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Chapter V - Two Shakespearean Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

David K. Herzberger
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Summary

In Corazó n tan blanco (1992) (A Heart So White, 1995) and Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí (1994) (Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, 1996), Marías continues to emphasize two important aspects of his fiction: intertextual connections with other works of literature and film (most explicitly with Shakespeare in these two novels), and the way in which storytelling lies at the heart of how we construct our understanding of the world. Each of the novels begins with a sudden and unexpected death, and thus contains elements of a mystery novel which invite the reader to expect intrigue and perhaps danger as the narrative progresses. In each case, however, and in typical fashion for Maróas, the intrigue is generally deferred and the mystery turns out to be less tautly drawn than readers might have anticipated. In Corazón tan blanco, the narrator tells the story of the death unwillingly—he does not directly set out to discover more about it (for example, why it occurred or what were its consequences), and in fact, he resists finding out what actually happened several decades before. In contrast, the narrator of Mañana en la batalla piensa en mó desires to tell the story of the night of the death and to explore as well what happened afterward. In each novel the death serves as a perturbation in the life of the narrator, and in each case the telling of the story determines how such perturbations may persist or diminish over time.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2011

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