Metamorphosis as a figure of displacement in El país del diablo by Perla Suez

Abstract

This study will focus on the identification and semiotic analysis of the rhetorical-metamorphic and narrative-textual procedures underlying the original process of descriptive-narrative metamorphosis in the novel El país del diablo by the Argentinean writer Perla Suez. In this text, the author seeks, in the instance of her model reader, the defamiliarization of the introjection of a constructed exclusively visual and horizontal perception of the space of the Patagonian “desert” that was conquered in the 19th century in Argentina by the so-called “Desert Campaign”. The work of textual conversion carried out in this novel uncovers and transforms a specific way of conceiving a spatial reality, impregnated with the positivist and empiricist ideology of the late 19th century in Argentina.