Abstract

CRIACH, Sofía. The Reality of Imaginary: El pentágono, a Pataphysical Novel. perifrasis. rev.lit.teor.crit. [online]. 2023, vol.14, n.29, pp.29-45.  Epub May 19, 2023. ISSN 2145-8987.  https://doi.org/10.25025/perifrasis202314.29.02.

This paper proposes a reading of El pentágono, by the Argentine writer Antonio Di Benedetto, from the dialogue with the French pataphysics and with the experimental forms that, since the mid-twentieth century, embraced Alfred Jarry's proposal as a more experimental and playful variant of absurd, fruitful for contesting positivist concept of reality. Emphasizing imagination, compositional freedom, experimentalism, and language as the aim of fiction, we analyze how Di Benedetto draws upon antimetaphysical conjecture and the universe of the potential, typical of the pataphysicists, and OuLiPo's contraintes, to create a literary object in which meaning plays an elusive role that invites misunderstanding and multiple interpretations. Finally, it concludes with the novelty that El pentágono supposed in its production context and the work's restitution in the avant-garde novel panorama.

Keywords : Antonio Di Benedetto; narrative; Argentina; experimental romance; imagination; pataphysics; absurd; pure writing.

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