In my work as an early modernist in Mexico and the United States, I am determined to show that scholars and students with various cultural backgrounds can approach foundational literary works of the English canon, such as Shakespeare’s plays.
I am driven to communicating the relevance of literature, language, and culture, in academia and to wider audiences across disciplines.
My effort participation in the 3 minute thesis (3MT) 3MT (Three Minute Thesis) First Prize Award, Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools regional final. My dissertation is entitled “Performing a servant’s faithful parts: Master-Servant relations in Early Modern Drama”. In this project, I study the significance of servant figures in three plays –Ben Jonson’s Volpone, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Shakespeare’s The Tempest— to argue that these early modern playwrights represent social mobility by staging negotiations between masters and their subordinates that hinge on servants’ roleplaying abilities. I demonstrate that playwrights use the language of theater itself to explore the success or failure of servants under the terms dictated by the period’s social and economic transformations. Furthermore, my dissertation contributes to conversations on the subjectivity of the lower classes and the agency they gained from positions of precarious employment in the context of early capitalism and European colonialism.
Publications
Gutiérrez-Popoca, Emiliano. “The Independent Parasite: Mosca’s Theatrical Service in Volpone.” Ben Jonson Journal, vol. 29, no. 1, May 2022, pp. 46–64. Edinburgh University Press Journals, https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2022.0327.
This article explores the relationship between Volpone and Mosca as a master-servant bond grounded on roleplaying and theatricality. I argue that Mosca’s growing importance as an actor within Volpone’s theatrical schemes for wealth acquisition lead Mosca to envision detachment from his master and to gain an independent self. Mosca’s independence is legally recognized by the Venetian authorities only for a moment in the final act before he is discovered and punished. Notwithstanding its conservative ending, the play reveals paths of advancement for the parasite through deceit and theatricality. In addition, Mosca’s soliloquies reveal an introspective mind that delights in his role of parasite. I relate this introspection to a form of subjectivity arising from the precarious employment of household servants in early modern London, which prompted their adaptation to a variety of roles.
English-Spanish Translation
My publications include articles on translating poems by English authors like John Donne and George Herbert into Spanish. In these poetry translations, I seek to create texts that work as alternative poems, evoking the complexity of the original’s imagery, tone, and effect.
Gutiérrez Popoca, Emiliano. “”El alma en paráfrasis”. El soneto ‘Prayer I’ de George Herbert y su traducción como soneto en español.” Cánones y fugas, el soneto como ejercicio de traducción literaria: teoría y práctica, Gabriel Linares González and Mario Murgia Elizalde (editors), 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10391/7492———————————-. “Pequeños mundos de ingenio y arte: traducción y comentario de seis sonetos religiosos de John Donne”. Anuario de Letras Modernas. Vol. 7, 2012. Mexico: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM.http://ru.ffyl.unam.mx/handle/10391/4235