Discovery of the Self and Authorial Outing of the Protagonist in Manual Mujica Lainez's El retrato amarillo

Authors

  • Troy J. Prinkey University of Virginia

Abstract

The literary production of Manuel Mujica Lainez is plentiful and varied, and although existing criticism has examined his novels Bomarzo and El unicomio, to seeming near exhaustion, his short fiction has been unfairly undertreated. Just as scarce is discussion regarding the homosexual character in Mujica Lainez's work. 'To out someone'- or to reveal that someone is gay- has become the cultural as well as the critical term for what Mujica Lainez eventually does to "El retrato amarillo's" protagonist, Miguel. I shall attempt to show that although Mujica Lainez's process of "outing" Miguel and his father is typically subtle for the social milieu in which Mujica Lainez wrote, it is exactly this subtlety-with its textual innuendo and encoding- that makes the 'outing' of Miguel so effective, and at the same time, so easy to overlook.

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Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1

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Articles

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