Geografías ficcionales : El Uruguay de Copi

Abstract

In his novelette L’Uruguayen (1972) Copi established a complex analysis from different perspectives, which looks at the two countries of the Rio de la Plata, Argentina and Uruguay on the one hand and France on the other, the text being conceived as a letter to a French correspondent. In keeping with Copi’s poetics Uruguay is presented as a grotesque exaggeration, and the utopian image of the small neighboring country as it traditionally exists in Argentina is ridiculed. The so-called Uruguayan identity here takes the shape of a fictitious geography, so L’Uruguayen can be looked upon as a precursor of other, more recent pseudo-ethnological novels such as Los fantasmas (1990) by César Aira.

Keywords

• Uruguay
• fictional geography
• Copi
• Aira