Bolaño against Babel: multilingualism, translation and narration in 2666, ‘La parte de los críticos’

This article examines the first part of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 with regard to the strategy of telling a multilingual story in a monolingual narrative. Discussing the motives behind, and implications of, this flattening of the text’s linguistic surface, it argues that to dismiss the tension between story and discourse as a defect is to overlook one of the novel’s principal proposals and to deny a key aspect of Bolaño’s narrative poetics. The article shows that in ‘La parte de los criticos’, effortless communication is confined to a utopian communicative space, which provides a level playing field for characters from different cultural-linguistic backgrounds. The novel’s approach to multilingualism and translation, for which Bolaño may have found support in his readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, suggests that to him, languages matter not for what separates them but for what they have in common as a generic means of communication. The article contends that the novel’s linguistic flatness is programmatic, exposing to ridicule narratives that claim to represent reality faithfully. In place of the myriad real-world problems of Babel, Bolaño sets an ideal of linguistic transparency and perfect translatability made possible by way of literature

El naturalismo literario francés: una mirada sobre la doctrina de Zola desde España

The study examines the literary programme of Émile Zola, drawing primarily on the French author's critical, theoretical and programmatic essays published under the title Le Roman expérimental in 1880. In doing so, the article explores in detail the reasoning behind Zola's proposal to bring literature into line with science, discussing the author's main sources of inspiration and primary targets. The article argues that although within the mimetic theory of artistic representation Zola's concept of the roman expérimental advocates a hypermimeticism (S. Halliway), literary naturalism, as conceived by its founding father, does not propose to indiscriminately reproduce reality in its full complexity, but aspires to a synthetic and coherent vision of a specific sector of society with the aim of identifying the factors that determine the social phenomenon under investigation. Here, the success of a writer depends largely on his perceptiveness at the point of setting up the experiment alias novel. A close look at Zola’s essays further reveals that, contrary to the accusations raised by many of his contemporaries, Zola did not subscribe to a fatalistic worldview; rather, the naturalist doctrine displays a profound optimism with regard to the possibility of bringing about social change.

Me duele ver la destrucción del Cuzco: Conversación con Luis Nieto Degregori

Nacido en Cuzco en 1955, el escritor, ensayista e investigador peruano Luis Nieto Degregori ha pasado la mayor parte de su vida en la ciudad andina. Estudió Literatura y Lingüística en la Universidad Patricio Lumumba de Moscú (actual Universidad Rusa de la Amistad de los Pueblos). Pasando por Ayacucho vivió desde cerca la violencia de la época del terrorismo en el Perú. En Cuzco, se ha desempeñado como investigador del Centro de Educación y Comunicación Guamán Poma de Ayala. Actualmente es Director de Cultura de esa ciudad. Es considerado el narrador cuzqueño más importante de la actualidad. Aparte de sus libros de cuentos Harta cerveza y harta bala (1987), La joven que subió al cielo (1988), Como cuando estábamos vivos (1989), Con los ojos para siempre abiertos (1990), Señores destos reynos (1994) y El guachimán y otras historias (2008), ha publicado las novelas Cuzco después del amor (2003) y Asesinato en la Gran Ciudad del Cuzco (2007), así como varios libros para niños y adolescentes. Su novela histórica más reciente, Muchas veces dudé, sobre el cronista indígena Guamán Poma de Ayala, se publicará próximamente

El naturalismo literario francés: una mirada sobre la doctrina de Zola desde España

The study examines the literary programme of Émile Zola, drawing primarily on the French author's critical, theoretical and programmatic essays published under the title Le Roman expérimental in 1880. In doing so, the article explores in detail the reasoning behind Zola's proposal to bring literature into line with science, discussing the author's main sources of inspiration and primary targets. The article argues that although within the mimetic theory of artistic representation Zola's concept of the roman expérimental advocates a hypermimeticism (S. Halliway), literary naturalism, as conceived by its founding father, does not propose to indiscriminately reproduce reality in its full complexity, but aspires to a synthetic and coherent vision of a specific sector of society with the aim of identifying the factors that determine the social phenomenon under investigation. Here, the success of a writer depends largely on his perceptiveness at the point of setting up the experiment alias novel. A close look at Zola’s essays further reveals that, contrary to the accusations raised by many of his contemporaries, Zola did not subscribe to a fatalistic worldview; rather, the naturalist doctrine displays a profound optimism with regard to the possibility of bringing about social change

Comics’ mobility across time, space, and media: introduction

Introduction to the themed issue of New Readings

Fictions of organized crime: introduction

Introduction to the themed issue of New Readings