Palabras clave
Relato breve
The Decameron Project
Escapismo
Narrativas de la pandemia
Cómo citar
Resumen
El presente artículo ofrece un estudio de los temas y técnicas narrativas de corte escapista en The Decameron Project (2020), una colección de relatos de autoría múltiple motivada por el deseo de relatar la experiencia globalizada de la pandemia de COVID. El trabajo previo sobre la colección de relatos ha loado su representación de la estasis temporal (Mussgnug, 2021; Howell 2022), pero el análisis de sus propósitos escapistas ha sido mínimo, cuando no intencionadamente desatendido (Pittel 2023). Este estudio tipifica las ambiciones escapistas del volumen de manera dicotómica: en primer lugar, se argumenta que algunos de los cuentos están construidos sobre una creencia ciega en la humanidad y su capacidad de aunar fuerzas ante la adversidad, una temática que se arguye constituye una metanarrativa escapista en la colección; por otra parte, el artículo analiza historias que escapan de la realidad vírica introduciendo focalizaciones narrativas impersonales o alienígenas, y deshumanizan así la experiencia de la pandemia mediante el uso de técnicas narrativas que borran conscientemente los afectos y el sufrimiento de la diégesis. Habiendo considerado estas dos aproximaciones al escapismo, se defiende que el matrimonio de opuestos que vertebra la colección refleja el surrealismo, la atemporalidad y la disrupción de la normalidad que ocuparon el centro discursivo de la pandemia. Por ello, y pese a presentarse como aparentemente irreconciliables, se concluye que la confluencia de estas dos disposiciones escapistas consigue tanto representar la experiencia de la pandemia como ofrecer un escape narrativo a su lectorado.
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