Horror and Dystopia in the Narrative of Beatriz Ardesi

Abstract

The narrative of Beatriz Ardesi offers innovative features that stand out. In his second collection of stories, Three Demons [2021], she explores new possibilities of realism from a mythical, archetypal background, achieving a grotesque effect of reality, exploring its apparently more dayly aspects, but with great symbolic depth. Thus, common stories become metaphysical allegories: the first micro-story, which gives the volume its title, fully installs us in the dystopian atmosphere that permeates most of the texts. The complicity with the reader is achieved through the deceptive song of sirens that weaves a verbal first person (protagonist or witness) that traps us with the pretended innocence of a conscience incapable of discerning truth and lies, reality and fiction. The analysis will address the narrative procedures by which Ardesi's text manages to immerse the reader in an ominous environment: at first, the narrative voice, responsible for the horror effect it produces, but without neglecting other essential components: the terrifying space, a true "touchstone" of the Gothic mode, considered not as simple topos but as an active agent in the development of the plots.