Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Comparative Literature

Sub-Department

College of Arts and Sciences

First Advisor

Judith Kalb

Abstract

In his work Nombre falso (False Name, 1975), leading Argentinian writer Ricardo Piglia (1941-2017) presents a double tale composed of the story of a search, and of the supposed results of the search: the short story Luba. According to the narrator, the short story is written by influential Argentinian author Roberto Arlt (1900-1942), but it is in fact a distorted copy of Russian writer Leonid Andreev’s (1871-1919) The Dark (T’ma, 1907). Piglia mixes real life with falsification to create his work, changing elements of the life of Arlt and modifying Andreev’s story. In this work, I revisit Piglia’s text, paying close attention to the relationship between the prologue and the short story Luba, as well as the contrast between this text and Andreev’s original. While previous analyses of Piglia’s text focus on perspectives from Latin-American studies, here Luba is contrasted with The Dark, as I examine the two texts using a Russian historical, political and literary perspective. I argue that Andreev’s context influences the reading of Piglia’s work and that the differences between the original and the copy offer a new and unique perspective on community versus individuality in literature.

Rights

© 2017, Carol E. Fruit Diouf

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