Signos Literarios

Prudence and freedom in two fables by Félix María de Samaniego.

2025-07-14T09:57:20-05:00

In the present research I deal with two fables by Félix María de Samaniego, entitled “La Hormiga y la Cigarra” and “El Perro y el Lobo”. In those didactic-moral compositions I analyze two virtues weighted by classical thought, which represented a couple of recurring themes in the fabulous world: prudence and freedom. The objective is to reassess from a critical point of view the ethics of this gender, which is usually subject to children. In this way, I intend to recognize the ideological background of those fables, which, as suggested by Plato in his Republic or Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Emilio o de l'Education, could produce in children’s mentality a detachment from important values; among them prudence or freedom, and which ultimately leads to the normalization of cruel and individualistic behaviour.

The character of the mother in La mujer del César by Pereda

2025-07-14T10:00:06-05:00

The aim of this paper is to study the female characters, particularly the maternal figures (portrayed negatively and positively) that appear in José María de Pereda's short novel La mujer del César (1876). This work, which was first published in the press and later integrated a volume with two other stories under the title of Bocetos al temple, is a text scarcely studied by previous critics and was one of the first stories of a certain length written by the Spanish novelist of conservative ideology José María de Pereda. The article attempts to demonstrate how the presentation of positive and feminine images of mothers, particularly those belonging to the aristocratic class, is essential in the moral approach of the novel of religious thesis cultivated by Pereda, among others.

Argumentative Imbalance in “La muerte tiene permiso” by Edmundo Valadés

2025-07-14T10:00:51-05:00

In this article, we analyze the argumentative procedures in the short story “La muerte tiene permiso”, by Edmundo Valadés from a pragma-dialectical perspective (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992, 2012). Our objective is to demonstrate that the narrative structure can be read as a confrontational system of argumentative maneuvers between groups interacting from positions of unequal power. As a key contribution, we show that the different stages of argumentation in the story (opening, turn-taking, reasoning, and conclusion) materialize textually as a system of local appearances; while in reality, they are part of broader and more critical ideological aspects of Mexico’s sociocultural life. A significant implication of this study is the proposal that the argumentative speech act of “asking for permission” to kill can be interpreted as an allegory of epistemic resistance by rural communities against hegemonic colonial powers.

La presencia del padre en una autobiografía hispanomexicana: Cuando acabe la guerra de Enrique de Rivas

2025-07-14T10:01:32-05:00

The writers of the second generation of exile produced important autobiographical and autofictional books. The study of these works reveals an interesting interpretation of the history of the Spanish Civil War and exile, the different appreciations surrounding the same events and the personal and generational nuances. In the 1990s, Enrique de Rivas published Cuando acabe la guerra, a book in which he recounts the way he experienced this period during his childhood and adolescence. The hypothesis of this work is that the author generates a text that helps him become the owner of his own story. In particular, it is important to review the way in which he turns his father, Cipriano de Rivas Cherif, into a literary character. To achieve all of the above, the writer uses estrangement as an essential resource.

Editing and ‘zozobra’ in The Autobiography of Cotton and Liliana’s Invincible Summer, by Cristina Rivera Garza.

2025-07-30T12:01:15-05:00

The Autobiography of Cotton and Liliana’s Invincible Summer, by Rivera Garza, benefits from the porosity between literary genres to make fiction and non-fiction work together both with the archive and the political stances in the books. In the first one, a critic to the extractivistic logic of economic development and criminal violence; in the other, femicide. The present article links Rivera Garza with 1) the implications of montage as a crucial technique in non-fiction, which Amar Sánchez explores in Rodolfo Walsh’s work; and 2) Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga’s idea of zozobra, a form of constant vulnerability. To Amar Sánchez, the disposition of facts, data and subjects participate in the “editing” of the textual artifact that searches for the non-official true. It is the counterpart of Rivera Garza’s desedimentación. On the other hand, zozobra frames the contingency that accompanies Rivera Garza’s subjects and narrators across the Mexican space: at any given moment, crime or political changes can erase them. It is the zozobra what moves them to search transformative intersubjectivities.

D’Annunzio, Gabriele (2023), Grotescos y arabescos, traducción de Diego Mejía Estévez y Rodrigo Jardón, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 89 p.

2025-07-14T10:02:41-05:00

Muñoz Covarrubias, Pablo (2023), Tres conversaciones en Nepantla: poesía, vida y exilio de españoles e hispanoamericanos, México, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana/Gedisa, 173 p.

2025-07-14T10:03:11-05:00

Calvillo, Juan Carlos (2023), Dickinson en nuestra lengua: una galería de retratos, México, El Colegio de México, 199 p.

2025-07-14T10:03:54-05:00

Review of: Calvillo, Juan Carlos (2023), Dickinson en nuestra lengua: una galería de retratos. México: El Colegio de México, 200 p.

Munguía Zatarain, Martha Elena y Daniel Avechuco Cabrera (coords.) (2024), Representaciones artísticas del indígena en América Latina, Madrid, Iberoamericana, 222 p.

2025-07-14T10:04:27-05:00