Emerson, Camilla Ann;
(2019)
Revisiting the Roberto Bolaño Archive: doubles, deliberate obfuscation and rhizomatic intertextuality in Amberes, Monsieur Pain, Amuleto and 2666.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
The analysis offered by this thesis demonstrates that Chilean author Roberto Bolaño’s (1953-2003) conception of sculpting of his fiction and poetry into an interconnecting system began much earlier than critics claim. The first sign of this is commonly thought to have occurred with the short novel Estrella distante (1996), essentially a rewriting and expansion of the final chapter of La literatura nazi en América (also 1996). However, this thesis reasserts the importance of the texts Bolaño crafted prior to these, showing that this notion began to form as early as the 1980s. This is established through analysing newly-available archival material provided by the Roberto Bolaño Estate and a close comparative reading of four texts: two Bolaño originally wrote in the 1980s –Amberes and Monsieur Pain (published in 2002 and 1999, respectively)– and two of his later texts –Amuleto (written 1998, published 1999) and 2666 (published posthumously in 2004). The analysis of each novel is constructed around the identification of three motifs, which are teased out of Amberes and tracked through his later texts. The repeated occurrences of these motifs across his oeuvre reveal how essential the years he worked extensively experimenting and refining before he was published on a large scale were to his later writing practices. They assess: the insertion of a ‘deliberate obfuscation’ in his writing, posited as an intentional avoidance of clarity that works to undermine the reader’s ability to make connections; the presence of doubles; and, a ‘rhizomatic intertextuality’, a vision of Bolaño’s literary project as mimicking that of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome. The methodology utilised borrows additional concepts from Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis, alongside elements of genetic criticism and narratology, to analyse the movement of writing between the ‘versions’ of his texts.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Revisiting the Roberto Bolaño Archive: doubles, deliberate obfuscation and rhizomatic intertextuality in Amberes, Monsieur Pain, Amuleto and 2666 |
| Event: | UCL (University College London) |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2019. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > CMII |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10085854 |
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