Parodies to the National Canon in Hispanic Contemporary Literature (1978--2000): Examples From Argentina, Spain, and Colombia
Crespo, Natalia Maria
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/86148
Description
Title
Parodies to the National Canon in Hispanic Contemporary Literature (1978--2000): Examples From Argentina, Spain, and Colombia
Author(s)
Crespo, Natalia Maria
Issue Date
2007
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Tolliver, Joyce
Department of Study
Spanish
Discipline
Spanish
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Latin American
Language
spa
Abstract
"This thesis analyzes parodies to national canonical texts in four contemporary Hispanic literary works written during the last decades of the 20th Century. Following mainly---but not only---Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody, I analyze how these parodies are constructed and how they read and re-interpret their respective national literary predecessors. The short story ""Help a el"" (Pajaros de la cabeza, 1985), by the Argentine Enrique Fogwill, ironically re-creates the canonical text ""El Aleph"" (El Aleph, 1945), interpreting Borges' text as a realistic narrative. ""El capitulo ingles"" ( El humor de la melancolia, 2001), by the Colombian R.H. Moreno Duran, narrates the adventures in London of Efrain, the protagonist of the 19th Century foundational romance, Maria (1867) by Jorge Isaacs. By inventing Efrain's life during those years, Moreno Duran produces a parody that not only fills in an ellipsis already present in its canonical predecessor, but also re-thinks Maria in terms of ideology and aesthetics. In the third chapter I read El cuarto de atras (Carmen Martin Gaite, Spain, 1978) as a novel in which certain Francoist dominant discourses are ironically re-created and, hence, subverted. Through stylistically echoing national predecessors, El quarto de atras subverts the romance genre in general and, in particular, Carmen de Icaza's Cristina Guzman, profesora de idiomas (1936). I finally consider Boris Salazar's novel The Other Jungle (La otra selva, 1991) as a parody of the Colombian text La voragine (1924), by Jose Eustasio Rivera. While stylistically echoing its predecessor, La otra selva also makes an important authorial gesture: it gives voice to Rivera's submissive character Alicia, thus inverting not only the representation of the feminine persona but also the question of power within the new ""jungle"". My reading of these texts suggests that during periods of social conflict, parodies of the texts associated with ""foundational fictions"" (Sommers) serve as striking indictments of the failure of the national projects those fictions helped to construct."
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