Grotesque Deconstruction of Oficial Colonial and Postcolonial Latin-American Identities

From Valle-Inclan’s Tirano Banderas to Silviano Santiago’s Cosmopolitismo do pobre

Pedro Santa María de Abreu - Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal - email

Abstract

This article explores the deconstructive function of grotesque elements in contemporary Spanish and Ibero-American Literature. Starting with Tirano Banderas. Novela de Tierra Caliente (1926), a highlight in Valle-Inclan’s esperpento aesthetics, mocking what authors as Bakhtin or Foucault pointed out as “official truths”, both collective and individual. It is argued that grotesque representation establishes a subversive relation when confronted with epic or tragic modes, as established by aristotelic-horatian and dogmatic poetics. This may shed some light on the relation between grotesque structure and critical deconstruction, from the so-called Baroque era up until modernist and postmodernist essay, such as it is the case of one of the most thoroughly sophisticated contemporary writers in Brasil, Silviano Santiago, whose collection of essays O Cosmopolitismo do Pobre (2004) is the third pillar of our analysis.

Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Feb. 8, 2018 | Accepted: April 1, 2018 | Published Dec. 11, 2018 | Language: es

Keywords Valle-Inclán • Contemporary narrative • Silviano Santiago • Postcolonial identities • Grotesque esperpento • Baroque • Iberian and Latin-American Comparative Studies • Deconstruction • Classical and contemporary poetics • Modernism

Copyright © 2018 Pedro Santa María de Abreu. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_1577
dc.title	Grotesque Deconstruction of Oficial Colonial and Postcolonial Latin-American Identities. From Valle-Inclan’s Tirano Banderas to Silviano Santiago’s Cosmopolitismo do pobre
dc.contributor.author	Santa María de Abreu Pedro
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	es
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/rassegna-iberistica/2018/110/deconstruccion-grotesca-de-las-identidades-oficial/
dc.description.abstract	This article explores the deconstructive function of grotesque elements in contemporary Spanish and Ibero-American Literature. Starting with Tirano Banderas. Novela de Tierra Caliente (1926), a highlight in Valle-Inclan’s esperpento aesthetics, mocking what authors as Bakhtin or Foucault pointed out as “official truths”, both collective and individual. It is argued that grotesque representation establishes a subversive relation when confronted with epic or tragic modes, as established by aristotelic-horatian and dogmatic poetics. This may shed some light on the relation between grotesque structure and critical deconstruction, from the so-called Baroque era up until modernist and postmodernist essay, such as it is the case of one of the most thoroughly sophisticated contemporary writers in Brasil, Silviano Santiago, whose collection of essays O Cosmopolitismo do Pobre (2004) is the third pillar of our analysis.
dc.relation.ispartof	Rassegna iberistica
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 41 \| Issue 110 \| December 2018
dc.issued	2018-12-11
dc.dateAccepted	2018-04-01
dc.dateSubmitted	2018-02-08
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2037-6588
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/Ri/2037-6588/2018/11/005
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Baroque
dc.subject	Baroque
dc.subject	Classical and contemporary poetics
dc.subject	Classical and contemporary poetics
dc.subject	Contemporary narrative
dc.subject	Contemporary narrative
dc.subject	Deconstruction
dc.subject	Deconstruction
dc.subject	Grotesque esperpento
dc.subject	Grotesque esperpento
dc.subject	Iberian and Latin-American Comparative Studies
dc.subject	Iberian and Latin-American Comparative Studies
dc.subject	Modernism
dc.subject	Modernism
dc.subject	Postcolonial identities
dc.subject	Postcolonial identities
dc.subject	Silviano Santiago
dc.subject	Silviano Santiago
dc.subject	Valle-Inclán
dc.subject	Valle-Inclán
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