Body of writing: figuring desire in Spanish American literature

Abstract

Body of Writing focuses on traces that an author's leaves on a work of fiction. Drawing on work of six important Spanish American writers of twentieth century, Rene Prieto examines narratives that reflect - in differing yet ultimately complementary ways - imprint of author's body, thereby disclosing insights about power, aggression, transgression, and eroticism. Healthy, invalid, lustful, and confined bodies - as portrayed by Julio Cortazar, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Severo Sarduy, Rosario Castellanos, and Tununa Mercado - become evidence for Roland Barthes' contention that works of fiction are anagrams of body. Claiming that an author's intentions can be uncovered by analysing the topography of a text, Prieto pays particular attention not to actions or plots of these writers' fiction but rather to their settings and characterisations. In belief that bodily traces left on page reveal motivating force behind a writer's creative act, he explores such fictional themes as camouflage, deterioration, defilement, entrapment, and subordination. Along way, Prieto reaches unexpected conclusions regarding topics that include relationship of female body to power, male and female transgressive impulses, and connection between aggression, idealisation of women, and anal eroticism in men. This study of how authors' longings and fears become embodied in literature will interest students and scholars of literary and psychoanalytic criticism, gender studies, and twentieth-century and Latin American literature.