The critical humor of "The Death of the Empress of China"

Abstract

The presence of irony in some of the short stories included by Rubén Darío in Azul... has been duly noted. However, the studies that focus on this aspect tend to consider it exclusively in relation to the poet's aesthetic proposals. The present article offers a new appraisal of "La muerte de la emperatriz de China", a tale that has generally been the subject of cursory readings. The story's humorous details are considered in order to demonstrate that the comic effects they produce have an ethic dimension. The analysis confirms Dario's deep concern for the social and cultural circumstances of Latin America, calling attention to dilemmas that were still unresolved at the turn of the twenty-first century.