The Ekphrastic Visual Archive of Pain as a Narrative Strategy in Pablo Montoya's Novels

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Published: Sep 17, 2018
Keywords:
Contemporary Colombian Novel, Pablo Montoya, Cultural Memory, Archive, literature and visual art

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Carlos Mario Mejía Suárez
Gustavus Adolphus College

Abstract

At the root of Pablo Montoya’s novelistic work lies the exploration of the past through visual artefacts that register socio-cultural crisis in specific moments in history. This article analyzes the development of the ekphrasis of visual artefacts of pain as a narrative device in his novels Lejos de Roma (2008), Los derrotados (2012) y Tríptico de la infamia (2014). Particularly, it studies how each work reflects on the relation between literature, archives of pain and their meaning, not as artefacts of a recorded and throughly understood story, but as exploration of latencies left behind by pre-narrative events.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 51 (2018)
Section
Articles
Author Biography

Carlos Mario Mejía Suárez, Gustavus Adolphus College

He is an assistant professor of Spanish and literature and Latin American culture at Gustavus Adolphus College, MN. His research has studied versions of the myth of Faust in Latin American letters from the nineteenth century to the present. He is currently studying the contemporary Colombian novel and its tensions with the official discourse of the post-agreement era. For this purpose, aesthetic production is analyzed from its intersection with peace, memory and gender studies.