Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This paper offers a reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” (1922) in the light of Pierre Bourdieu’s theorization of forms of capital. Fitzgerald’s story is centrally concerned with social class and addresses the rise of consumer culture in the 1920s. It is about a Midwest American trying to improve his economic and social status to win the hand of a wealthy girl he loves. At issue here are different types of capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic), hence the relevance of Bourdieu. Thus, we explore in Fitzgerald’s story the way characters are engaged in everyday practices as social agents competing with other social agents to  accumulate ‘capital’. In the process of socialization, the economic capital provides the protagonist with luxury but the lack or shortage of other forms of capital —especially cultural capital— cause him to fail in the pursuit of his heart’s desire. 

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Most scholars agree that Jewish humour is a relatively modern phenomenon born out of the unique Jewish experience of exile, segregation and persecution. Howard Jacobson is a British Jewish writer who has always praised comedy and paid special attention to Jewish comic sensibility. He has emphasised the coping and liberating function that humour has exercised for the Jews, allowing them to transcend the terrible circumstances of their lives. Jacobson does not believe that humour removes pain, but that it contributes an emotional factor that makes the pain more bearable by affirming and celebrating life. He is convinced that there is something particularly Jewish about the way in which he fuses comedy and tragedy in his novels, since Jews have always joked in the face of affliction. Jacobson also stresses how from the very beginning the novel has been defined by its subversive and God-defying character. After explaining Jacobson’s main ideas on comedy and how they are shared by scholars who have examined the characteristic features of Jewish humour, I will analyse how they are reproduced by the narrator in Kalooki Nights (2006).

The myths developed over several centuries on the historical figures of the Malinche and Pocahontas have had different developments that reflect the colonial policies of the Spanish and British empires, as well as the distinctive postcolonial positions that arise in the United States and Mexico after their independence. I intend to question the apparent similarities existing between these two historical figures and try to explain the divergence that occurs in the development of successive narratives (both historical and fictional) of which they are the central axis. I conclude that the North and South sides of the North American border elaborate different discourses based on plausible historical realities that were developed by, and would develop the signs of Mexican and American national identities.

In the present essay I argue that that Mike McCormack’s acclaimed latest novel Solar Bones (Brit. 2016, USA 2017) thematises two impulses: on the one hand, the narrator, Marcus Conway, is seeking an order and structural coherence to his world, an order that throughout assumes a distinctly religious tint; on the other hand, the novel features various images of collapse of structures, ranging from the economic system all the way to actual buildings, all of which thwart his efforts. It is those twin movements, towards order and chaos, that reveal an association with Heidegger’s idea that only by becoming aware of death as one’s sole personal mode of life, does one begin to apprehend the essential structure of life, even if the glimpse of that structure is only ever available in its constant deferral.

Tendo em conta o facto de, em várias gramáticas escolares portuguesas publicadas na sequência da nova Terminologia Linguística para os Ensinos Básico e Secundário (TLEBS) (Ministério da Educação 2004), ocorrerem certas oscilações na definição da natureza morfológica e semântica do condicional (modo versus tempo), achamos oportuno desenvolver um estudo particular que procurasse clarificar essas mesmas dúvidas. Assim, o objetivo principal desta análise é a avaliação da consistência das definições e da caracterização gramatical do modo condicional e/ou do tempo futuro do pretérito, com o intuito de esclarecer uma questão crítica que não apresenta unanimidade na descrição gramatical escolar portuguesa. Com esses fins e para estabelecer os fundamentos deste estudo e comparar orientações teóricas, consultaram-se, em primeiro lugar, as principais gramáticas de referência ou gramáticas teóricas do Português. De seguida, definindo previamente as dimensões da análise de conteúdo dos manuais de gramática, procedemos, então, ao confronto e à descrição dos textos de dez gramáticas escolares de Português do 3º Ciclo do Ensino Básico e/ou do Ensino Secundário, procurando verificar as suas propostas de caracterização morfológica e semântica do modo / tempo condicional. Em termos de possíveis conclusões, esperamos poder clarificar as propostas destas gramáticas escolares e, simultaneamente, adotar uma perspetiva de abordagem pedagógica desta área sensível da gramática que seja mais eficaz para a aprendizagem dos alunos e mais compreensível do ponto de vista teórico.