el ...narrativas contaminadas - D-Scholarship@Pitt - University of ...

My proposal is to explore the literary tensions of these Latin-American narratives,
suggesting that it is possible to identify in them concerns such as the influences of mass
movements within “peripheral” societies. I argue that despite their different responses to the
literary-historical conjuncture, each of the texts chosen exhibited conflictive components which I
call “contaminatory”: that is to say, an unstable (even contradictory) mixture of political as well
as literary elements from very different origins.
One of the means of accomplishing this, after a review and critique of some key avant-
garde concepts, is through an analysis of the relationship between Vallejo’s cultural essays
(including his USSR travel books) and El tungsteno. Then, in the case of Parque industrial, I
evaluate the links with other Brazilian works and “female voices” of the time. Finally, I assess
the relationships between Cubagua and some of his historical works, before summing up the
different “contaminatory” strategies of the era in my conclusion.
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