1979) by Abelardo Arias, a historical novel in which the awardwinner Argentine writer recreates the life of the mestizo sculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa, genius of sculpture more widely known by his nickname: “the Aleijadinho" and by his magnificent sculptures that recreate the Passion of Christ and twelve Prophets, in Ouro Preto, Brazil. Arias he chooses the mulatto and leper sculptor, who lived in times of the Imperial Brazil and of the revolt of the “Unconfidants" –a group of intellectuals who for the first time tried to liberate their country from the Portuguese yoke– as a synthesis of the American man and of his continuous debate to reach the longed for cultural identity. Principally, three axes of the novel are emphasized: the correspondence art-religion and the relation with the author's poetics; the revolt of the Unconfidants like a mirror of the pursuit of the intellectual Argentinians during the last military dictatorship and, finally, the baroque microuniverse of Imperial Brazil like a symbol of the complex Latin-American identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of the first Russian translation of El castigo sin venganza in the configuration of the Lopian canon in Russia. A reading of the Russian version, by Sergei Yuriev, suggests that both in its reformulation of the title (El castigo no es la venganza) and in its many modifications of the characters, Yuriev's translation radically distances itself from Lope's text, eliminating the tragic character of the Duke of Ferrara's motivations, and presenting the relationship between Casandra and Federico as an idealized love, innocent and natural. Such changes, imposed in part by the translator's historical circumstances, resulted in the general failure of the work on the Russian stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of Xenophon in Don Quijote goes beyond a passing mention of the Athenian writer included in the prologue to the first part. After tracing the reception of Xenophon in the West, with particular attention placed on his role in Renaissance culture and on the translations of Xenophon into Spanish done during the 16th Century, this paper focuses on two passages from Don Quijote --one, a description of hunting and the other, a description of the path of virtue-- to demonstrate the possibility of a direct influence of Xenophon on Cervantes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terms used to describe the state of being outside of oneself in Golden Age literature ("abandono," "desafuero," "pasmo," "suspension," "enajenación," "transposición," "transportación," "embeleso," "turbación") abound to such an extent that an examination of what role this suspension plays in the aesthetics of the period is necessary. This paper examines several philosophical and aesthetic sources from the 17th Century to tie suspension to doubt and surprise, which the Baroque subject understood as the basis both for artistic creation and for the receptor's response to such creations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To aid in remedying the lack of a systematic study of Don Quijote's numerous translations, this paper compares translations of a famous passage from the second part of Don Quijote (a paragraph in which don Diego de Miranda, the Knight of the Green Coat, describes himself) with the aim of casting light on the different translator's motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many critics have analyzed literary works in general, and Golden Age texts in particular, to detect in them the prejudices that writers employ to describe that which is foreign, otherness. This paper focuses on the specific case of Francisco de Quevedo in order to highlight that, while the portrait of the Other may serve to identify information relevant to the author, it is also fundamentally determined by the concrete historical, and above all generic, circumstances of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the many masks that Lope de Vega adopted is that of the theorizing subject who reflects on his own poetry. This paper focuses on the sonnets of the Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos in order to study how Lope utilizes this mask as a means of a metaphysical self-interrogation, in a serious tone or with irony, on the nature and pragmatics of poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of Góngora's romance "Entre los sueltos caballos," extensively quoted in El príncipe constante of Calderón, is exceptional due to the magnitude of the quotation, without equal among the verses of other poets included in Calde-ronian comedies. This paper studies in detail the ways in which Calderón adapted this romance to the circumstances of his comedy, also resolving the question of which versión of Góngora's romance the Madrid playwright knew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The court theater of Francisco Bances Candamo serves as a medium for studying the relationships between power and literature that existed in the Golden Age in general, and in the court of Carlos II in particular. Within this context, Bances Candamo's theater pursues a pedagogical goal tied to the policies of the monarch, to which the playwright adds references to contemporary politics, and above all, presents images of the ideal monarch. This paper demonstrates the impossibility of discovering, in the courtly comedies of Bances Candamo, elements interpretable as criticisms of royal power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the circumstances of a biographical, historical and literary kind under which the poet Luis Cernuda attempted his only play, La familia interrumpida. I intend to draw from these issues a few keys that might explain this astonishing incursion in a genre he was not very fond of. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines ironic interchanges in casual colloquial conversation in Spanish, according to a Conversational Analysis framework (Briz & Val.Es.Co. group 2003). The research is based on a corpus (Briz & Val.Es.Co. group 2002) that leads us to establish some differences with other corpus. Frequently, responses to an initial ironical intervention do not support the least disruption principle (Eisterhold, Attardo & Boxer, 2006), because speakers response along a conversational sequence to what is said or to what is meant (Kotthoff, 2003). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticism has no doubts when emphasizing the predominant position of realism in the second half of 20th century Spanish short stories; however, the prevalence of aesthetic streams out of this tendency all through the post-war period have been hardly pondered. This paper discuss the production of some significant members of the so-called "Mediosiglo" generation, who, although they choose a kind of compromised and testimonial literature, are also interested in the practice of non realistic forms. This is the case for Ana María Matute and Medardo Fraile, whose stories go into the symbolic existentialism in depth and, sometimes, culminate in the marvelous genre, or for Juan Eduardo Zúñiga and Alfonso Sastre, who use the fantastic genre with the purpose of stepping up the message of denounce of the literary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among Navarres Romance own features we find, as it can be attested by the notarial scripta from the middle ages, the use of the velar spelling followed by oa, representing, in principle,/kwa/and/gwa/. Some of the considered Navarre's features are present in the late medieval Biscay's documents. Well then, the presence of these spellings in the Biscay's documentation does not involve any contradiction with the ascription of them to the Navarre's Romance. Thus, this paper attempts to analyze this phenomenon in the context of the Biscay's documentation and more concretely in that of the town of Bermeo, selecting for this purpose 30 original documents during the period ranged from 1237 to 1531. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present article we want to study some characteristics of discourse organization in three narrative texts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, two of them historical texts, the Primera Crónica General and the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, and a novelistic one, although written with resemblance to a historical text: the Libro de Joseph Abarimatia. These texts are divided in chapters or sections which present a homogeneous content, clearly separated from the preceding or following chapters or sections; still they must have a coherent connection with them. The main goal of this paper is to study the linking procedures between chapters, which can reinforce the text coherence. Between them we can highlight temporal indications at the beginning of chapters, which refer to something mentioned in the previous chapter, the explicit reference to the narration development, and the pointing out of the end of a theme, or the indication of a new one which is going to be developed, a frequent procedure in chapter limits. This article attempts to contribute to a better knowledge of text typology and its historical development, in relationship to the coherence procedures used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the different ways of self-representation that have been used by comic creators through the analysis of Art Spiegelman's Portrait of an Artist as a Young %@&*!, where he offers an extensive range of possibilities of self-portraits based on a fragmented narrative structure. This fragmentation allows new ways of autobiographical expression through the use of a specific artistic language which is the comic. We can gather from that not only narrative poetics but interesting insights on selfportrait and the graphic representation of the self. Spiegelman's Portrait is as much a memory act as an intertextual exercise with his own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Inconfidencia (El Aleijadinho) (1979) by Abelardo Arias, a historical novel in which the awardwinner Argentine writer recreates the life of the mestizo sculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa, genius of sculpture more widely known by his nickname: “the Aleijadinho" and by his magnificent sculptures that recreate the Passion of Christ and twelve Prophets, in Ouro Preto, Brazil. Arias he chooses the mulatto and leper sculptor, who lived in times of the Imperial Brazil and of the revolt of the “Unconfidants" –a group of intellectuals who for the first time tried to liberate their country from the Portuguese yoke– as a synthesis of the American man and of his continuous debate to reach the longed for cultural identity. Principally, three axes of the novel are emphasized: the correspondence art-religion and the relation with the author's poetics; the revolt of the Unconfidants like a mirror of the pursuit of the intellectual Argentinians during the last military dictatorship and, finally, the baroque microuniverse of Imperial Brazil like a symbol of the complex Latin-American identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the least studied episodes in the scope of Hispanic-American literature is the one defined by Enrique Anderson Imbert as: “parenthesis about pirate matter". This is a series of writings, mainly historical novels, published along the 19th century. In them, those corsaries, buccaneers and filibusters who domineered in the Caribbean Sea, are recreated as protagonists or deuteragonists in a novelistic action. In that text corpus, the narrators of this early Hispanic America are immersed in a stage of political reconstruction after the processes of Independence. Because of this, they extol the seditious actions of the pirates in order to construct metaphors regarding national destiny. Underlying them, a strong critic against the Spanish hegemony exerted in the continent during three centuries, may be noted. The exception confirming the rule is: Los piratas en Cartagena by Colombian writer Soledad Acosta de Samper. This quintette of narrative pictures vindicates the Spanish civilizing undertaking in America. The romantic bond between piratic fiction and a patriotic project regarding the future, can be seen in Acosta under a singular aspect: the resource of the apologue to transmit her exonerating message. This paper proposes the reading of Los piratas en Cartagena as a set of fables (in the classical sense) converging into a master moral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The autobiographical text is the result of a personal representation project. It is, therefore, a suitable method to analyze the concept of subjectivity and how it is perceived in different socio-cultural contexts. Over the centuries studies on printed verbal figures from the perspective of personal writing have demonstrated that the autobiographer looks for the confirmation and understanding of the self, by revealing an identity that is in line with the cultural structure. This paper reviews the construction of the aesthetic discourse of the self in the postmodern era. It argues that the aesthetic discourse of the self is contradictory in a way it repeats pre-existing cultural models, but is driven by a desire to deviate from the norm, and a need to stress the uniqueness of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]