Una tarde con campanas. Un análisis de la novela y su afiliación a la narrativa hispanoamericana del cambio de siglo (1990-2010)

Abstract

The present study analyzes the novel Una tarde con campanas (2004) written by the Venezuelan author Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez and presents a review of several critical essays about Latin American narrative at the turn of the century which corresponds to the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. The purpose of our work is to investigate if there are similarities between the characteristics of certain literary trends in Latin American narrative and the novel. This purpose led us to identify a series of different common writing practices between the novel and the Latin American narrative. Through the analysis, we identified several common writing practices, which allowed us to point out several literary trends with which the novel is affiliated with. In order to carry out our work, we have analyzed the novel structure, the narrative voices, the discourses, the language and the aspects of everyday life and universality. Based on what we have analyzed, our study points towards six Latin American literary trends with which the novel is affiliated with: the fragmentary nature of the novel structure, the narrative narcissism, the mix of discourses, the colloquial and irreverent language, the everyday life and the universality.