Monsters, borders and dead: the Argentine gothic in "Under the Black Water", by Mariana Enriquez

Authors

  • Inti Soledad Bustos Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo

Keywords:

Argentine literature, Mariana Enriquez, gothic, civilibarbarism

Abstract

This article is a proposal for the analysis of the tale "Under the black water", by the Argentine author Mariana Enriquez (1973). The story belongs to the anthology Things We lost in the fire (2016), and puts Buenos Aires conurbano and its characters at the center of the plot, as a key element and trigger for the Gothic action. For this reason, the focus of the analysis is on the urban territory and its derivations. The main theoretical elements that will be useful for this approach are concepts formulated for the study of horror literature (mainly David Punter’s theory on the Gothic genre) and the category of "civilibarbarism" proposed by Elsa Drucaroff to think about many manifestations of the New Argentine Narrative.

References

Drucaroff, Elsa (2011). Los prisioneros de la torre. Política, relatos y jóvenes en la postdictadura. Buenos Aires: Emecé.

Drucaroff, Elsa (2018). "El quiebre en la posdictadura: narrativas del sinceramiento". Historia crítica de la Literatura Argentina. Vol. 12: Una literatura en aflicción. Dir. Noé Jitrik. Dir. de volumen Jorge Monteleone. Buenos Aires: Emecé. 287-315.

Enriquez, Mariana (2016). Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego. Barcelona: Anagrama.

Enriquez, Mariana (2018). "Creating a New Tradition of Latin American Horror". Literary Hub, 31 oct. Disponible en https://lithub.com/creating-a-new-tradition-of-latin-american-horror/

Enriquez, Mariana (2020). "Cómo me hice escritora". Clase magistral pronunciada el 15 de marzo de 2019 en el Centro Cultural San Martín. Youtube.com, 9 abr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyTz_XfYEpI&t=7s

Grazioli, Gustavo (2020). "Mariana Enríquez, la dama del terror gótico". Clarín, 5 enero. Disponible en: https://www.clarin.com/viva/mariana-enriquez-dama-argentina-terror-gotico_0_IS2f8Sfw.html

Ibarlucía, Ricardo y Valeria Castelló-Joubert (2019). Vampiria. De Polidori a Lovecraft. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo.

King, Stephen (2010). Danza macabra. Madrid: Valdemar.

Llopis, Rafael (1974). Esbozo de una historia natural de los cuentos de miedo. Madrid: Júcar.

Ordiz, Inés (2019). "De brujas, mujeres libres y otras transgresiones: el gótico en Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego de Mariana Enriquez". Natalia Álvarez Méndez y Ana Abello Verano (coords.) Realidades fracturadas: estéticas de lo insólito en la narrativa en lengua española (1980-2018). 263-286.

Punter, David (1980). The Literature of Terror. A History of Gothic Fictions From 1765 to the Present Day. Vol I: The Gothic Tradition. London: Routledge.

Punter, David (2013) [1996]. The Literature of Terror. A History of Gothic Fictions From 1765 to the Present Day. Vol. II: The Modern Gothic. London: Routledge.

Rice, David Leo (2018). "Mariana Enriquez on Political Violence and Writing Horror". Entrevista. Literary Hub, 18 abr. Disponible en: https://lithub.com/mariana-enriquez-on-political-violence-and-writing-horror/

Published

11-07-2020

How to Cite

Bustos, I. S. (2020). Monsters, borders and dead: the Argentine gothic in "Under the Black Water", by Mariana Enriquez. Boletín GEC, (25), 28–43. Retrieved from https://revistas.uncu.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/boletingec/article/view/3683

Issue

Section

Articles