Motivos vegetales en Cuentos de angustias y paisajes: elementos y funciones narrativas

Abstract

Carlos Salazar Herrera’s tales have been studied academically from different theoretical approaches. However, there is still no research that analyzes the presence of plant motifs and their narrative functions in the texts of this Costa Rican writer. Thus, the objectives of this article are (i) to give a detailed account of the plant motifs present in Cuentos de angustias y paisajes (1990), and (ii) to characterize the narrative functions that these motifs have in fifteen of the thirty tales included in this book (“El puente”, “El bongo”, “Un matoneado”, “El grillo”, “El beso”, “Un grito”, “Los colores”, “La sequía”, “El temporal”, “El estero”, “El curandero”, “La montaña”, “El chilamate”, “Una noche”, and “El resuello”). In total, 295 explicit references to the plant world were found in the work of Salazar Herrera (i. e. common names of plants, vegetation in general, organs and parts of plants, edible fruits and products of plant origin). In the texts analyzed, these motifs entail three types of narrative functions: setting the scene (setting function), introducing reading keys (hermeneutical function), and helping to build the multidimensionality of the characters, based on comparisons (rhetorical function). It is concluded that Salazar Herrera’s tales have a deep human meaning, since they explore the complexity of the relationships of the human being with its environment, with others and with itself, however, plant motifs of different kinds are used to elaborate the plot of that complexity.