Augusto Monterroso e la minifinzione ispanoamericana

Abstract

The author tries to explain the mini-text in relation to the so called "post-modern" condition by resorting -in particular- to the notion of "fractal". This term is taken from the scientific language and distinguishes itself from the notion of "detail", which would clearly refer to a modern vision of the text. Moving from the realm of science to the literary domain, it is inevitable to think of the deconstruction of the narrative canon not so much to negate it as to explore and exploit its creative potentialities in the form of shards, fragments, which the necessary extension of the traditional novel has suffocated since its origine. This outlook implies, in general, an ironical fre-reading of the narrative sub-genres and, almost always, a "hybridation" of their own individual traits. In the first part of the volume the author delves into the paradigm of the mini-text in Latin-American culture, starting from the theories of various Latin-American scholars of the genre. The second part studies the literary production in this area of Augusto Monterroso and above all his collection "La oveja negra y demas fabulas" whose texts postulate a special involvement on the part of the reader. By drawing on his "encyclopedia" the reader has to fill the silences of the writer and circumscribe the indeterminacy of concision without haste, letting bring to the surface the literary and ethical references which make up the underlying structure of the text.