Phenomenological Ontology and Second Person Narrative: The Case of Butor and Fuentes

Abstract

A discussion of narrative voice is not new to literary criticism. Yet surprisingly enough, little or no effort has been made to ground the problem in philosophical terms. Such a task might seem unnecessary if today’s writers continued to produce traditional first and third person narratives. However, the appearance of a second person in post-war literature has raised questions that baffle not only readers and critics but the writers themselves who practice it. This is because second person narrative points to ontological structures clearly transcending the limits of literature itself. While certain philosophers, including Sartre, have placed literature within an ontological framework, no adequate theory of second person narrative has been articulated.1 It is in response to this lacuna in narratological studies that the present essay has been conceived. In the first part we shall attempt to outline the basic parameters of such a theory while in the second part we shall examine what are often considered the two most important novels employing a second person narrative: Michel Butor’s La Modification and Carlos Fuentes’ La muerte de Artemio Cruz.