Entre las particularidades del estilo narrativo de Crónica de una muerte anunciada de Gabriel García Márquez se destaca la presencia de una polifonía basada en las declaraciones y testimonios de varios de sus personajes. Dentro de este relato, esta característica estilística constituye un elemento de carácter posmoderno que subvierte la voz dominante del cronista e incita al lector a participar en un juego intrincado de interpretaciones que no conduce a una conclusión obvia. Esta ponencia se propone examinar el modo en que se manifiestan las diversas voces en relación con la voz del cronista con el fin de dilucidar la función discursiva de esta estrategia narrativa.

Pluralism and Diversity in the Writings of Jorge Luis Borges

By Mark Frisch

Duquesne University

The epistemological crisis within the intellectual community that followed World War II with its questioning of where Western Civilization went wrong ,with the resulting emphases on multiplicity, ambiguity, randomness, fragmentation, indeterminacy, its challenges to privileged discourse, its democratic orientation, its problematizing of “reality” vs fiction, its re-exploration of the meaning of the self, its re-examination of the nature of the literary work and of woman's/man's place in the universe, and its tilt toward pluralistic model for explaining our world laid the foundation for numerous literary and intellectual movements, including Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism, Lo real-maravilloso or realismo mágico y el Boom in Latin American literature, and what I call Postmodernism (Postmodernismo). This cultural shift away from utopian models and monistic visions to explain history and toward philosophical pluralism had various roots, but one of the most important was the literary writings of Jorge Luis Borges. As a precursor and perhaps one of the first if not the first, of the postmodernists, Borges played a pivotal role with his focus on pluralism and diversity. I propose to do a close reading and examination of a few of Borges’ stories and essays to highlight Borges’ important link.