Argentine Literature on Both Sides of the Ocean: Julio Cortázar and Manuel Puig
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2021-4-111-122Keywords:
Manuel Puig; Julio Cortázar; antinovel; nouveau roman; literature of Argentina; Latin American ‘boom’.Abstract
The article analyzes and compares two Argentine novels of the mid-twentieth century, Rayuela (Hopscotch), 1963, by Julio Cortázar and Traición de Rita Hayworth (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), 1968, by Manuel Puig. The writers are similar in their innovativeness, a thirst for experimentation. Both of them mainly worked outside Argentina, which also influenced the poetics of the novels. The parallelism between the creative searches and the life situations provides a basis for comparing these Latin American authors. We show that that J. Cortázar creates a complex intellectual work. Together with the heroes, the author reflects on the future of the novel as a genre and the possibility of creating an antinovel, while at the same time embodying some of the ideas of the Nouveau Roman writers (N. Sarrott, A. Robbe-Grillet, etc.) in practice: he destroys the usual forms of narration and involves the reader in the process of the novel-creation. M. Puig turns to pop art and mass culture. Following the Nouveau Roman writers, he discards the plot and the main character. On the pages of the novel, Puig captures the image of a typical provincial town with the precision of a movie camera; remaining ‘behind the lens’, he ‘disappears’ from the narrative and allows the characters to tell the story themselves. The article concludes that both novels are complex postmodern works in which the influence of deconstructivism and poststructuralism is obvious. J. Cortázar and M. Puig adhere to different approaches to the novel, but both strive to find new forms of narration, to take a different look at the novel as a genre, which indicates a certain unity of Argentine literature created outside Argentina.References
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