Abstract

ARCE, Rafael. Realism of the Unreal: Material Imagination in Juan José Saer's Works. Anclajes [online]. 2009, vol.13, n.1, pp.9-25. ISSN 1851-4669.

This article proposes to read Juan José Saer's narrative from the perspective of Gaston Bachelard's phenomenology. The analysis focuses on three novels, which are considered to be representative of the Argentine author, and inquires into which Bachelard calls material imagination in his poetic analyses. This notion allows to hypothesize about Saer's realism, which has been conceived in terms of representation and related to the topic of perception, especially in this narrative. This reading does not propose a simple methodological transfer but finds its potential in the realistic approach to a piece of writing carried out from the microscopic phenomenology of Bachelard, who studied mainly poetry and fantastic narratives. It is about an inherent problem to Saer's narrative, that is to say, the tension between liberation of material imagination in a narrative regulated by formal imagination, which is related to the novel structure and to the prerogatives of realistic verisimilitude.

Keywords : Argentine literature; Realism; Novel.

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