Una ilustre familia: la reivindicación del autor en el ensayo de Mario Vargas Llosa.

Abstract

Mario Vargas Llosa's literary essays dispute the Latin American theoretical and critical space. They propose a poetic of the novel and a literary canon. Centering on the Author, they link two traditions: the romantic narrative of bards, and the modern narrative of experts. Vargas Llosa assembles a catalog of a vast family of writers. Biological filiation relations take over cultural affiliations. He enlists only heterosexual, illustrated and neo-european males. Fathers, brothers and sons mark the distance between "we" and male/female "they". "We" is of the order of identity, excluding any ethnic, gender or cultural alterity. Author figurations construct the writer's lineage, acting as specular doubles authorizing his writing.