A Genetic Structuralist Analysis of the Novels Mr. President and The Feast of the Goat / El Señor Presidente ve La Fiesta del Chivo Adlı Romanların Oluşumcu Yapısalcı Analizi

Abstract

Miguel Ángel Asturias and Mario Vargas Llosa, both have experienced the dictatorial regime in their own countries in their youth, are among the main novelists who express the destruction caused by dictatorships. The authors’ novels El Señor Presidente (Mr President) and La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat), received great acclaim at the time of their publication, describe the darkness, cruelty, torture and death by revealing the society of fear created by the dictatorship and its consequences. In the axis of these books, this study aims to examine the theme of dictatorship and the figure of the dictator and also to explain the key concepts that constitute the social structures in the novels. In the study, the French sociologist and critic theorist Lucien Goldmann’s genetic structuralism method was used, who stated that the meaningful structures formed by historical and social values directly affect a novel, and therefore, examining a literary work with a focus on the connection between novel and society will yield more comprehensive results. Also, in the study, the authority-obedience relationships in the novels were tried to be explained in line with Erich Fromm’s thoughts and Norbert Elias’s theories were included in the evaluations on social structure and relations.

Keywords

• mr.president
• the feast of the goat
• dictator and dictatorship novels
• genetic structuralizm