Publication Date

6-15-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English (MA)

Committee Member

Broncano, Manuel

Committee Member

Heredia, Roberto R.

Committee Member

Murphy, Jonathan W

Abstract

This thesis considers the power of Chicano poetics and its influence on liberatory rhetoric in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s-1970s. The late, Laredoan, activist Heriberto Gutiérrez Terán’s Espejo de Alma y Corazón presents a tradition of Chicano minor literature identifiable in the work of the many writers and rhetoricians who emerged during this politically tense time. This thesis marks the first time Terán’s literary work is subject to a literary analysis, positioning him among other known Chicano writers and figures from the 1960s and early 1970s, such as Alurista, José Angel Gutiérrez, José Rendón, Enrique Rodríquez, and Roberto Enrique Vargas. This thesis will attempt to demonstrate how selections from Terán’s Espejo de Alma y Corazón along with other works by Chicano writers and rhetoricians can be considered a “minor literature,” as theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature. Finally, as part of identifying and analyzing this specific form of Chicano minor literature, this thesis will consider its potential for being used in calls for material, revolutionary change for Chicanos and Others.

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