| El mundo alucinante (1969)---Reinaldo Arenas' satirical fantasy based on Fray Servando's Memorias (1817), La guerra del fin del mundo (1981)---Mario Vargas Llosa's retelling of events in Canudos inspired by eye witness Euclides da Cunha's account in Os Sertoes (1902), and Em Liberdade (1981)---Silviano Santiago's apocryphal diary attributed to Graciliano Ramos and written in response to this author's own Memorias do Carcere (1953) constitute the core narratives of this thesis. I study each pair of texts in order to analyze the relationships between both sets of texts and writers. What distinguishes the novels in this study is the bold and explicit manner in which they incorporate another writer's text, posing questions about the nature of historical representation and authority and about the provocative relationship between the two in the process.;As they represent the lives of earlier generations of writers-intellectuals, Arenas, Vargas Llosa, and Santiago construct their own identity as intellectuals. Their novels reflect upon the ways in which Fray Servando, Euclides da Cunha, and Graciliano Ramos were themselves engaged in the act of rewriting, a practice which, I argue, comes to signify the critique of foundational discourses used to construct a national or regional identity. Rewriting is thus represented in these texts as a defining characteristic of Latin American intellectuals: prominent, if ambiguous, figures in the construction of Latin American culture and the making of revolutions. I take the position that there is a relationship between the act of critically examining national traditions and the function of intellectuals who speak truth to power. Rewriting in these novels not only results in the creation of a chain of texts but also in the construction of a chain of writers who witness and react to oppression under authoritarian regimes. In their novels, as well as in their essays and autobiographical writing, Arenas, Vargas Llosa, and Santiago critically position themselves within a tradition of critical dissident writers. In so doing they are able to articulate their own criticism and understanding of history. |
