Yo el Supremo como crítica al discurso del poder

Given the scarcity of contextual analyzes that point to the understanding of power in the Latin American environment from the region’s own literary subgenres, the present research studies this conception in the work Yo el Supremo, an outstanding piece of Latin American narrative and cusp of Dictator Novel. For this purpose, the literary and historical records that contextualize the narrative are analyzed. After the hermeneutical analysis of both records, power is determined as the ability to generate historical-discursive realities in the construction of historical characters, in this case the dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia. The reading of I the Supreme warns us about the complexity involved in the study of power in Latin American dictatorial figures within the social tissue and political life of its nations.

AARTI SMITH MADAN. Lines of Geography in Latin American Narrative: National Territory, National Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 291 pp.

Review of Lines of Geography in Latin American Narrative: National Territory, National Literature by AARTI SMITH MADAN.

El entenado, de Juan José Saer: “nueva crónica de Indias”, “nueva novela histórica”, “metaficción historiográfica”, “ficción y de archivo” y “novela neobarroca”

Taking into account the different interpretative frameworks that have been proposed for a critical approach to the emergence of the historical fiction in the latest Latin-American narrative, the following article proposes a set of reading keys for the novel El entenado (1983), by Juan José Saer, paying attention, in a special way, to the metafictional and intertextual character of the novel, as common features to all the interpretive programs that will be considered.

Aarti Smith Madan. Lines of Geography in Latin American Narrative. National Territory, National Literature.

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Sobrevivientes y desaparecidos

Latin American narrative journalism plays a role of denunciation and resistance to the phenomenon of migration in Mexico as a place of origin-transit-destination of migrants. The chronicler’s word breaks the silence and the lies to say the perverse reality that reflects the validity of the perverse, the annihilation of the human condition under the appearance of institutionalised normality. The analysis of some chronicles by Marcela Turati and Oscar Martínez offers two different perspectives, Mexican and Central American, and a single intention: a writing that seeks to explain and make sense of the migrant’s condition through the instrument of the word.

„Borg er byggð. Og byggð er borg.“

This introductory chapter focuses on the multiple and diverse representations of urban communities and their infinite complexity. Firstly, the chapter introduces samples of recent representations of the city of Reykjavík, from Icelandic artists and scholars. Then the focus shifts to Enrique del Acebo Ibáñez´s theoretical ideas, as revealed in his book Sociología del arraigo: Una lectura crítica de la teoría de la ciudad (1996), (Sociology of Rootedness: Theories on the Origin and Nature of Urban Communities), translated into Icelandic in 2007, where he discusses the complex phenomenon of the “city” and questions the role of its inhabitants. His reflections substantiate previous theories of scholars such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, René König and Henri Lefebvre, whose writings are introduced and discussed in the chapter as well. Finally, the chapter applies a critical approach to a brief analysis of well-known Latin American narrative readily available in Icelandic, such as One hundred years of solitude (Cien años de soledad, 1967) by Gabriel García Márquez, The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) by Isabel Allende, and Amulet (Amuleto, 1999) by Eduardo Bolaño.

Historia y cognición en la narrativa de Latinoamerica: Jorge Volpi y la Trilogía del siglo XX.

The interrelations among History, cognition and knowledge in the Trilogía del siglo XX, a set of novels written by the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi, constitute a discursive space where readers and critics can inquire and explore the meaning of nowadays Latin American narrative. In spite of the fact that evanescence and fragmentarism are elements that are clearly present in the analyzed works, the study sets to assess the novels as courses of a ‘serial knowledge’ and as attempts in the difficult balance between the real and the imaginary elements. Furthermore, the paper suggests that these works’ meaning leads the reader to a ‘foundationalist’ acceptance of History as an element for the cognition of the present reality as well as for the timeless one.

Timothy R. Robbins y José E. González, eds. New Trends in Contemporary Latin American Narrative: Post-national Literatures and the Canon. Nueva York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

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