Elisabetta Perra, a PhD student in the Department of Modern Languages, has won The Valentina Guevara Prize for the best paper given at the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (AHGBI) annual conference.
The AHGBI is a professional association of academics and researchers working in all areas of Hispanic Studies. It represents a very diverse discipline, in terms of both geographical coverage (Spain, Portugal, Latin America and other Hispanic and Lusophone parts of the world) and objects of study (language, literature, film, popular culture, visual culture, music, history). They promote research and advanced study in all these areas, and represent the interests of their scholarly community at national and international levels.
The Valentina Guevara Prize is awarded for the best paper given at the AHGBI annual conference on any subject relating to Argentina and was revived in 2013.
Elizabetta’s paper entitled ‘(Re)Inventing Language in Rayuela‘ focuses on the stylisitic features of Cortázar’s novel Rayuela (1963) and his ideas according to which language is a limited system of communication and therefore new alternative ways of communication need to be found to express what words cannot say. In Rayuela three alternative ways of conveying meaning are proposed: the first entails the destruction of conventional language by subverting the syntax of phrases and morphology of words; the second consists in the invention of a new language known as Glíglico; the third one is brought about by stylistic parallels with jazz music.
The paper demonstrated how the mechanisms of these three modes of communication function, as well as the importance of stylistics for conducting a line of enquiry that is both objective and exhaustive.
For more information about the PhD in Hispanic Studies, please see the page here:
www.kent.ac.uk/secl/hispanicstudies/postgraduate/research-hispanic-studies.html