UBC Theses and Dissertations

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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Extrapolaciones : ética literaria y discurso crítico en Roberto Bolaño, Ricardo Piglia y Fernando Vallejo Villacreses Benavides, Norman Xavier

Abstract

The research examines the conditions of production and the function of critical discourse, (mainly texts that circulate in parallel to the production of fiction, such as interviews, essays, speeches, or newspaper articles) elaborated by Latin American writers since the mid-20th Century. The objective is understand the writer's strategies of positioning and the place that this discourse has in his literary project. For this purpose, the research proposes the concept of literary ethics to analyze the creative relationship of the writer with society and the literary field. Since a considerable part of critical discourse circulates in the mass media, the construction of the writer's public figure has also been problematized under the notion of personification taking into account the possible relations of ambiguity that occur when there is an identification between a fictional character and the personification. To study this processes, Roberto Bolaño, Ricardo Piglia and Fernando Vallejo have been chosen as representative writers of the literary system, considering legitimacy, extensive discursive production, deliberate construction of the personification/character relationship and contemporaneity, as relevant elements. The research concludes that literary ethics allows us to analyze the tension between an historical moment and the creative production in a writer's career and that this process shapes critical discourse, whose main function is to establish and maintain a literary position, through canonical reorganization, the alteration of modes of reading or social criticism. Lastly, it is established that personification, critical discourse and works of fiction can be linked through ambiguity in the public reception of the writer's image.

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