40 años de investigación académica sobre las novelas de Vargas Llosa : Análisis meta-crítico y metodológico de tesis doctorales escritas en los Estados Unidos (1970-2010)

Sammanfattning: This doctoral thesis uses a meta-critical method with an epistemological approach. The corpus consists of the doctoral theses presented in the United States about the novels of the Peruvian-Spanish writer and Nobel Prize winner in 2010 Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most outstanding Spanish-speaking authors, with an extensive literary production. The study covers the 56 doctoral theses presented between 1970 and 2010 on the narrative of Vargas Llosa. The analysis has given the following results:The first and most obvious classification that can be made of the 56 doctoral theses is whether they are monographic theses or theses in comparative literature. One trend is that comparative literature studies have become more frequent in the last decade (2000-2010).Another classification is based on the categories established by the epistemologist Susan Haack, who speaks of genuine research, fake reasoning and sham research. By fake research she means research that does not have a clear question or hypothesis. If the question is not clear, then it is not possible to choose a clear method, and the result can not be used as a basis for further research. With sham research, Haack refers to research done, so to speak, "backwards." The researcher has decided in advance what the results will be and collects arguments and examples to support his thesis. By genuine research, Haack refers to the case when the researcher starts from a research question, designing a method that allows answering that question, thus contributing new knowledge to the field in question.Another result is that, among the monographic theses, the three types of research are represented, whereas the theses of comparative literature only exemplify fake and sham research. Many of the sham theses are political, mixing literature and politics, something that could be related to Vargas Llosa's own interest in politics.