The classicist in the cave
Bolaño’s theory of reading in By Night in Chile
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12936433 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacobo Myerston (0000-0003-0865-9494, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 554-573 |
| Publication date | 2016-04-09 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Classical Receptions Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1759-5134 • E-ISSN: 1759-5142 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/crj/clw006 |
| OpenAlex | W2324170415 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
In his novels, Roberto Bola n ̃ o explores different forms of reading Greek and Roman literature by presenting fictional characters that relate to ancient texts in antithetical ways. In this article, I focus on one specific example of Bola n ̃ o’s approach, namely the experience of reading Greek texts by a conservative Latin American man of letters presented in By Night in Chile . In this novel, Bola n ̃ o narrates the pseudo-confession of Sebasti a ́ n Urrutia Lacroix, a literary critic and Hellenist who supported Augusto Pinochet. From his complicity with the dictatorship, a conflict of consciousness arises that the protagonist seeks to obscure with a particular way of interpreting Greek literature. Bola n ̃ o dramatizes this hermeneutics of concealing through Urrutia’s struggle to suppress a disturbing image of himself that emerges while reading Plato’s Republic and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. In this article, then, I investigate Bola n ̃ o’s theory of reading, as it unfolds in By Night in Chile. I argue that Bola n ̃ o operates with a dualistic model in which there are bad and good practices of reading. The first consists of concealing the reader’s vantage point, while the second leads to a recognition of the reader’s self and his sociopolitical location in the world
Archaeology · Art · Comparative literature · Confession (law · Dictatorship · Epistemology · Focus (optics · Hermeneutics · Humanities · Linguistics · Literature · Politics · Reading (process · Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · Latin American Literature Studies · History · Law · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |