Revista Chilena de Literatura

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: una historia recuperada

María Eugenia Góngora — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

En esta breve revisión de la recepción moderna de la literatura centrada en las historias del Rey Arturo y sus caballeros, mencionaré los hitos principales del itinerario de una obra en particular, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, y de los estudios que le dedicó Jessie L. Weston, una especialista en literatura medieval inglesa muy poco reconocida en la actualidad y cuyo nombre apenas figura –literalmente– en una nota a pie de página. T. S. Eliot la menciona por la importancia que habría tenido su obra titulada From Ritual to Romance (1920), en la creación de su gran poema The Waste Land. En la nota inicial de ese texto, Eliot afirma que le debe mucho al libro de Jessie Weston sobre la leyenda del Grial, no solo respecto del plan de su obra, sino también de muchos de los símbolos que aparecen en su poema, y recomienda su lectura por el interés del libro de Weston por sí mismo.

The water that escapes from the fist. On morality and authority: an analysis of Cara de pan, by Sara Mesa

Maria Ayete-Gil — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper starts from the notion of morality developed by Joan-Carles Mèlich to propose an interpretation of Sara Mesa’s novel Cara de pan as a novel that tries to break with the functional logic of morality. Mesa's work exposes a series of questions that point to the problematization of certain moral and social codes, challenging the official discourses according to which the world is what it is, and is the best of all possible. Mèlich's approach is based on the idea that we are born into a world that is already codified, ordered and (pre)established by morality and its frameworks. However, morality is not ahistorical; it is a construction elaborated to structure and give meaning to the world and, as such, it varies according to the hegemonic system. Mèlich's contributions, which I will relate to certain concepts of Foucault, Butler or Esposito, allow me to break down the configuration of morality and, with it, some of its categories and mechanisms.

El circuito afectivo monstruoso en Mapocho de Nona Fernández y La resta de Alia Trabucco

María Belén Contreras-Contreras — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article advances a reading of two different affective economies —linked to fear and the monstrous, respectively— in the Chilean post-dictatorship novels Mapocho, by Nona Fernández, and La resta, by Alia Trabucco. My hypothesis is that, in the case of Mapocho, we find an affective circuit related to eschatology/scatology that pushes to access the national imaginary and subvert the discourse of official history dominated by hygienism. Similarly, in La resta an enlightened affective circuit is linked to a mathematical discourse that is strained an re-affected. Moreover, in both works the individual political subject immersed in the affective circuit of fear is unsettled by monstrous, spectral, and animalized figurations that blur its predications.

AGAINST THE FATHER, AGAINST THE DICTATOR: SUBVERSIVE MOTHERHOOD IN LUMPÉRICA AND LOS VIGILANTES BY DIAMELA ELTIT

Alexis Hernando-Cubas — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I analyze the representation of subversive motherhood embodied in the protagonists of the novels Lumpérica (1983) and Los vigilantes (1994) by Diamela Eltit. I state that, through mothers L. Iluminada and Margarita, Eltit gives an account of the permanent struggle between the totalitarian powers of Augusto Pinochet's military regime and the American female subject. The rebellious mothers try to dismantle the ideological devices of the dictatorship and interrupt the perpetuation of parental law. For this reason, the narratives give centrality to the semiotic-pulsional potential of mothers as a force capable of destabilizing the phallogocentric order and reestablishing the symbiotic bond with the children. Finally, I propose that subversive motherhood is at the base of Eltit's aesthetic: one that exceeds the literary and that seeks to blur the art-life boundaries.

El mal francés en la literatura española: desengaño y grotesco en tres retratos (Lozana, Maxi Rubín y Max Estrella)

Almudena Izquierdo-Andreu, Álvaro López-Fernández — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The paper´s aim is to analyse the syphilis presence and consequences in three characters of the Spanish literature: Lozana (La lozana andaluza, 1528), Maxi Rubín (Fortunata y Jacinta, 1887) and Max Estrella (Luces de Bohemia, 1920). The common point is based on three features in order to give coherence and cohesion to the studied books at the thematic and temporal level: the grotesque setting to create a portrays the vicissitudes and characterisation for the syphilis sufferer, the relevance of disease effects at the plot, and how his symptoms connect with the final disillusionment of the characters. In this way this critical interpretation seeks to reform and reinforce the symbolic plane through the truthful repercussions this illness has on the characters actions.

COLOURS IN RUBEN DARÍO’S PROSE FICTION

Micaela Moya — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The following paper deals with the treatment of colour in Rubén Darío’s prose fiction, taking as examples two short stories by the Nicaraguan writer: “Un cuento para Jeanette” and “El año que viene siempre es azul”. It also inquires into the motivations that led Darío to place special emphasis on the chromatic issues, thus shedding light on the links between modernismo and Parnassianism.

AUTONOMY AND RECONCILIATION IN THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE AESTHETIC DEBATE: ‘THE DECAY OF LYING’ AND NEWS FROM NOWHERE

Pablo San Martín-Varela — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This essay interprets “The Decay of Lying” by Oscar Wilde and News from Nowhere by William Morris as contributions to the debate concerning realist art that took place during the late-Victorian period. Specifically, it compares the ways in which these works deployed the strategies of autonomy and reconciliation characteristic of modern aesthetic discourse. For this purpose, the author establishes an interpretive framework by discussing relevant rhetorical devices developed by German classical aesthetics in the late eighteenth century. Thus, s/he identifies and analyzes the main similarities and differences between Wilde’s and Morris’ aesthetic stances, and, finally, reassesses the definition of autonomy as “uselessness”, usually employed in the scholarship on British aestheticism.

Eduardo Barraza Jara. De la Araucana a Butamalón: el discurso de la conquista y el canon de la literatura chilena. 2ª ed. Osorno: Editorial Universidad de los Lagos, 2021.

Cristian Vidal-Barría — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

La primera edición del libro De la Araucana a Butamalón: el discurso de la conquista y el canon de la literatura chilena fue publicada en 2004 por la editorial de la Universidad Austral de Chile. Esta segunda edición es una versión corregida que, con una presentación del historiador Jorge Pinto y con una nueva presentación por parte del autor, amplía el campo de reflexión en torno a los discursos literarios que a lo largo de la historia nacional han contribuido a la conformación de la identidad del país.

Noé Jitrik. Un círculo. Buenos Aires: Interzona, 2022.

Tomás Bombachi — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

En Un círculo, novela tan actual como crítica, Noé Jitrik –crítico literario, ensayista, poeta y narrador argentino– pone en escena el interior obligado de tres personajes dentro de la casa que habitan cotidianamente. Encierro, quietismo, barbijos. Publicada en 2022, bajo el sello de la editorial Interzona, la situación de la trama escapa a la ficción, por más que no deje de serlo: la narración de Jitrik permite encontrar elementos de la realidad que, por su huella en la experiencia histórica e incluso su actualidad al presente, la condicionan.

Leonel Delgado Aburto. Conversación e impureza: José Coronel Urtecho y las escrituras posvanguardistas. Santiago: Palabra Editorial, 2022.

Thomas Rothe — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

La literatura centroamericana no es completamente ajena a los procesos culturales chilenos. El paso de Rubén Darío por Chile a fines del siglo XIX marcó la carrera de la figura capital del modernismo hispanoamericano, dejando también su huella en el imaginario popular. Carmen Lyra, considerada como una de las primeras escritoras costarricenses, tomó su seudónimo de dos calles del centro de Santiago, Carmen y Lira, a sugerencia de Joaquín García Monge, quien vivió una temporada en la capital chilena a comienzos del siglo XX. El connotado escritor Joaquín Gutiérrez, oriundo de Puerto Limón, la principal ciudad caribeña de Costa Rica, también vivió en Chile durante años, asumiendo la dirección de la Editorial Quimantú hasta el golpe de Estado de 1973, cuando se vio obligado a volver a su país. Miguel Ángel Asturias, Roque Dalton, Leonel Rugama, Ernesto Cardenal, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Giaconda Belli, María del Carmen Pérez Cuadra son nombres que circulan con frecuencia en Chile, no pocos de ellos con publicaciones locales.

Mary Luz Estupiñán. Simplemente Clarice. Santiago: Editorial Mímesis, 2022.

Rebeca Errázuriz-Cruz — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Simplemente Clarice, el libro que nos regala Mary Luz Estupiñán, entra en el tejido oblicuo de las letras clariceanas para mostrarnos que esa simplicidad no se alcanza de manera inmediata ni directa. Laborioso es el trabajo de dar cuenta de esa simplicidad y de lo que se juega en ella. Hace falta una profundidad que no se logra con las disecciones del escalpelo del crítico, sino mediante el gesto abierto y receptivo. Se trata de hacer vibrar las resonancias de esa escritura para devolvernos hacia una superficie que ha sido recubierta por tradiciones, por lugares de poder masculino letrado, por estabilizaciones que han intentado fijar y regular lo que literatura puede/debe realizar.

Itamar Vieira Junior. Tortuoso arado. Traducción de Felipe Cammaert. Bogotá: Tusquets, 2021.

Matías Rebolledo-Dujisin — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Es la primera novela de su autor –ha publicado además dos libros de cuentos, A Oração do Carrasco (2017) y Doramar ou a odisseia (2021)–. Cabe señalar que el mundo representado en la novela es el resultado de un profundo conocimiento de campo del autor, geógrafo y doctor en estudios étnicos y africanos, con una tesis sobre las comunidades quilombolas en nordeste brasileño. Así, como geógrafo, investigador y miembro del INCRA conoció a las comunidades descritas en la novela, que viven aún bajo un régimen tributario del modelo esclavista y colonial: trabajadores sin derecho a un terreno propio, a salario, a construcciones sólidas, etc.

Presentación. Feminismos, redes y genealogías: abordaje a la escritura de mujeres en latinoamérica (1850-1950)

Natalia Cisterna Jara, María Lucía Puppo — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

En octubre del 2021, en plena pandemia, un conjunto de académicas e investigadoras de distintos países nos reunimos para escucharnos, pensar y conversar sobre la participación de las mujeres latinoamericanas y caribeñas, de 1850 a 1950, en sus respectivos campos culturales. El seminario virtual que nos reunió tenía como título “Memorias, genealogías y afectos: hacia una historia cultural de mujeres en América Latina”. En ese espacio reflexionamos y debatimos, desde distintas perspectivas, sobre los esfuerzos que desplegaron las intelectuales y creadoras de aquellos años por integrarse en sus espacios culturales y problematizar los modelos sexo-genéricos que las definían en lugares secundarios en sus naciones y en los espacios letrados.

CREATING BONDS, PLOTTING NETWORKS: CUBAN EXPERIENCES

Zaida Capote-Cruz — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The building of ties from a variety of contact spaces, such as magazines or institutions, intimate correspondence or critical exercise is a very frequent strategy of Cuban women writers. This article exemplifies that building of collaborative networks from the action developed by some women authors from XIXth century, like Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda o Domitila García de Coronado, and by their XXth century inheritors.

SUFFRAGIST DEMANDS IN THE ESSAYS OF CHILEAN WOMEN WRITERS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY: WAYS OF PARTICIPATING IN THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL DEBATE

Joyce Contreras-Villalobos — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines a corpus of essays written by Martina Barros, Elvira Santa Cruz Ossa, Amanda Labarca and Gabriela Mistral. Besides being relevant figures in the process of shaping the literary and cultural field in Chile in the first decades of the twentieth century, “in their essays on gender themes they also reflected on the status of women and the feminist movements/discourses that were emerging at the time. The focus will be on a corpus of texts they published during 1910-1940. It is proposed that these essays will contribute to promote, make visible and mobilize the demands for women’s rights in the country, and more specifically, women’s suffrage. Through a textual analysis the different positions to which they adhered are examined: What did it mean to obtain this right and what were its projections? To which kind of suffragist movements did women writers look forward? In what way did they support, disassociate themselves of, or rethink the character of the metropolitan suffragist movements?, What strategies did they have to adopt in order to legitimize their demands? The aim is to show how, from the cultural field and particularly through the essay genre, these authors contributed to rethink the role and the intervention of women in the public sphere, as well as in the future of their country.

TEXTS OF WOMEN TEACHERS IN CHILE: PERSPECTIVES FOR THEIR STUDY (1880-1920)

Claudia Montero, Leonora Reyes, Graciela Rubio — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The article deals with the possible perspectives of analysis for the study of the writings of teachers between the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. From an interdisciplinary approach we study their constitution as historical, political and educational subjects and knowledge producers. From the gender theory and the socio-cultural history of education, we propose some clues to deepen their study. The text is organized into three sections: the first develops a conceptual treatment; the second addresses the central elements of the context, and the last, a concrete research perspective.

Competing Feminisms in Zarela (A Feminist Novel), by Leonor Espinoza de Menéndez (1910?): Beyond Utopias, Conciliations, and Exceptionalities

Luz Ainai Morales Pino — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Zarela (A Feminist Novel) presents the upheavals of a group of women that converge in the precariousness of their lives. This leads them to deploy not always successful strategies of self-preservation and survival. Even though the text dialogues with a realist aesthetics and ideology (a framework frequently disqualified due to the experimental tendencies ruling in the literary field at the time), Zarela problematizes and rewrites realism by re-signifying it and imposing gender marks fundamental for, first, showcasing the critical circumstances of female subjects in the microcosm depicted in the novel; second, confronting the patriarchal literary and cultural tradition; and, third, proposing a subjugated feminist imaginary that vindicates individualist projects and affective counter-pedagogies based on rationality and anti-sentimentality for non-exceptional female subjects.

Gabriela Mistral, Federico de Onís y la publicación de Desolación en 1922

Alicia Salomone — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This essay pursues a double goal. On the one hand, it aims to characterize the authorial staging of Gabriela Mistral by the year 1922, in the context of publication of her first poetry book, Desolación. On the other hand, it inquires on the process that led to the first edition of the book, which did not occur in Chile but in New York City (USA) due to the Spanish philologist Federico de Onís’ mediation. The study’s methodology shifts the focus from the poetic writing analysis itself to the dynamics of the Ibero-American literary and cultural fields. In this way, the essay elaborates on the conditions that allowed Mistral to have her book published and to consolidate an authorial figuration as a Latin American poet and intellectual of international relevance between the decades of 1920 and 1950.

MARTA BRUNET’S ARRIVAL IN ARGENTINA (1939-1942): SELF-MANAGEMENT AND INSTALLATION STRATEGIES

Osvaldo Carvajal-Muñoz — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Between 1939 and 1953 the Chilean writer Marta Brunet (1897-1967) was appointed to diplomatic functions in the cities of La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Literary historians and biographers of her time have diminished the relevance for her work of this period spent abroad to a supposed avant-garde influence. Such influence is supposed to mark the beginning of a second stage of her novelistic production far from her early “criollismo”. In this paper, the author’s efforts and movements in the cultural field in the first half of the 20th century are reconstructed to access the relevance of her diplomatic stay in Argentina (1939-1942). Thus, based on an exhaustive archival work, this research identifies the strategies that allowed the author to insert herself in the Argentinian cultural field and expand her name and work to a continental dimension, this involves her collaboration with several newspapers and magazines, so as her relationship with the main cultural referents at the time.

Presentación. Bolaño, eterna juventud

Héctor Hoyos, Alejandra Bottinelli-Wolleter, Jonathan Monroe B. — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

No es por falta de prominencia que el rostro de Roberto Bolaño difícilmente figurará alguna vez en moneda corriente, como sucede con Gabriela Mistral en el billete de cinco mil pesos en Chile, Gabriel García Márquez en el de cincuenta mil en Colombia o José Martí en el de a peso en Cuba. ¿Qué país podría reclamar simbólicamente a Bolaño, chileno, mexicano o español? En los ejemplos anteriores el billete media entre comunidades en un Estado nación que se identifican emblemáticamente con la figura de la escritora o escritor y comunidades extranjeras que acceden a ella a través de una eventual conversión de divisas: veinticuatro Martís por un Washington de a dólar, y así sucesivamente. Para Bolaño haría falta un Banco Latinoamericano con subsidiaria en la Península Ibérica, o acaso un Banco Mundial, distinto de la entidad financiera que lleva ese nombre. O, de plano, quemar los billetes.

FROM THE SYMBOL WOMAN TO THE POLITICS OF WOMAN IN ROBERTO BOLAÑO’S LOS DETECTIVES SALVAJES (THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES) Y 2666: A FEMINIST READING

Patricia Espinosa Hernández — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: This text will address the figure of women in two fundamental novels by Roberto Bolaño: Los detectives salvajes (The savage detectives) (1998) and 2666 (2004). In the first, the objective is to corroborate the existence of a sacred elaboration of women. In this regard, it is worth considering the figure of Cesárea Tinajero not only as the myth of the avant-garde artist, but as the avant-garde itself. In regard to 2666, specifically in “La parte de los crímenes”, the objective is to account for a revealing twist in Bolaño's perspective regarding women, who stop to be a literary symbol to become a political subject; accusing in such a way, a central problematic for feminism, gender violence.

BOBBY SEALE’S GRAIN OF SAND: TOWARD AN ANALYSIS OF BLACK INTERNATIONALISM IN 2666

Tania Arabelle Flores — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Bobby Seale’s Grain of Sand: Toward an Analysis of the Afro-Atlantic Chronotopes in 2666 By tracing the intertextual links between Bobby Seale’s autobiography A Lonely Rage and Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, this article proposes that the third part of Bolaño’s text experiments with the continuation of the act of writing Seale’s life as a means of thinking the futurity of political ideals as well as the temporality of the violence of modernity. I demonstrate that, in 2666, the rhetorical figure of the grain of sand—the most important of the images that Bolaño borrows from Seale—forms part of a system of Afro-Atlantic chronotopes. These chronotopes, in turn, evoke the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy of racial oppression and sketch the structural relation of slavery and racism to femicide on the U.S.-México border. This article delves into an understudied textual site in 2666 to indicate the value of Bolaño’s oeuvre for studies of blackness and the Afro-Atlantic in Latin America. Keywords: Bobby Seale, 2666, chronotope, Afro-Atlantic, intertextual

2666 as an interpellation to psychoanalysis: the repetition, the subject, and the nightmare.

Juan Pablo Vildoso Castillo — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this article I propose an interpellation to psychoanalysis based on three elements of the novel 2666: the endless repetition of forensic obituaries of "The part of the crimes", the character Lalo Cura and the nightmares suffered by the critics and Amalfitano. These elements challenge psychoanalysis at three different levels: marking the limits of metapsychology when addressing phenomena such as the femicides of Juárez (Santa Teresa); the elementary cell of violence hidden both in the myth of Oedipus and in the subject of the Lacanian unconscious, and finally, at the level of the dream paradigm of sleep as a fulfillment of desire, indicating the transition to a model of nightmare, correlative to a subjectivity that is torn between suicidal nihilism, melancholy and the multiple splits required to sustain itself on a world in destruction.

From ‘killing nazis’ to ‘saving the girl’: Roberto Bolaño’s gameplay writing

Nibaldo Acero, Javier Pérez-Díaz — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper wishes to analyse, intermedially, part of Bolaño’s narrative, fractions that we call here “gameplay writing”, which are especially housed in three works: 2666, The Third Reich and The Savage Detectives. Through the exploration of these selected cultural objects, we will seek to develop an interdisciplinary, aesthetic and historical dialogue based on that analysis.

BECOMING ROBERTO BOLAÑO: A SURVEY OF POETIC CONGENIALITY AND THE “PERFORMING AUTHORSHIP” OF PATTI SMITH

Rike Bolte — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this essay, a marginal and —at the same time— prominent phenomenon in the exegesis of Roberto Bolaño's work is studied: the performance offered by the rock-veteran Patti Smith, as reader of the Chilean author, in an interview that took place in Madrid, in 2010. Smith meta-positions herself with respect to the “literary system”, but she also uses a concept inherited from romanticism, the poetic congeniality, locating herself in an inter-authorial dimension with Bolaño. Then, she performs several nostalgic exercises: the (re)staging of her own poetic authorship, and the projection of her authorial presence as a singer on/from Bolaño's absence. These interventions by Smith are analyzed in relation to a study by Sonja Longolius dedicated to the “performing authorship”, which at the same time takes up the Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of becoming author, and the transmission of the great texts (of cult).

BOLAÑO’S GERMAN AND RUSSIAN READINGS: ASYMMETRIES AND INFLUENCES

Thomas O. Beebee — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Less pervasively central to Bolaño’s career than Spanish-, English-, and French-language authors, German and Russian Precursors, as Thomas O. Beebee’s essay demonstrates, are nonetheless extensive and generative, including among others Goethe (The Third Reich), Novalis (2666), Kafka (Monsieur Pain, Nazi Literature in the Americas, Distant Star, By Night in Chile) –whom Bolaño calls the “greatest writer of the twentieth century”– and Thomas Mann (2666). Among Russian writers in relation to whom Bolaño situates his late work and sense of himself as a novelist in particular, the combined influences of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (The Savage Detectives, By Night in Chile, 2666) are considerable. The essay examines the asymmetrical exchanges between these traditions and extrapolates on their interpretative purchase on the oeuvre as a whole.

BOLAÑO’S OTHER GLOBAL SOUTH: AFRICA AND ASIA AS THEME AND READERSHIP

Héctor Hoyos — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The article compares the thematization of Africa and Asia in Roberto Bolaño, mainly 2666, with the work’s reception in several locales from those continents. Building on sources such as the Indian writer Tanuj Solanki, the Kenyan Billy Kahora, and the Egyptian Youssef Rakha, alongside the Chinese editor Wang Ling, the Japanese translator Kenji Matsumoto and other participants in Bolaño’s global reception, Héctor Hoyos examines how the oeuvre exposes, reproduces, and subverts a Hegelian narrative of the West. Decades past his death, the author’s idea of the world keeps mutating—which affects the impact and overall meaning of his work.