Horacio Quiroga’s Short Stories and Latin American Posthumous Narration
- Issue:
- Received: 24 Aug. 2025
- Approved after reviewing: 30 Sept. 2025
- Date of publication: 25 Dec. 2025
- УДК / UDK: 821.134
- Publication Type: Research Article
- DOI:
- EDN:
- Abstract:
This paper considers two works by the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga, the novella “The Ghost” (“El Espectro,” 1921) and the short story “Beyond” (“Más allá,” 1925), in the aspect of the historical poetics of posthumous narration, i. e. the narration of a character who, in the conventional reality of the inner world of the work, is represented as a dead character. Quiroga, artistically exploring his most important theme — the theme of death, which arose many times in his works, goes in this study significantly further than his predecessor E.A. Poe, in whose novellas the violation of the boundary between the living and the dead is carried out only at the level of the character, but not at the level of the narrator. Quiroga was one of the first authors in the Western world to enter the territory of posthumous narration, including in the genres of short fiction: this narrative technique flourished in the 1950s, whereas in the 1920s it was very rare. The texts under consideration demonstrate a conscious desire to experiment with narration “from beyond the grave.” In “The Ghost,” the narrator is a man, in “Beyond,” a woman. In the novella, the characters, who seem to be in an interworld between the dead and the living, strive to return to life, in the short story — to die “the second death.” In “The Ghost,” the plot is built on external effects, whereas in “Beyond,” it is based on the disclosure of the “unreliability” of the previous narration, on “voicing” the repressed. But in both cases, what happens after death is reflected upon, and this reflection is partially realized by the dead narrator himself, who hopelessly yearns for life.
- Keywords: Horacio Quiroga, “El Espectro”, “Más allá”, Latin American prose of the 20th century, Uruguayan literature, posthumous narration, narrative from beyond the grave.
- For citation:
Zuseva-Özkan, Veronika. “Horacio Quiroga’s Short Stories and Latin American Posthumous Narration.” Literature of the Americas, no. 19 (2025): 166–189. https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2025-19-166-189
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