SPIRITS AND RELATIONSHIPS IN THE NOVEL LA FERIA

Abstract

In this article my attention is centered around a group of anonymous voices who, in the novel La feria (1963), by Juan José Arreola (1918-2011), refers to the presence of spirits, who reveal specific areas where treasures are hidden. This story is a part of the artistic work of the former writer (Jalisco, Mexico) and is told with a language that encompasses the footprints of human happenings, the significance that the inhabitants of a Mexican rural scope give to their surroundings, the way they look at themselves and others and, the accumulation of ancestral knowledge inherited from generation to generation through spoken word. The references to the divinatory power of the spirits is inscribed in this novel as relationships with a narrative style derived from juridical and notarized formulas of the colonial times who, in this fictional universe, legitimize the stories that these anonymous voices tell.

Keywords

• ancestral wisdom
• orality
• voices
• memory
• language