Memory, metaphor, and traumas in the Uruguayan narrativeof the new century.The proposals of Agustín Acevedo Kanopa and Horacio Cavallo

Abstract

The object of the study is to think about the impact that the end of the grands réctis of modernity has meant for a thematic aspect of contemporary Uruguayan literature that has its focus on the recovery of memory. The collapse of these grands réctis has led writers to adopt minimal stories and leads the analysis to focus on the literary production of two Uruguayan narrators of recent times': Agustín Acevedo Kanopa (1985) and Horacio Cavallo (1977). Their latest collections of stories, Historia de nuestros perros (2016) and El silencio de los pájaros (2013), respectively, relate the collective memory with the crisis of personal identity. Moving from the definitive questioning of the "great stories" previous to postmodernity, a methodological approach to the plot of the stories "El béisbol criollo", by Agustín Acevedo Kanopa, and "La idea del agua", by Horacio Cavallo, will be proposed, using the postulates of the Theory of Reception (Wolfgang Iser), the contributions of Roland Barthes on the multiple senses of the text, and the studies of Roland Spiller on the specific features of personal and collective memory. The study of these two fictional texts shows how during the last twenty years, in Uruguayan literature, some forms of writings that focus on tiny narratives, a sort of minimal histories within History, have been consolidated. These narratives need the reader's collaboration and -once interpreted according to a metaphorical point of view -they cross the limits of the everyday story to reflect the memory of traumatic experiences that have marked the lives of the protagonists, in connection with the Big Histories of the broader society. The allusions to violence present in the two stories do not only create, on the literary level, a double level of reading (the linear and the metaphorical), but they seem to propose -from a current perspective -a single Palabras clave: narrativa uruguaya contemporánea; Agustín Acevedo Kanopa; Horacio Cavallo; literatura de la memoria; Historia de nuestros perros; El silencio de los pájaros Su memoria es solo un archivo de conceptos ordenados, añejos y vetustos. Cómo decirle que lo que importa realmente son solo las preguntas.Teresa Porzecanski, «Invención de los soles» Más recuerdos tengo yo solo que los que habrán tenido todos los hombres desde que el mundo es mundo.Jorge Luis Borges, «Funes el memorioso»