QUIM MONZÓ I LA RE-ESCRIPTURA IRÒNICA DE LA FANTASIA

Abstract

This article studies the short stories by Catalan writer Quim Monzo (1952) that are parodic re-writings of traditional fairy tales. It connects Monzo's short stories to other American and European writers who, within the parameters of postmodernism, have approached literature in a similar fashion (from Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Slawomir Mrozek, Danielle Brolli, Giorgio Manganelli, Donald Barthelme and Margaret Atwood to poet Carol Ann Duffy). Drawing on postmodern thinkers such as Umberto Eco, Linda Hutcheon or Andreas Huyssen, and on French feminist thought, Lunati underlines the political significance of a number of humorous but uncompromising texts that acknowledge tradition but only by establishing a critical dialogue with it. Lunati demonstrates how classical theoretical studies that categorise fantastic literature (such as Tzvetan Todorov's) are inadequate to analyse Quim Monzo's parodies of the fantastic. Monzo's short stories problematize mimetic narrative, gender identities and Cartesian conceptualizations of the subject while questioning the naturalized yet normative artifice of the fairy tale. Despite producing an experimental, metafictional, avant-garde writing that distances itself from the conventions of realist literature, Monzo's short stories are extremely popular and this article also examines relevant aspects of the reception of his narrative production and connect it to the historical and social background.