| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 西班牙語文學系碩士班 === 102 === El Tiempo Entre Costuras was published in June, 2009. It speaks about Sira Quiroga, an ordinary girl born in Madrid, who turned from an inconspicuous seamstress, petite and meticulous, to one that set foot in Spain, Morocco, and was even involved in the spy missions in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. This novel also lists the author, Maria Duenas, formerly a linguistics professor, as one of the world’s best-selling authors.
The first chapter of the thesis is Introduction, where the motivation, aim, methods, and literature are expounded, ensued by a discussion of the research scope and limitations. Chapter Two introduces the life of the author and the writing of El Tiempo Entre Costuras, coupled with a brief synopsis of the story and characters in the novel. The thesis aims to explore and analyze the themes of love and memory used in the story. Therefore, in Chapter Three, love is further discussed and categorized into four types, according to C.S. Lewis. The story not only contains love between men and women, but also love in friendship, parents and children, and lastly in patriotism. Chapter Four focuses on the theme of memory. It is observed that the story, which is based on the memory of the leading character, Sira, employs a great number of metaphors, either on the collective memory of the historic and societal events, or on the individual memory of the personal experience and growth. It is found that the images of people, happenings, and adventures in the story are in many ways analogous to those of dress-making. After deliberate inspection, it is reasoned that dress-making, or cloth-sewing signifies the concept of time and memory. Weaved by time, fate, and history, a series of adventures unfold. People can best be depicted as cloths, whereas time is the seamstress. Browsing through memory is like an inventory of all the dresses which are tailored, cut and seamed. The Last chapter is conclusion, which sums up what is mainly discussed in each of the previous chapters.
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