Onega, Susana 1948–

(Susana Onega Jaén, Susana Onega Jaen)

PERSONAL: Born November 17, 1948, in Madrid, Spain; daughter of Carlos (a commercial agent) and Josefa (a homemaker) Onega; married Francisco Curiel Lorente (a property registrar), August 8, 1970; children: Jorge and Alberto Curiel Onega. Ethnicity: "European." Education: Official School of Languages, Madrid, Spain, certificate in French, 1967, and English, 1968; New School of English, Cambridge, England, diploma in advanced English, 1969; University of Heidelberg, diploma in German language and literature, 1969; Istituto Italiano di Cultura, diploma in Italian language and literature; Cambridge University, certificate in English, 1970; University of Zaragoza, diploma in German, 1977, B.A. (cum laude), 1975, Ph.D. (cum laude), 1979. Religion: "Roman Catholic background." Hobbies and other interests: Human rights, feminist issues, international relationships, animals and plants and the preservation of the ecosystem.

ADDRESSES: Office—Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain; fax: 976 76 1519. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Official School of Languages, Madrid, Spain, English teacher, 1968–69; University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, lecturer, 1975–77, associate professor, 1977–86, professor of English, 1986, department head, 1987–89, 1991–95, 1997–99. Director of national research projects for various Spanish ministries; member of international advisory committees; conference participant.

MEMBER: International Association of University Professors of English, European Society for the Study of English (founding member), European Association for American Studies, Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies, Instituto de Estudios Ingleses (founding member; treasurer and secretary, 1985–90), Association of Women Researchers and Technicians, English Association (corresponding fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS: Enrique García Díez Award, 1990; honorary research fellowship, Birkbeck College, London, 1995–96.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(Under name Susana Onega Jaén) Análisis estructural, método narrativo y "sentido" de "The Sound and the Fury" de William Faulkner, Libros Pórtico (Zaragoza, Spain), 1980.

(Editor and author of introduction) Estudios literarios ingleses II: Renacimiento y barroco, Cátedra (Madrid, Spain), 1986.

Form and Meaning in the Novels of John Fowles, UMI Research Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1989.

(Editor and author of introduction) "Telling Histories": Narrativizing History/Historicizing Literature, Rodopi (Atlanta, GA), 1995.

(Editor, with José Angel García Landa, and coauthor of introduction) Narratology: An Introduction, Addison Wesley (New York, NY), 1996.

Peter Ackroyd: The Writer and His Work, British Council (Plymouth, England), 1998.

(Editor, translator, and author of introduction and notes) El coleccionista de John Fowles, Cátedra (Madrid, Spain), 1999.

Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd, Camden House (Columbia, SC), 1999.

(Editor, with John A. Stotesbury, and coauthor of introduction) London in Literature: Visionary Mappings of the Metropolis, Carl Winter (Heidelberg, Germany), 2002.

(Editor, with Christian Gutleben, and coauthor of introduction) Refracting the Canon in Contemporary Literature and Film, Rodopi (Atlanta, GA), 2004.

(Editor, with Annette Gomis, and coauthor of introduction) George Orwell: A Centenary Celebration, Carl Winter (Heidelberg, Germany), 2005.

Jeanette Winterson, Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 2006.

Contributor of articles and reviews to journals, including Alfinge, Anglistik, Atlantis, Cruz Ansata, Miscelánea, Estudios de Filología Inglesa, European Journal of English Studies, Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica, Review of English-Language Teaching, and Twentieth-Century Literature. Contributor to anthologies of literary criticism, including England and the Spanish Armada, University of New South Wales, 1990. Contributor of chapters to academic literature, including Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Susana Onega once told CA: "My career as an Anglicist is the result of three main interests: my early desire to learn foreign languages, my love of literature, and an early vocation to teach. These interests are reflected in my writings: some of my books are attempts to explain (primarily to myself) texts which I find fascinating. To this type would belong the book on The Sound and the Fury, the book on the novels of John Fowles, and Camden House book on Peter Ackroyd, and my book on Jeanette Winterson. In these books the main focus is on the analysis of the texts themselves, usually aimed at highlighting the main thematic and formal traits recurring in the writer's work as a whole which might help me situate writer and work in their proper literary context.

"'Telling Histories': Narrativizing History/Historicizing Literature is a collection of essays on the relationship between history and literature triggered by the desire to establish the characteristics of what I believe to be a new trend emerging in British writing in the 1980s: historiographic metafiction, to which writers such as Fowles, Ackroyd, Jeanette Winterson, and Charles Palliser belong. Other books, such as Estudios literarios ingleses II: Renacimiento y barroco, and Narratology: An Introduction, are aimed at introducing to university students and teachers and authors a particular work or period, or a critical an interest in narrative theory. In my writings, as well as in my classes, I often make use not only of narratology, but also of the critical tools made available by the various post-structuralisms, by archetypal and myth criticism, deconstruction, feminist theory, and postmodernist theory in general."

Later Onega added: "The volumes of collected essays I edited with other scholars originated in seminars or conferences organized as part of the research activities of the competitive research group we have at the University of Zaragoza. The only exception is the volume on Orwell, which was specifically meant as a celebration of the centenary of his birth. Orwell's participation in the Spanish Civil War is closely related to Aragon, which is the region where the University of Zaragoza is located."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, March, 1997, J.F. O'Malley, review of Narratology: An Introduction, p. 1156; September, 1999, N.B. Palmer, review of Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd, p. SF-56.

English Fiction and Prose since 1945, spring, 2000, Jean-Michel Ganteau, review of Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd.