La tradición del folletín y de la novela popular en Chile (cánon y corpus en la narrativa chilena siglos XIX y XX)

Abstract

Identified as mass literature, subgenre or paraliterature, the serial novel appears located in the periphery of the canon and of the literary criticism. Such subordination encourages examination thas contributes to establish a field of research that makes it possible to categorize the structural features of that type of narrative in Chile. The serial novel is not simply reduced to an “anachronistic narrative” (Herlinghaus 2002) that subordinates a mass audience to “the empire of feelings” (Sarlo 1985) and occasionally to “provoke tears”. In our view, it is a textual constant, which Eco identifies as the "popular novel", that brings into play "a practice of consolation” (Eco 2012), not alien to social, political and utopian questions, nor to the carnivalization or demystification of the genre, as we will examine with regard to La casa de los espíritus (1982) by Isabel Allende and El viaducto (1994) by Darío Oses.