The painful pathway between theory and praxis: reflections on the character Urania in Mario Vargas Llosa’s "The Feast of the Goat"

Abstract

The following article will present reflections about the character Urania in the novel The Feast of the Goat, originally published in 2000 by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. To this analysis, the concept of historiographical metafiction, coined by Linda Hutcheon ([1998] 1991) was used to discuss the relations between literature and history in the novel. In what concerns the analysis of the character Urania (core of this article), the lathing of memory and trauma is central, since the character suffered a traumatic experience in a difficult era of the Dominican Republic: the Trujillo Era (1930-1961). On the pathway between theory and practice, that is, the historical living experience and the historical knowledge, stands Urania and the power to recreate, using fiction, the consequences that dictatorships can have upon individuals. Besides, it is exactly in the movement between theory and practice that the reconstruction of Urania’s Dominican identity becomes possible.