Rhetoric and Emotion in “The Vengeance of a Barbarian” by Miguel Luis Amunátegui

Abstract

This study deals with the figuration of «savage Araucanian» as a figure of otherness for the Chilean modernizing project of the late nineteenth century, analyzing the articulation of "The revenge of a barbarian" (1876), a traditional story by the writer and historian Miguel Luis Amunátegui, with intercultural romance through affective rhetoric. It is proposed that the representation of the mapuche and its articulation with the impeded romance between lovers of different cultures aimed, in the case of Amunátegui, to transfer the legislative battle that supported military occupation of the Araucaria towards the heart of the emerging popular readers, appealing to a game of sympathy and rejection that would sentimentally justify Chilean domination over the Araucanía and its inhabitants.