BORGES, CLARICE, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN AMERICA’S “NEW NARRATIVE”

Abstract

Latin American “New Narrative” is commonly associated with avant-garde writing such as that practiced by Spanish American writers like Borges, Rulfo, Cortázar, García Marquez, among others. Nevertheless, we can outline a different history of experimental writing in Latin America, one that originates with Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, by Machado de Assis, published in 1880. By comparing Ficciones by Jorge Luís Borges and Clarice Lispector’s novel Perto do coração selvagem, we can perceive the development of both histories and of two theories of narrative that are related, respectively, with structuralism and post-structuralism, two branches of literary theory that come to being some time after Borges’ and Lispector’s works. We can, therefore, attest to the complexity of the development of the theory of ficcional narrative in Latin American landscapes, in its multiple paths.

Keywords

• nova narrativa
• narrativa interamericana
• narrativa experimental