Donoso, a narrative cycle of fiction

• Main Author: Shamash, Eve Marie
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2010
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25218

This thesis studies the first four novels ( Coronacion , Este domingo, EJ. lugar sin limites , EI obsceno pajaro de la noche ) of the Chilean author Jose/ Donoso, born in 1924. The thesis proposes that these four novels form a coherent narrative cycle of fiction which is linked together by a common theme of destruction. The thesis demonstrates that the theme of destruction is developed in each successive novel with increasing emphasis on fantasy, on the grotesque and on the irrational. Parallel to this increasing emphasis on the unreal, this study outlines Donoso's increased experimentation with innovative literary techniques as the novels move towards a total rejection of traditional realism and its attributes of verisimilitude. In terms of narrative technique, this study points out key literary influences on Donoso's writing: Henry James and William Faulkner are considered to be the most significant. This study proposes that the archetypal structure of the novels from Coronacion to El obsceno pajaro de la noche is vital to the thematic development in each novel and from one novel to the next, in a cyclical context. The thesis uses the analysis of the archetypal structure to demonstrate how the theme of destruction is organized and orchestrated. This study also outlines the main biographical, existential and psychoanalytical elements which are integrated into the broader archetypal structure. The archetypal analysis largely follows the methodological approach of Northrop Frye. This analysis outlines Donoso's restating and reshaping of recurrent archetypes which are the basis of the biblical myths that bourgeois society has cultivated and which Donoso presents in a demonic inversion. This thesis concludes that the Bible, as myth, provides a synthesizing archetypal structure to Donoso's narrative cycle of fiction and proposes that the mythical patterns in the novel are mainly organized by apocalyptic imagery and demonic parody, an inversion of Christian beliefs. The study of Donoso's first four novels as a mytho-poetic presentation of the process of destruction and of the eternal fall demonstrates the aesthetic unity, beauty and the richness of significance which make Donoso a great writer. === Arts, Faculty of === French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of === Graduate