Femme Fatales Defying Status Quo. A Study of Three Hispanic Novels and their Film Adaptation

Authors

  • Verónica Hernández Landa Valencia Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán, UNAM

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15174/rv.v13i27.539

Abstract

The femme fatale has been studied as a figure in art used by men artists to stigmatize and subjugate all women who rebelled against statu quo throughout history. However, femme fatale has also been used to point out the weaknesses, hypocrisies, decandence and authoritarism of the patriarchal system where it is set. This paper aims to explore the character’s ambivalent function, by contrasting three novels in which the femme fatale becomes the axis of conflict in the plot, and the proposals to resignify its meaning by film adaptations. These are hispanic novels published in the last third of the twentieth century: Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa, Sultry Moon by Mempo Giardinelli and The Ages of Lulu by Almudena Grandes; and their respective adaptations directed by Francisco Lombardi, Roberto Denis and Bigas Luna.  This comparison focuses in the analysis of the topos of a poweful sexuality that leads to ruin. In order to study this figure, the paper proposes a conceptualization of the topos that allows to visualize its rhetorical function and its capability to adapt and resignify itself in every discourse. This proposal seeks not only to highlight the ambivalence and transgressive potential of the femme fatale, but also to pormote the rhetorical analysis in the study of topoi and thematized characters in literary tradition.

Author Biography

Verónica Hernández Landa Valencia, Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán, UNAM

Verónica Hernández Landa Valencia has a phd in Literature, by the UNAM, an performes as a Level C Associated Professor at the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán, where she coordinates the Seminary of Rhetoric, Literature and Teaching.

She is amember of the National System of Researchers, and also develops herself as an invited researcher and member of the publishing commitee  in the project “Lecturas transversales de la novela corta en México”, directed by Gustavo Jiménez Aguirre of the UNAM's Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas UNAM, financed by Conacyt and FONCA.

Her researh interests are: nineteenth century's short novels and historical novels, rethoric and literature, relationships between literature, history and society, femme fatales in hispanoamerican literature and films. 

She has participated in many nacional an international conferences, and have publiched different papers in and outside México.

Her last publications are:

2019: “Transversalidades de la novela corta en los tiempos de la Academia de Letrán”, in Ligera de equipaje. Itinerarios de la novela corta en México,  Gustavo Jiménez Aguirre y Verónica Hernández Landa Valencia, eds., México, UNAM, 2019, pp. 125-139. ISBN 978-607-30-1917-0.

2018: “Estrategias retóricas en la pugna por la memoria histórica: el ejemplo de la Inquisición en la República Restaurada”, Rétor, 8.1 (2018): 58-83. ISSN 18536034. On line: http://www.revistaretor.org/pdf/retor0801_hernandez.pdf

2017: “Retórica de la novela histórica de tema colonial en el México de la República Restaurada (1867-1872). Hecho retórico y res extensional”, Actio Nova. Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada 1 (2017): 153-186. ISSN: 2530-4437. On line: https://revistas.uam.es/index.php/actionova

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Published

2020-11-05

How to Cite

Hernández Landa Valencia, V. (2020). Femme Fatales Defying Status Quo. A Study of Three Hispanic Novels and their Film Adaptation. Valenciana, 13(27), 35–64. https://doi.org/10.15174/rv.v13i27.539

Issue

No. 27 (2021): Núm. 27 enero-junio 2021

Section

Artículos

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