Julio Cortazar

(1914-1984)

The Boom (1960s)Latin American literature gains international visibility

Boom Writers:The Big Four

Julio Cortazar Argentina Gabriel Garcia Marquez Columbia Mario Vargas Llossa Peru Carlos Fuentes Mexico

Boom Writers:The Big FourJulio Cortazar Argentina Rayuela (Hopscotch 1963)Gabriel Garcia Marquez Columbia One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)Mario Vargas Llossa Peru The Time of the Hero (1962) Carlos Fuentes Mexico The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962)

Julio Cortazar

Impact of:SurrealismNouveau Roman

Alain Robbe-GrilletFor a New Novel (1963)Balzac- a reference point for 19th c. novelists.

Each generation must create works which turn into reference points for future artworks.

Obsolete notions" in the novel: character, story and depth.

The nouveau roman would be an individual version and vision of things, subordinating plot and character to the details of the world rather than enlisting the world in their service.

Rayuela (1963)

Narrative techniques first person third personstream-of-consciousness Certain chapters claim to be written by other authors, there is a section taken from another novel that may or may not exist in actuality.--------------- Multiple endings

1967

1967 1873

Cortazar as a translatorEdgar Allan Poe The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Axolotl by Julio Cortasar

Axolotl

Binomial Name (genus/species): Ambistoma Mexicanum

Family name: Ambistoma (a type of salamander)Proper name: Mexicanum

Axolotl

Amphibian: inhabits both land and water

Amphibians typically start out aslarva living in water. The young generally undergometamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs.

Lake Xochimilco home of the axolotlDiego Rivera: a mural depicting the City of Tenochtitlan in Aztec timesNational Palace-Mexico City

Xolotl

Quetzalcoatl(The Feathered Serpent)A boundary maker between earth and sky

Narrative point of viewThere was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls.

Narrator - axolotlsActive

Articulate

Observer

Immobile (stone head, statue)

Silent

Observed

Gradual shift in the narrative point of viewI stayed watching them for an hour and left. Once in a while a foot would barely move, I saw the diminutive toes poise mildly on the moss. It's that we don't enjoy moving a lot, and the tank is so cramped. He returned many times, but he comes less often now I saw him yesterday, he looked at me for a long time and left briskly.

Metamorphosis

Now I am an axolotl.The horror beganI learned in the same moment of believing myself prisoner in the body of an axolotl, metamorphosed into him with my human mind intact, buried alive in an axolotl, condemned to move lucidly among unconscious creatures.

Metamorphosis = crossing boundariesAxolotl amphibian

Crossing the boundary between:Human/AnimalInside/OutsideLife/DeathReal/ImaginayFact/Fiction

The axolotl as the other

Exotic features: That they were Mexican I knew already by looking at them and their little pink Aztec faces and the placard at the top of the tank. golden eyes I found their Spanish name, ajolote and the mention that they were edible.

Object of study/scrutinyMute

Affinity with Indigenous Native American cultures destroyed/supressed by European conquistadores.Axolotl: supressed aspects of modern Latin American identity (related to precolumbian cultures)

Narrator - axolotls after the first minute I knew that we were linked, that something infinitely lost and distant kept pulling us together.

what obsessed me was the feet, of the slenderest nicety, ending in tiny fingers with minutely human nails. And then I discovered its eyes Above all else, their eyes obsessed me their handsome eyes so similar to our ownThey were not animals.

Definition of self through the otherAttempt of the modern (Latin American) individual to come to terms with the supressed past.

IntertexualityMythological connotations of the axolotl.They were not animals. It would seem easy, almost obvious, to fall into mythology.

Allusion to the myth about Argus Panoptes

I got to them by chance one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent.

Argus Panoptes

Iowas, inGreek mythology, a priestess of Hera,anymph who was seduced by Zeus, who changed her into a cowto escape detection. His wife Hera sent ever-watchful Argus Panoptes, with 100 eyes, to watch her, butHermes was sent to distract the guardian and slay him. According toOvid (Metamorphosis), to commemorate her faithful watchman, Hera had the hundred eyes of Argus preserved forever, in apeacocks tale tale.

Edgar Allan PoePremature BurialTo be buried while alive is, beyond question,the most terrific of these extremes which has everfallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, And where the other begins?

I saw from very close up the face of an axolotl immobile next to the glass. No transition and no surprise, I saw my face against the glass, I saw it on the outside of the tank, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back and I understood. Only one thing was strange: to go on thinking as usual, to know. To realize that was, for the first moment, like the horror of a man buried alive awaking to his fate. Outside, my face came close to the glass again, I saw my mouth, the lips compressed with the effort of understanding the axolotls.

To continue being a reasoning creature (human being) in the body of an animal = buried alive

To be buried while alive is, beyond question,the most terrific of these extremes which hasever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.Poe

To realize that was, for the first moment, like the horror of a man buried alive awaking to his fate.Cortazar

In the year 1810, a case of living inhumationhappened in France, attended withcircumstances which go far to warrant theassertion that truth is, indeed, stranger thanfiction. Poe, Premature Burial

The function of intertexual links The theme of metamorphosis is enhanced through the rejuvenation of old texts as well.

Axolotl as an example of magical realism

MAIN FEATURES OF MR1. Magic: an irreducible element 2. A strong presence of the phenomenal world;3. The reader may experience some unsettling doubts in the effort to reconcile two contradictory understandings of events;4. The narrative merges different realms; 5. MR disturbs received ideas about time,space, and identity. (Wendy B. Faris,Ordinary Enchantments: Remystification of Narrative, 2004: 7-43)

1. Magic: an irreducible element

* Irreducible element: something we cannot explain according to Western empirically based discourse

* The irreducible element is presented on the same narrative plane as other, commonplace, happenings.

The phenomenal world: Realistic descriptions create a fictional world that resembles the one we live in, often by extensive use of detail

There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl. I got to them by chance one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent. I was heading down the boulevard Port-Royal, then I took Saint-Marcel and L'Hpital and saw green among all that grey and remembered the lions.

The phenomenal world: Realistic descriptions create a fictional world that resembles the one we live in (Paris), often by extensive use of detail

There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl. I got to them by chance one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent. I was heading down the boulevard Port-Royal, then I took Saint-Marcel and L'Hpital and saw green among all that grey and remembered the lions.

The phenomenal world: Realistic descriptions create a fictional world that resembles the one we live in, often by extensive use of detail

There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl. I got to them by chance one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent. I was heading down the boulevard Port-Royal, then I took Saint-Marcel and L'Hpital and saw green among all that grey and remembered the lions.

3.Unsettling doubts

The reader may hesitate between two contradictory understandings of events, and hence experience some unsettling doubts.

4. The MR narrative merges different realmsAncient/ traditional/indigenousmodern worlds.Life deathFact - fiction

5.Disruption of Space

* Space Cortzars axolotl and his observer seem to change places on either side of the glass .

Topics for the midterm examMagical realism: definition, development, classification, neighbouring genres AxolotlNarrative point of viewMetamorphosisFluidity of boundariesRelationship between the narrator and the axolotlElements of Magical Realism

Sample questions:(20p.) Kafka is considered to be a precursor of magical realism because .2. (20p.) Explain the oxymoronic nature of the term magical realism:3. (30 p.) Explain the difference between magical realism and surrealism:. 4. (30 p.) Discuss the narrative point of view in Axolotl: