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

We aim to highlight the contribution that can bring the Asturian language to the study of Romance etymology, both when it comes to solving lexical aporias in the Ibero-Romance territory, and in the attempt to establish genetic relationships between Romance words that are difficult to link to each other because of their apparent semantic divergence. Not infrequently, the Asturian language holds precisely the missing link in the chain of Romance data, so that its evaluation makes it possible to connect pieces of information that seemed divergent. Consequently, it allows us to identify the common Proto-Romance basis of lexemes spread in various Romance linguistic varieties. At the same time, by analyzing the Asturian cognates of Romance words of doubtful or unknown etymology, in certain cases, one can reveal the semantic trajectory of such lexemes whose meaning was not easily explainable. Thus, the polysemy of Ast. tacu ‘heel’, ‘piece of wood’, ‘short person’ reveals the linkage between It. tacca ‘incision’, Fr. tache ‘stain’ and tache ‘nail’, Sp. taco ‘piece of wood’ and tacón ‘heel’. The Asturian word tochu ‘stick, ‘stupid’ allows us to establish, on the one hand, the correspondence between the meanings of Sp. tocho, namely ‘cudgel’ and ‘rude’, and, on the other hand, the relationship between the Ibero-Romance lexical items and It. tòzzo ‘piece of bread’ and ‘thick’. We will also show that the genetic relationship between these words involves an etymological connection with Ast. tucu ‘stump’, Sp. tocón ‘id.’ and It. tòcco ‘pedazo’.

Artículu con dellos natos novedosos sobre la formación y actividá de la Real Academia Asturiana de Artes y Letras de 1919, cuntando ente les novedaes col primer llistáu completu de los miembros de la entidá, ente los qu'esistíen trés muyeres nunca citaes como miembros hasta'l momentu.

This article analyses Hilary Mantel’s critically-acclaimed Tudor novel series (Wolf Hall, 2009; Bring Up the Bodies, 2012; The Mirror & the Light, 2020) in the context of Brexit. Even though Mantel has dismissed any possible analogy between the Reformation and Brexit, this research builds on the hypothesis that the past and the present interact in historical fiction, a genre that has contributed to both feeding and questioning the myths upon which nations are constructed. More specifically, I focus on the trilogy’s protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, to argue that he is presented as the architect of what Whig historiography has understood as the pillars of Englishness (and, by extension, Britishness), often evoked in the discursive context surrounding Brexit. However, although the narrative’s portrayal of Cromwell undoubtedly fosters the reader’s sympathy with the character, a deeper analysis of Mantel’s characterisation and narrative techniques —and, more specifically, Cromwell’s status as a flawed human being presented through the lens of what turns out to be an unreliable narrator— suggests that Mantel’s portrayal of Cromwell cannot be reduced to a simple vindication of the Whiggish notion of Englishness, subtly questioning instead the myths upon which the latter is built.

Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat is a radical metafictional experiment, suggesting the inexorable connections between contingency and a predetermined plot which are so common to many Sparkian novels. Following Marina MacKay’s perception that Spark’s experimental narrative operates “in the conceptual space where the more abstract preoccupations of Roman Catholic theology overlap with the metafictional and fabulist concerns of postmodernism” (2008: 506), this essay will discuss how the notion of predestination reverberates in The Driver’s Seat, not only as a remnant of Spark’s Presbyterian education but also as a postmodern re-visitation of classical tragedy in a metafictional key. Spark’s preference for predetermined plots may echo a long philosophical and theological discussion spanning many centuries about free will and predestination, particularly intense in the times of the Protestant Reformation, but it also reflects the sense of predestination as a necessary ingredient of classical tragedy. In The Driver’s Seat Spark deliberately brought to the fore some conventions of Aristotelian tragedy, although she approached them through an experimental subversion ultimately resorting to comedy and ridicule, on Spark’s own admission her weapons for the only possible art form. Our contention is that the metafictional implications of The Driver’s Seat’s prolepses undermine a Calvinist-like certainty concerning predestined salvation or damnation. By using a partial narrator only capable of producing limited accounts, Spark may be playing with an experimental and essentially postmodern interpretive openness which is in tune with the ultimate uncertainty about each individual’s eternal salvation that is commonly accepted in Catholic thought.

This article explores two predominant images of Gillian Flynn’s female characters: the monstrous mother and the missing/dead girl. These two representations of Flynn’s female characters showcase the link between female criminality and transgression on the one hand, and the female characters’ traumatic history and family dysfunctionality on the other. This article argues that Flynn’s use of these two tropes reveals the conflicting facets of female crime, victimhood, and agency in her thrillers, and by so doing her work subverts the murky domain of the portrayal of criminal women in relation to motherhood, mental illness and trauma.

This paper presents a twofold analysis that, on the one hand, is intended to examine the presence of IT Anglicisms in the contemporary Spanish digital press; on the other hand, it aims to reveal the degree of knowledge and use of these English lexical items by a sample of Spanish speaking university students and to explore what their perceptions and attitudes are towards Anglicisms and their use ‒not only in specialised contexts such as the IT field, but also when dealing with current and more general topics. The administration of a questionnaire to 232 pupils studying various degrees in two Spanish universities provided reliable data of the high level of knowledge and reported use of a sample of IT terms extracted from an Anglicisms search tool, ‘Observatorio Lázaro’. In addition, the findings have shown open and positive perceptions by Spanish students towards the usage of Anglicisms. Various pragmatic functions (expressive and referential) seem to motivate these uses. Finally, some pedagogical implications of this study are discussed in the sphere of ESP teaching/learning.