Homosexual Desire and Existential Alienation in Renato Pellegrini's _Asfalto_

dc.contributor.authorBrant, Herbert J.
dc.date.accessioned2017-02-22T23:01:48Z
dc.date.available2017-02-22T23:01:48Z
dc.date.issued2004
dc.description.abstractRenato Pellegrini's second novel, Asfalto, was published in 1964 and created a firestorm of controversy. It is one of the few novels ever banned in Argentina for reasons of “obscenity” (rather than politics) and the censorship case for this novel went all the way to the Argentine Supreme Court. As a result of the devastating legal procedures, Pellegrini stopped writing and has been relegated to the periphery of the Argentine and Spanish-American literary canon, his work remaining relatively unknown and undervalued. In this presentation, I will demonstrate why this novel and its author demand greater critical attention from researchers on the literatures of Spanish America, particularly those interested in issues of gender and sexuality and the Latin American literary canon. Although Manuel Puig's El beso de la mujer araña (1976) is often popularly cited as the first Argentine novel to treat issues of homosexuality openly from a relatively positive and affirming perspective, Pellegrini's Asfalto, pre-dating Puig's novel by twelve years, is much more revolutionary in terms of content and attitude. The novel narrates a young man's process of discovery of same-sex attraction as he leaves the provinces and enters the homosexual “underworld” of Buenos Aires in the early 1960s. Unlike earlier works that present homoerotic desire in disastrous or shameful terms, Asfalto provides the reader with perhaps the first case in Hispanic literature in which the fictional world is made up of characters who are able to express their homosexuality freely and without guilt. Further, it is also interesting to note that Puig's now infamous use of informational footnotes in El beso de la mujer araña is foreshadowed by Pellegrini's inclusion in his novel of several explanations of the nature of homosexual desire with references to scientific theory and research into the field, as well as a listing of famous homosexuals throughout history. Pellegrini's Asfalto is a groundbreaking novel that reveals the youthful promise of a literary talent that was, sadly, silenced by prejudice and fear. In addition to its literary merit, this novel also serves as a vitally important cultural document for understanding the nature of homosexual subjectivity in a specific Hispanic context, providing historical insight into the relationship between center and periphery and the power structures that have maintained and still maintain marginalized social groups in positions of inferiority.en_US
dc.identifier.citationConfluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura 20.1 (Fall 2004). 120-137.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1805/11966
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherConfluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literaturaen_US
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
dc.subjectRenato Pellegrinien_US
dc.subjectLGBTQ Fictionen_US
dc.subjectAsfaltoen_US
dc.subjectExistentialism in Literatureen_US
dc.titleHomosexual Desire and Existential Alienation in Renato Pellegrini's _Asfalto_en_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
BRANT-Pellegrini-Asfalto 2.pdf
Size:
169.69 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.88 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description: