Author: Perkowska, Magdalena

Source: Romance Studies, Volume 27, Number 2, April 2009 , pp. 145-156(12)

Publisher: Maney Publishing

Abstract:

This article explores the intertextual relationship between three stanzas from the Canto XXVI (of The Inferno) in La Divina Commedia by Dante and La pesquisa by Juan José Saer (1994). The famous discourse pronounced by Ulysses ('orazion picciola') and quoted in its entirety in the novel is interpreted here as a key not only to La pesquisa but to Saer's oeuvre. The ambiguity of Ulysses's character and of its configuration by Dante, as well as the urgency to pursue knowledge beyond the established limits, voiced in Ulysses's exhortation, point to the fundamental elements of Saer's aesthetics: meditation on knowledge, its pursuit and its limits; uncertainty about human comprehension of the world; tension between the evident and the unreachable; fluctuation between madness and lucidity; inevitability of the cognitive pursuit, and the looming failure as an always possible horizon.

Keywords: MADNESS IN LITERATURE; TRANSGRESSION; ULYSSES; INTERTEXTUALITY; DANTE ALIGHIERI; JUAN JOSÉ SAER

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/174581509X408521

Publication date: 2009-04-01

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