La parodia en la nueva novela hispanoamericana by Elbieta Sklodowska Review by: Antonio Fama The Modern Language Review, Vol.

88, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 245-246 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3730874 . Accessed: 04/11/2013 11:56
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attention. They deserve as much. The book comes with a useful list of works available in English.
LONDON COLLEGE, QUEEN MARY ANDWESTFIELD DAVIES CATHERINE

'OneHundred Years to Teaching GarciaMarquez's of Solitude'.Ed. by MARIA Approaches VALDES. and MARIO DEVALDES ELENA J. (Approaches to Teaching World Literature, 31) New York: Modern Language Association of America. 1990. X+ I56 pp. $34 (paperbound $I9). are brought together in Years Twelve separate approaches to OneHundred of Solitude this volume whose primary value is pedagogical. Accompanied by a set of materials that provide pertinent bibliographical information, the twelve approaches describe different contexts within which Marquez's novel may be studied (comparative literature courses, women's studies courses, Latin-American literature courses, and so on) and identify differentinterpretativeapproachesfrom perspectives of ideology, history, phenomenology, narratology, and so forth. Varying in length between eight and twelve pages, the essays typically mark out an area for study and rehearse an Years outline argument with illustrations from the text of OneHundred of Solitude. Without laying claim to being exhaustive, each essay adumbrates a full treatment of its subject, providing pointers and referencesthat may be exploited by readers. The volume is edited to a high standard and furnished with an up-to-date bibliography whose bias is mainly North American and Spanish American.
OXFORD WADHAM COLLEGE, ROBINW. FIDDIAN

Amsterdam SKLODOWSKA. novela enla nueva hispanoamericana. By ELZBIETA Laparodia

and Philadelphia: Benjamins. I99I. xix + 29 pp.

The stated purpose of this book is to study the use of parody in the Spanishone reason or another, have not attracted a great deal of attention from critics. Chapter I sketches the evolution of the term 'parody' from its inception to the postmodern conception. The theoretical base for parody is largely drawn from the Russian formalists, Shklovski, Tinianov, and Bakhtin, as well as from the writings of direction of the text being parodied, the pre-text, whereby parody tries to subvert the discourse of the original text. The author sees in the novels written between 1960 and 1985 the development of a counter discourse to the generation of the Boom. Having sketched the theory and its historical backgroundin Chapter I, the author moves on to show differing manifestations of parody through the analysis of twenty-five novels. Chapter 2, for example, has as its heading 'La parodia hist6rica revisitada: parodia y reescritura'.Here the function of the discourse within the novel is seen as one of questioning the historical discourse, a rewriting of history whose purpose becomes that of 'contestar con la verdad a las mentiras' (p. 29). Hence, parody fulfils the role of vindicating the historical past. As the author expresses it: 'La parodia es un vehiculo ideologicamente significativo, que bien puede ser empleado para reevaluar el pasado y entablar una polemica reactualizadora con discursos preexistentes' (p. 33). Chapter 3, 'Ethos ludens y la parodia total', deals with self-reflexiveor narcissistic discourse. In other words, parody is used as a way of questioning the formal aspects of the novel, its style, its techniques, and so on. Parody as a vehicle for renovation is the subject of Chapter 4. Here the author points out that the post-Boom generation of writers uses parody as a means of liberating itself from the powerful influence of
Linda Hutcheon. The parodic discourse is defined as an inversion of the general American novel from 1960 to 1985 through the works of selected authors who, for

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246

Reviews

the Boom generation and as a way to renovate the novel. The intertextual nature of parody allows it to assume the contradictoryquality of breaking with the past while being a continuation of it- 'continuidad y ruptura' (p. I95). Chapter 5 deals with the detective novel. Here the role of parody is the transgression of the detective-story formula. Parody is used to subvert the formula. As the author states: Si volvemos entrela f6rmula policial y susreelaboraciones aquia la diferenciaci6n parodicas, sensu sancionanlo podemosconcluirlo siguiente:mientrasque las novelaspolicialesstricto deseadoy cumplencon lo esperado,las novelasde Ibarguengoitia, Giardinelli y Taibo se fundanen la duday en la ambigiiedad, desarticulan pasoa pasonuestras y presuposiciones refuerzan la sanci6nde la incertidumbre moderno. y del caosdel hombre (p. I33) In other words, the readeris faced with the inversion of the known formula. The final chapter, 'La escritura femenina', analyses the female discourse through Hagiografia denarcisa la bellaby Mireya Robles, La casadelosespz'ritus by Isabel Allende, and Como en la guerra by Luisa Valenzuela. The author shows how the female discourse is in essence a 'contratexto' (p. 154). Parody is used by female writers to subvert the dominating male discourse. In conclusion, the principal thrust of the book is that parody may make use of irony, satire, demythification, and so on, but that its main purpose is that of producing a counter discourse, one that emerges in opposition to the general direction of the original text. All in all, this is a good book. The author gives an excellent account of the role that parody plays in the postmodern narrative and in the post-Boom generation of Latin-American novelists.
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO, ONTARIO ANTONIO FAMA

'Leben' und'Seele' in denaltgermanischen Studien zumEinflufchristlich-lateinischer Sprachen. Arbeiten, ii) Heidelberg: Winter. I99I. 448pp.
DMI 20).

LA FARGE. (Skandinavistische aufdie Volkssprachen.By BEATRICE Vorstellungen DM 150 (paperbound

This book, resulting from a dissertation (Frankfurtam Main, under the supervision of Klaus von See) of more lasting value than most of that genre, deals with a theme which is narrower than the title might suggest. Beatrice La Farge is concerned with tracing the disappearance of the etymon *ferh-from all the Germanic languages (except Icelandic, conservative in this as in other respects) and with accounting for
its replacement by such a term as life, liv, Leben. Despite the admirable care with which this problem is tackled and the industry with which an immense amount of linguistic evidence has been sifted it has to be said that the word 'Seele' which is mentioned in the title and which should have played a part in the argument (on page I8 the author admits that *ferh- was forced onto the retreat by l/fand its cognates, but also by sawul and its counterparts) comes up for only relatively brief discussion. However, once we adjust ourselves to this disappointment, this book has much to offer us. The author, proceeding not from the question what a particular word may mean but from the question what a thing is called, divides her book logically into two parts, although they are not indicated as such in the table of contents. Chapters I and II belong together in dealing with the Germanic concept of what she calls the 'Lebensprinzip' or vital spark, common to human beings and to animals, as far as this can be reconstructed on the basis of texts written necessarily in the Christian period. The first of these chapters traces developments in the terminology of this sphere brought about under the influence of Christian-Latin literature; the second analyses the ways in which, by a process of metonymy, terms for the vital spark in

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