The Monstered Self: Narratives of Death and Performance in Latin American Fiction

Gonzalez, Eduardo

ISBN 10: 0822312093 / ISBN 13: 9780822312093

Published by Duke University Press, Durham, 1992

About this Item

B & W Illustrations; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 275 pages; [SIGNED] 1992 Duke University Press. HC/DJ 1st edition. Snugly bound and neat in original pictorial dust jacket. Inscribed and signed by the author on the front endpage. Just trace shelf evidence to jacket at edges. NF/VG++; Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 50656

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Monstered Self: Narratives of Death and ...

Publisher: Duke University Press, Durham

Publication Date: 1992

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

Viewing stories and novels from an ethnographic perspective, Eduardo González here explores the relationship between myth, ritual, and death in writings by Borges, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar, and Roa Bastos. He then weaves this analysis into a larger cultural fabric composed of the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Joyce, Benjamin, H. G. Wells, Kafka, Poe, and others.
What interests González is the signature of authorial selfhood in narrative and performance, which he finds willfully and temptingly disfigured in the works he examines: horrific and erotic, subservient and tyrannical, charismatic and repellent. Searching out the personal image and plot, González uncovers two fundamental types of narrative: one that strips character of moral choice; and another in which characters' choices deprive them of personal autonomy and hold them in ritual bondage to a group. Thus The Monstered Self becomes a study of the conflict between individual autonomy and the stereotypes of solidarity.
Written in a characteristically allusive, elliptical style, and drawing on psychoanalysis, religion, mythology, and comparative literature, The Monstered Self is in itself a remarkable performance, one that will engage readers in anthropology, psychology, and cultural history as well as those specifically interested in Latin American narrative.

From the Back Cover:

"A haunting meditation on death and narrative, with suggestive readings of Borges, Cortazar, and Roa Bastos. A major contribution to the study of modern Spanish American narrative."--Daniel Balderston, Tulane University