Manuel Puig’s canonization process in the context of end of the century Latin American narrative: system and literary change

Abstract

This paper aims to initially describe and interpret the mechanisms of work and author‘s literary canonization in a specific cultural community, Latin America. The case studied is that of Argentine writer Manuel Puig and his work. The interactive relationship among cultural context, social institutions and systems of social and evaluation meaning allows a description and attempted explanation of the imbued meaning relations in the constitution of the canonized literary repertoires (Even Zohar), their selection criteria, ideological nature and the way in which social practices associated with this process are formed by a variable number of discursive practices. To do this, we analyze an illustrative set of communicative events and their textual instances, through which the literary canon and cultural effects are articulated:positioning, aesthetic appreciation, author and discourse iconisation, and professional influence, critical and academic thematization, among others. Thus, we study a case of canonical integration by the Argentine writer Manuel Puig into Hispanic and universal literary canon at the end of the century, and set up an interaction with the parameters of canonical construction from the previous generation, the so-called ―Latin American literary boom.