Abstract

ALONSO, Mercedes. Al borde: las costas en la narrativa de Carlos María Domínguez. Cuad.Sur, Let. [online]. 2010, n.40, pp. 9-28. ISSN 1668-7426.

The coasts -both the Río de la Plata banks and the Uruguayan northern banks- are the privileged narrative spaces in Carlos Maria Dominguez' works. Area of departure and passage, the literary possibilities of the region are given by the unknown. In terms of literary history, it has been unexplored by both Argentinian and Uruguayan literature as there is absence of narrative dedicated to the sea and the river. At the same time, these marginal regions allow Dominguez to use narrative forms that are also marginal- sometimes fictitious, other times taken from reality: small town gossip in particular and oral narrative forms in general. Although they share an existence on the edge of the nation -in the geographical and cultural sense- the two banks are overloaded with contradictory meanings. In Tres muescas en mi carabina (2002) and Escritos en el agua (2002), the coasts and islands of the Río de la Plata are an utopian space, where the refunding of society should be possible. In La casa de papel (2004) and La costa ciega (2009), on the other hand, the sea coast is a space for negative idealization where utopia is failure.

Keywords : Regionalism; Culture area; Imaginary lands.