Lo monstruoso como poética del contrapoder en Pelea de Gallos de María Fernanda Ampuero

Abstract

This study proposes to analyze the recent literary production that uses the category of the monstrous as a recurrent element. Latin American narrative has been able to adapt it to its reality and more and more authors, for the most part, use this category as the basis of their writing. Despite this, to some extent literary criticism has neglected these productions or has not focused enough on this theme in Ecuadorian works of the XXI century. For this reason, this paper aims to analyze the literary category of the monstrous and the function it fulfills within the work Pelea de Gallos (2018), by María Fernanda Ampuero; to analyze how the figure of the monster acts as a device to strain relations with the patriarchal paradigm and subvert the discourse of power. Among the concepts and authors that will shape this theoretical perspective are: the monster and subaltern figure by Bukhalovskaya and Bolognesi (2021), the new Latin American short story by Gaeta (2022), the monstrous in Latin American literature by Koričančić (2011), power according to the notions of Foucault (1976), the hermeneutic perspective in literary criticism by Wahón (2011) and discourse analysis according to the notions of Paul Ricoeur (1976).