Ecocritical Reflections on Fiction Written by Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa

Abstract

This article examines anthropocentric and ecocentric tendencies in two major works written by Mario Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller and The Dream of the Celt, to identify the value of those novels in ecocritical terms. I provide this analysis in the context of recent academic dialogue which notes an apparent contradictory relationship between the presentation of abuses of Amazonian people and their environment, and the portrayal of Westernized protagonists as their saviors in fiction written by Vargas Llosa. This essay provides a solution to this paradox and other apparent contradictions in his narratives and posits that even though the anthropocentric literary discourse concerning the environment has declined throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, in part, due to the rise of the environmental movement, this type of discourse has changed in Vargas Llosa’s literature, rejecting early twentieth century misconceptions of the natural world but holding onto technocentric neoliberal beliefs.

Keywords

• Ecocriticism
• Environment
• Mario Vargas Llosa
• Peruvian literature
• The Dream of the Celt
• The Storyteller