Pariah in the Desert

This is the first monograph in English on Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay 1878-Argentina 1936), a canonical author whose works are read by all advanced students of Spanish in the US and many other countries. The study examines QuirogaΓÇÖs work through the theoretical lens of the heroicΓÇöa lens elaborated in part by means of QuirogaΓÇÖs own disquisitions on the subjectΓÇöand the complementary phenomenon of the monstrous. This lens serves to elucidate many evidently obscure and self-contradictory aspects of QuirogaΓÇÖs work and its relation to the context in which he lived. That context included the neo-colonial social and economic milieu of ArgentinaΓÇÖs fast-changing, immigrant-charged, increasingly materialistic society; the growing influence of foreign cultural discourses, particularly Hollywood film; the conflict between the genders in a society that embraced modernity but resisted changes in gender roles; the weight of new scientific discourses, especially Darwinian evolution, in social and political thought; and the impact on pedagogical theory and practice of these multiple changing discourses. This study discloses the extraordinary range of QuirogaΓÇÖs work, which includes erotic romance, science fiction and fantasy, psychological occult, social satire, a great variety of juvenile literature, outdoor adventure andΓÇömost familiar to readers in the United StatesΓÇögothic and naturalist horror. The book concludes that QuirogaΓÇÖs consistent imperative of the heroic is essential to reconciling these various, evidently incompatible aspects of QuirogaΓÇÖs poetics, revealing its theoretical and ethical coherence.