Emelina de Eduardo Poirier y Rubén Darío: romance regional de Valparaíso

Abstract

I offer an overview of the critical reception around the novel Emelina (Valparaiso, 1887) written by Eduardo Poirier and Ruben Dario, considering the role that the first comments may have had in their current marginalization. Then, I propose a reading of Emelina as a “foundational fiction” (Sommer), since the narrative carries out an intertwining between the erotic desire and socio-political ties. Finally, I introduce the category of “regional romance”, to analyze how the novel, set on the commercial and cosmopolitan Valparaiso of the late XIX century, configures its dialectic proposal between the national and regional.