From the Space of the Wunderkammer to Macondo's Wonder Rooms: The Collection of Marvels in Cien años de soledad

Abstract

This article explores the relationship of Gabriel García Márquez's novel Cien añs de soledad to early modern material culture. In particular, it argues that we may reread central passages in the novel as a ludic reintegration of the space of the cámara de maravillas or Wunderkammer : sixteenth- and seventeenth-century repositories of objects that were conceived of as marvels or wonders. While this transhistorical relationship appears at first to link García Márquez's novel to modern and contemporary reinventions of the Wunderkammer in Europe and North America, the present article underscores the specificity of Cien años de soledad 's approach to the early modern culture of the marvelous in light of the novel's retracing of the affective cartographies of empire.