Literature and photography in the works of Julio Cortazar, Tomas Eloy Martinez and Salvador Elizondo (Argentina, Mexico)

The dissertation explores the structuring role that the photographic medium plays in the works of three contemporary Latin American writers: Julio Cortazar, Tomas Eloy Martinez and Salvador Elizondo. Taking as methodological cue the notion of the "paragonal" relation between word and image, developed by critics such as W. J. T. Mitchell and James Heffernan, I trace the contest between verbal and photographic representations in some of the most influential literary texts of these authors.; Chapter one serves as an introduction to the project, exploring some of the methodological and theoretical issues around the links between literature and photography, in particular in modern Latin American letters. Chapter two analyzes the photographic imprint in Cortazar's short stories "Las babas del diablo" (1959) and "Apocalipsis de Solentiname" (1977). Drawing from the discourses of journalism and travel literature, and mediated by Cortazar's avant-garde aesthetics of heightened awareness, chapter three shows the ways in which photography becomes a decisive hinge around which his literary evolution is articulated. I regard his work as an interpretive vertex of a triangle from which two literary directions emerge, emblematized by the works of Tomas Eloy Martinez and Salvador Elizondo. In the case of Martinez, I show in chapter four how the testimonial or realist aspect of the photographic medium dominates his novel La novela de Peron (1985). My interpretation focuses on an analysis that highlights the pervasive thematic presence of the photographic medium and its structuring role in the narrative. In the case of Salvador Elizondo, whose work I analyze in chapter five, the uncanny or demonic aspect of photography inflects his novel Farabeuf (1965). The photographic medium becomes the focal point of an obsessive delirium. I elucidate how the media interactions the novel displays revolve around a complex net of inner connections between memory, perception, and representation.; The dissertation opens up a new line of interpretation in a field of research where Latin American literature, visual culture, and communication and media studies intersect.