La anomalía fantástica: relatos fantásticos en ciclos cuentísticos realistas (Rafael F. Muñoz, Jesús Díaz y Eduardo Antonio Parra)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe the characteristics of three fantastic short stories included in three books considered short story cycles and to determine whether any of these characteristics was influenced by the realistic context of the book. “La cuerda del general” (El feroz cabecilla y otros relatos de la revolución en el Norte [1928] by Rafael Felipe Muñoz), “El polvo a la mitad” (Los años duros [1967] by Jesus Díaz), and “Traveler Hotel” (Tierra de nadie [1999] by Eduardo Antonio Parra) are the stories studied here. This article starts from the hypothesis that the insertion of a fantastic short story in an emphatically realistic context —such as the short story cycles mentioned— could have consequences in the configuration of fantastic fiction. The theoretical framework of this study is based on concepts of the fantastic taken from Tzvetan Todorov, Ana María Barrenechea and Rosalba Campra, and on the short story cycle concept proposed by Forrest Ingram. As a result, the attenuation of fantastic features in the supernatural intrusion, in the selection of themes and in the ambiguity of the discursive level is obtained.