(Universidad de Cuenca, 2023-08-28) Alvarez Mejía, Ana María; Villavicencio Quinde, Manuel Gonzalo
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).
