Abstract

GATTI, Giuseppe. The Subtle Delight of the Decadence. Urban Dynamics, Permeable Borders and time Suspended in El museo de cera from Jorge Edwards. perifrasis. rev.lit.teor.crit. [online]. 2012, vol.3, n.5, pp.81-97. ISSN 2145-8987.

The purpose of the present article consists of proposing a different interprtetation of the novel El museo de cera, which the Chilean writer Jorge Edwards published in 1981: we will concentrate not only in the habitual critical interpretation that confirms the lucid satirical sentence of the reactionary Chilean thought, but we will approach the plot from a perspective that demonstrates the relation between individual and collective time. At the same time, we analyze the representation of the decadence of a social and political structure, by connecting the fictional images from Edwards with the representations of the decline presented in the Austro-Hungarian narrative of the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, we examine the dynamics of osmosis between the two geosocial contexts described in the fiction demonstrating the permeability of sectors by all appearances opposite.

Keywords : Chilean literature; urban landscape; aesthetic of decrepitude; instant catching; permeability of borders.

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