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The education of older people is a field of intervention and of recent conceptual development in gerontology. That has led to the creation of geragogy or gerontagogy as a theoretical/practical field in charge of studying the learning process of older adults and the institutional and organizational conditions that contribute to achieve differential learning goals. Within this framework, the paper describes how older adults who are enrolled in non-formal learning activities in different institutions throughout Argentina view the necessary skills and capacities of educators, facilitators, or coaches. The research is based on a national survey that included eighteen non-formal educational programs (public and private universities, self-managed and co-managed) in six geographical regions. A semi-structured questionnaire was distributed to 1,200 elderly people (ages 50 to 85) enrolled in the programs. Using a number scale, respondents were asked to describe the importance of certain characteristics and capacities that, to their criteria, a good teacher/educator working with older adults should have. The results revealed that elderly students demand that educators should have professional capacities to conduct group work, and instrumental capacities necessary for the teaching of significant knowledge. They also value a number of personal attitudinal traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mundo Animal is a collection of stories that opens the literary career of the Mendocinian narrator, Antonio Di Benedetto. The book, difficult to locate in its genre, presents a strong ethical intention pointed out explicitly by the same author. Besides, it is evident the filial connection to Kafka of many of these stories. This relationship is observed especially in the heavily oneiric and oppressive atmosphere, both for characters and readers, in the short interest in the surrounding reality and in the presence of a schematic and highly symbolic space. This paper proposes analyzing the cracks on this space that, though it does not reflect the neighboring or referential reality, it deepens into other realities of profound relevance to the contemporary man. Among these schematic settings, though metaphorically valuable, the strong presence of the body is to be highlighted, presented in many stories as a space within which the action takes place, or heavily involved. First, there will be studied the notions of body and corporality (physical presence) in Di Benedetto's cultural horizon; then there will be analyzed specifically the stories that textualise the corporal space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper analyzes Abad's Poema Heroico from the point of view of exile. The author of the poem is an expulsed Jesuit from America in 1767. This work does not deal with the expulsion, but the memories of Mexico constitute one of the fundamental topics of the choice of the epic genre. In addition, the poem shows the survival of this genre in the 18th Century and the importance of Jesuit literature in the Latin American culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper analyzes La Vara de Fuego (1947), written by the Mendocinian author, Abelardo Arias. This novel, together with Álamos talados, represent the autobiographical vein of the writer's fiction and the central axis of his poetic. This work focuses on the main characteristics and the inevitable dialogue established with Álamos Talados (1942), and La Viña Estéril (1969). These three works conform a triptych, that reflects the author's personality, which hinges are composed by the intricate game between reality and fiction, and fiction within fiction. It is also studied the symbolic relationship between the three books, based on the myth of Paradise Lost and the confirmation of its leit motiv: the human unseemliness (in love and friendship), necessary punishment after the biblical fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes John Henry Newman's Apologia pro vita sua. The main purpose of this work is to study the specific characteristics of the genre as well as the sources observed in its structure. Newman's text suggests a special discourse within the autobiographic genre, highly marked by the apologetic style seen in Saint Augustine's Confessio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the year 1966 the writer Primo Levi publishes the tales' collection Storie naturali (Natural Stories) under the pseudonym Damiano Malabaila. At first reading, the volume seems quite far from the testimonial subjects of his most famous works and the unexpected presence of irony appears to contrast with the dramatic tones of Se questo é un uomo, Se non ora, quando (If this is a man, If not, when). However, this humour emerges from the attitude adopted by the chemist writer, interested in the contradictions of life, the writer that, recognised by himself, declares to be literally a voyeur; an observer, an etologist in today's words. This paper proposes an analysis of this work that could be categorised within the sphere of science fiction, considering the topics, the antecedents and sources, literary as well as scientific, and the linguistic value, specially the oral tone of the stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]