Na companhia do outro rosto da realidade: Carlos Fuentes e o diálogo com a literatura fantástica

Abstract

This dissertation aims to approach the collection of short stories Disturbing Company (2004), by the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, analyzing it through the prism of the fantastic literature. However, rather than simply trying to affiliate the stories to the genre in question, and thus obeying affiliation criteria, we choose to work with the notion of literary dialogue, which is the point of view the author himself encourages to the critical perception of his work. From this reason, we will analyze the position of the fantastic short story in contemporaneity, clarifying its reconfiguration during the transition of the nineteenth century to the twentieth, which generated atypical literary representations. Therefore, unveiling the potentiality of the fantastic genre in the present days, we will try to establish how the book of Fuentes is a revitalizing manifestation of fantastic literature, and how it is articulated through the literary dialogue and the fictional game. The reading of the stories will be based on three main concepts: the notions of literary heritage and of tradition, according to the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the concept of Misreading, conceived by the North-American critic Harold Bloom.