Sex, sin, and storytelling: Eroticism in the theatre of Mario Vargas Llosa.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of eroticism in three plays by Peruvian-born novelist Mario Vargas Llosa: La senorita de Tacna, Kathie y el hipopotamo, and La Chunga. The study was instigated by the coincidence of two factors: (1) the presence of erotic elements in the three plays and (2) their nature as vehicles for the exploration of Vargas Llosa's ideas concerning artistic and literary creation, particularly regarding his view of the relationship between fiction and reality. In order to connect these two factors, the author has emphasized the nature of eroticism as rebellious and transgressive, and posited a vision of Mario Vargas Llosa as a rebel and transgressor. A synthesis of eroticism and rebellion was also found in the concept of sin (transgression and taboo) and its confession, which appear as motifs in each of the plays. The concepts of metafiction and metatheatre were also employed to describe and discuss the plays.One conclusion reached at the end of the study was that Vargas Llosa has employed, to a reduced degree, the narrative techniques first developed in his novels, while gaining some facility with regard to the "tools" of the theatre. Another was that, although Vargas Llosa's use of eroticism and his development as a playwright may not be strictly correlated, each of the plays may be seen to utilize erotic elements in different ways in relation to narrative creation. Finally, the author examined Vargas Llosa's contention that the theatrical medium is a "privileged genre" for communicating his ideas on fiction and reality, concluding that it may be understood by (1) conceiving the act of impersonation as the essential act of theatre, and (2) equating the transformations of identity and/or personality with that act. This dramatic representation of the act of representation (theatre-within-the-theatre) was seen to add an additional level of insight into the nature of objective and subjective reality.