Before the apple: the concept of time in Voces de mujer of Lourdes Ortiz

Authors

  • Maja Zovko

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/vh.20.2.401-414

Keywords:

reinterpretation of classical myths, Spanish contemporary literature, concept of time

Abstract

The collection of stories by Spanish contemporary writer Lourdes Ortiz, Voices of Women, first published in 1991 under the title The reasons of Circe and republished in 2007 (Iberoamericana–Vervuert), is dedicated to the great female characters of Greek mythology and the Judeo-Christian tradition. The author’s purpose is to revise and subvert the ancient stories from the original plot of the Odyssey and the Old Testament, as well as to strip the protagonists (Eve, Penelope, Circe, Salome and Bathsheba) of the stereotypical image that has been attributed to them in previous centuries. By means of carefully premeditated language full of lyricism, Lourdes Ortiz successfully potrays the psychology of her characters, using a short original plot, enriched and intensified with a series of beautiful and suggestive images, complex metaphors and carefully chosen verb tenses. This study aims to investigate the concept of time in the collection Voices of Women of Lourdes Ortiz, challenging the linearity of the narrative, the cyclical and parallel constructions, the distribution of tenses and time references, which were elaborated according to the main objective of the author: to unravel the complex ancestral figures and thus provide a humane vision of the great stories of our collective memory.

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Author Biography

Maja Zovko

Maja Zovko, doctora por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, trabaja actualmente como profesora de Literatura Española e Hispanoamericana en la Universidad de Zadar, Croacia. Sus temas centrales de investigación son la
inmigración en la literatura española actual, la reinterpretación de los mitos clásicos y la novela española de posguerra. Ha impartido clases y conferencias en las siguientes universidades y centros: Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem (Budapest, Hungría), Univerza v Ljubljani (Eslovenia), Sveučilište u Zagrebu (Croacia), Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Alemania) y el
Instituto Cervantes de Tetuán (Marruecos).

Published

31.12.2012

How to Cite

Zovko, M. (2012). Before the apple: the concept of time in Voces de mujer of Lourdes Ortiz. Verba Hispanica, 20(2), 401–414. https://doi.org/10.4312/vh.20.2.401-414

Issue

Section

Literature