Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Uriarte, Javier | Burgos-Lafuente, Lena
Date
2013-12-01
Keywords
Latin American literature
Department
Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature.
Language
es
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77700
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Since the late 1990s, the work of Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has attracted an ever-growing amount of critical and popular interest. His skyrocket ride to the forefront of the literary universe was ironically preceded by many years at the margins of the field, and this background clearly informs his writing. In his novels and short stories, Bolaño undertakes the representation of marginal characters whose stories unfold in restricted, liminal spaces. Bolaño reimagines these spaces to delve into a dialogue between his characters and the circumstances and forces that rule their worlds. He grants importance to his underdog figures and relocates their stories to a central focus, thus allowing for a commentary on the structures of power that have relegated them to the sidelines. The analysis I propose in this thesis takes these spatial dynamics as a jumping-off point. I examine three of Bolaño's novels- Estrella distante (1996), Amuleto (1999), and 2666 (2004) - from a perspective that focuses on the way in which the spaces represented in each novel are resignified both literally and metaphorically, in a way that corresponds to historically concrete incidents of State-sponsored violence in Latin America. The narrative voices of the texts approach their testimonies of violence from marginal spaces, or recount the way in which the same violence conquers and invades space both public and private. I suggest that the problematic relation between Bolaño's textual spaces and the violence that pervades them allows the author to narrate a destruction of intimate space, and consequentially of the intimate life that could typically unfold within it. This gesture destabilizes the preconceived ideas of space, State terrorism, and intimacy and constitutes, in my reading, a direct intervention in the memory of the distinct historical contexts alluded to. | Since the late 1990s, the work of Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has attracted an ever-growing amount of critical and popular interest. His skyrocket ride to the forefront of the literary universe was ironically preceded by many years at the margins of the field, and this background clearly informs his writing. In his novels and short stories, Bolaño undertakes the representation of marginal characters whose stories unfold in restricted, liminal spaces. Bolaño reimagines these spaces to delve into a dialogue between his characters and the circumstances and forces that rule their worlds. He grants importance to his underdog figures and relocates their stories to a central focus, thus allowing for a commentary on the structures of power that have relegated them to the sidelines. The analysis I propose in this thesis takes these spatial dynamics as a jumping-off point. I examine three of Bolaño's novels- Estrella distante (1996), Amuleto (1999), and 2666 (2004) - from a perspective that focuses on the way in which the spaces represented in each novel are resignified both literally and metaphorically, in a way that corresponds to historically concrete incidents of State-sponsored violence in Latin America. The narrative voices of the texts approach their testimonies of violence from marginal spaces, or recount the way in which the same violence conquers and invades space both public and private. I suggest that the problematic relation between Bolaño's textual spaces and the violence that pervades them allows the author to narrate a destruction of intimate space, and consequentially of the intimate life that could typically unfold within it. This gesture destabilizes the preconceived ideas of space, State terrorism, and intimacy and constitutes, in my reading, a direct intervention in the memory of the distinct historical contexts alluded to. | 81 pages
Recommended Citation
Graf, Jessica, "Juegos de resignificación: espacio, violencia e intimidad en tres novelas de Roberto Bolaño | Juegos de resignificación: espacio, violencia e intimidad en tres novelas de Roberto Bolaño" (2013). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3491.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3491