La Parodia en Augusto Monterroso: una Revisión de la Conquista de América

An Hecke (1)

1 Applied Language Studies

This article analyzes the dialogues that Augusto Monterroso establishes with the chroniclers of the 16th Century. The chronicles of the conquest of America appear as intertextual reference in three texts of Monterroso: in the story “El eclipse”, in a fragment of the novel , and in the essay “El otro aleph”. In the first two texts the references are rather implicit, the third text, however, consists of a re-reading of by Alonso de Ercilla. Parody in these texts manifests through the imitation of some of the characteristics of the chronicles, but at the same time the author transforms this model with irony. The three protagonists of the conquest–the missionary, the conqueror and the chronicler–appear in Monterroso's texts as antiheroes and even as victims of the violent encounter between cultures. Against the dogma of a unique and official history, Monterroso introduces the doubt, the plurality of possible histories. His eagerness to change history reflects his great sense of relativity.

Mots clés: Augusto Monterroso; Intertextuality; Parody; Conquest of America; Chronicles

An Hecke. La Parodia en Augusto Monterroso: una Revisión de la Conquista de América. Neophilologus, 2010, 94 (4), pp.613-623. ⟨10.1007/s11061-010-9207-3⟩. ⟨hal-00568390⟩