Devouring sons and sinners: ekphrasis and intertextuality in Álvaro Bisama’s "Música marciana"

• Eunice Rojas ^[1]
  1. [1] Furman University

     Furman University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: CiberLetras: revista de crítica literaria y de cultura, ISSN-e 1523-1720, Nº. 46, 2022, págs. 91-106
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • Art in its many different manifestations plays a key role in Álvaro Bisama’s Música marciana, a novel concerned with the narrator’s troubled family legacy and Chilean identity. Francisco de Goya’s famous painting of Saturn Devouring his Son appears early in the novel to guide the narrator’s ekphrastic examination of the art created by his famous surrealist artist father and fourteen half-siblings. This article explores the how ekphrasis, the literary depiction of visual artwork, and multiple intertextual references to Dante’s Divine Comedy function in the novel to complicate notions of time, space, and the role of art in the narrator’s exploration his own identity as well as his nation’s.