PT Journal
AU Jastrzebska, SA
TI Corporeality and narrative subjectivity in three novels by Horacio Castellanos Moya
SO Romanica Olomucensia
PY 2022
BP 259
EP 274
VL 34
IS 2
DI 10.5507/ro.2022.022
DE corporeality; violence; Salvadorean post-war period; narrative subjectivity; crime fiction; Horacio Castellanos Moya
AB In his novels, Horacio Castellanos Moya employs homo-diegetic narration with traces of orality, or a hetero-diegetic one, focalised from the character's perspective. As a result, the vision of reality in his works is a combination of individual experiences. It reflects experiences and perceptions of the world, frequently distorted by trauma, an illness, a vice, or an ideology. On the basis of examples from three of Castellanos Moya's novels - El asco. Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador (1997), La diabla en el espejo (2000), and El arma en el hombre (2001) - the paper analyses the importance of the human body and various aspects of corporeality in the construction of these subjectivities. How are identities and subjectivities constructed from and through corporeality? How is corporeality situated in narratives of violence? The paper focuses on the corporeal dimension of human identity and narrative subjectivity concerning three levels: corporeality-identity, corporeality-violence, and corporeality-transgression of a human being. The paper demonstrates that corporeality factors determine and modulate the narrative voice focalised from the character. The modifying mechanisms impact on the narrator's corporeal dimension as formal mimesis. Furthermore, the character's physical configuration imposes itself as a filter of the perception of reality. From this perspective, the novels are configured as violent texts in their texture and on the diegetic level.
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