Abstract
Guerrero argues that Mario Vargas Llosa’s Cinco esquinas [Five Points] is an ironic and self-reflexive parody of yellow journalism that advances a harsh indictment of both yellow journalism’s political uses by Alberto Fujimori’s regime in Peru, as well as its place in contemporary democratic culture. Based on the premise that the aesthetics of melodrama is intrinsic to sensationalism, the chapter examines the ways in which the novel imitates the excesses of sensationalist journalism through an ample repository of melodramatic techniques. Guerrero further contends that, through the playful engagement with other intertexts—notably Peruvian criollo music—Cinco esquinas is self-derisory about its skeptical perspective on culture and politics, thus undermining, in a postmodern fashion, the discourse of a narrator whose views mirror those of the author.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Alonso, Carlos J. “La tía Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject’s Fantasy of Empowerment.” PMLA 106.1 (1991): 46–59. Print.
Anker, Elisabeth. Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Print.
Booth, Michael. English Melodrama. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1965. Print.
Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination. Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, 1976. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Print.
Burt, Jo-Marie. “Guilty as Charged: The Trial of Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori for Human Rights Violations.” International Journal of Transitional Justice Journal 3.3 (2009): 384–405. Print.
Gamarra Garay, Rubén. La prensa chicha de Montesinos. Lima: AFA Editores, 2001. Print.
Genette, Gerard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. 1987. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative. The Metafictional Paradox. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980. Print.
———. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. New York: Methuen, 1985. Print.
———. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.
———. The Politics of Postmodernism. 1989. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Podalsky, Laura. “Disjointed Frames: Melodrama, Nationalism, and Representation in 1940s Mexico.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 12 (1993): 57–73. Print.
Rodríguez Marcos, Javier. “Vargas Llosa: La pornografía es erotismo mal escrito.” Babelia March 4, 2016. http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2016/03/02/babelia/1456923139_366965.html. Web.
Singer, Ben. Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Print.
Streeby, Shelley. Radical Sensations: World Movements, Violence, and Visual Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. Print.
Sunkel, Guillermo. La prensa sensacionalista y los sectores populares. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002. Print.
Vargas Llosa, Mario. La tía Julia y el escribidor. Editorial Seix Barral, 1977. Print.
———. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, 1977. Translated by Helen Lane. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982. Print.
———. The Perpetual Orgy. Flaubert and Madame Bovary. 1975. Translated by Helen Lane. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986. Print
———. Contra viento y marea, Vol. 2. Seix Barral, 1986. Print.
———. Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society. 2012. Translated by John King. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. Print.
———. Cinco esquinas. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, 2015. Print.
Velásquez, Marcel. “El mal/estar en la cultura chichi: la prensa sensacionalista.” In Industrias Culturales. Máquina de deseos en el mundo contemporáneo. Edited by Santiago López Maguiña, Gonzalo Portocarrero, Rocío Silva Santisteban, Juan Carlos Ubilluz, and Víctor Vich. Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú, 2007. 181–198. Print.
Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. 1984. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Guerrero, J.C. (2018). Elective Affinities: The Spectacle of Melodrama and Sensationalism in Cinco esquinas by Mario Vargas Llosa. In: Weldt-Basson, H. (eds) Postmodern Parody in Latin American Literature. Literatures of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90430-6_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90430-6_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90429-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90430-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)