Search

Discourse analysis in Abelardo Arias' Minotauroamor allows the reader to access a series of concepts about man and his realities: love, friendship, art, and power, among others. Even though these relate to all the characters, they are focalized on the two protagonists: Minotaur and Theseus. In fact, Abelardo Arias has declared that what prompted him to write the novel was a vital question that haunted him: the true condition of modern man. The Mendocinian writer seemed to understand, already, a marked degradation of the values of our culture; and he wishes to awaken his contemporaries' conscience through these magnificent pages. That is why this paper aims at showing not only the great literary value of the novel, but also the link between the characters and the underlying concept of "normal man". In so doing, we try to elucidate how the ideas supported by the writer are projected on this literary space. To do so, I will briefly point the coincidences and modulations between the original myth and the Mendocinian novelist's recreation, to concentrate on the analysis of fragments on man's "diagnosis". For this approach, I take into account Alfonso López Quintás' Diagnosis of contemporary man, published in the same year as the novel, a study which shows - from another perspective - the same concerns as those in Arias' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show that space in Abelardo Arias' historical fiction (as well as in the rest o his production) plays a central role to fully understand his work. Thus, in Dust and Fear ("Polvo y espanto") this scope is not just a "time atmosphere", typical of any historical novel, but it is worked upon with a clear conscience of its significant power. Our study suggests two possible readings of space: the first is centered on the descriptive elements as true representatives of their historic referents (local color setting); the second, deeper reading, pays attention to the symbolism of space as a revelation of the characters' psychic processes, and of the total meaning of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]