Imagination and Self-Transformation in Puig’s El beso del la mujer araña

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

6 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

05/28/2009

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Literature

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Summary :

Introduction
Imagination as impetus: Three key scenes
Cinema, imagination and love: A relative analysis
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography

Abstract

One of the first things to strike a reader of Mañuel puig's El beso de la mujer araña is its narrative, or rather, textual structure. The novel is composed of numerous different discourses, including film narrations, footnotes, surveillance evidence, dialogue, subjective thoughts, etc. Most of the text consists of dialogue between the two cellmates, although it is not always clear who is speaking and when. The mere use of dashes to introduce speech, without an indication of the identity of the speaker, blurs this distinction. Additionally, the added footnotes with psychological literature; the subjective thoughts of the characters, as indicated by italics; grocery store lists (as dictated by Molina to the Warden); a letter dictated to Molina by Valentín and intended for the latter's lover, Marta; and the surveillance evidence incorporated at the end, as well as the film narratives and the dream that Valentín has at the novel's end, which I will discuss, all together suggest that the entire work is a meant to be seen as an assemblage of many discourses, which comment on one another and which the reader, and the characters to the extent that these discourses are available to them, must piece together. In this paper I will focus on the effects of the recounting and elaboration of plots from films that one of the characters, Molina, has seen. Consequently I will look at some of these film narratives and at the dialogue between Molina and Valentín.