LO MONSTRUOSO EN DOS NOVELAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS: UNA ...

LO MONSTRUOSO EN DOS NOVELAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS: UNA
INDAGACIÓN DE LA MODERNIDAD EN LATINOAMÉRICA
Raul Antonio Burneo, M.S.
Thesis Advisor: Gwen Kirkpatrick, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
My dissertation is about two contemporary novels, The War of the End of the
World by Mario Vargas Llosa and The Obscene Bird of the Night by José Donoso,
where these use the monstrosity and the grotesque to critique modernity in Latin
America.
In The War of the End of the World, there is a military and ideological
confrontation between the modern and urban classes that inhabit the coast of Brazil and
the inhabitants of sertões, rural areas of the Bahia state, in Northeastern Brazil. The
urban classes drive a modernization project –supported by scientific positivism– that
has begun to move into the sertões, where in contrast, a premodern culture prevails, in
which a popular aspect of the Catholic religion plays a fundamental role. Both the
urban classes and the inhabitants of sertões see their adversaries as monsters.
According to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, the monster embodies the anxieties, fears,
and inadmissible desires and fantasies of a community. Modern Brazilian people see
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