Rethinking Violence: La casa grande 's Role in the Modernization of the Colombian Novel and Theatre

Abstract

ResumenEl presente articulo examina La casa grande de Alvaro Cepeda Samudio como un texto fundamental dentro de la modernizadon de la novela colombiana y dentro del ambiente cultural del pafs en los sesenta. El estudia rastrea la manera en que Cepeda Samudio se vale de la ambiguedad del evento historico de la masacre de las bananeras para construir un texto heterogeneo de voces superpuestas. La novela explora el tema de la violencia desde una perspectiva subjetiva que contrapone los lfmites cognitivos del mito y de la historia, y que revela la insuficiencia de la experiencia personal como base de un entendimiento riguroso de la crisis historica. Este articulo sostiene que el desarrollo de mecanismos esteticos y narrativos en La casa grande constituye un nuevo acercamiento crftico y conceptual a la violencia social y polftica colombiana. Detalla, ademas, la contribucion de la novela al desarrollo y modernizacion del nuevo teatro colombiano. AbstractThis article examines Alvaro Cepeda Samudio's La casa grande as a fundamental text in the modernization of the Colombian novel and the country's cultural environment of the 1960s. It explores the way in which Cepeda Samudio makes use of the ambiguity of the Banana Massacre -the historical event on which the novel focuses -to construct a heterogeneous text of overlapping voices. The novel explores the theme of violence from a subjective perspective that reveals the cognitive limits of both history and myth and the inadequacy of personal experience to develop a rigorous understanding of historical crisis. I argue that La casa grande's aesthetic and narrative mechanisms constitute a new critical and conceptual approach towards Colombian sociopolitical violence. The article also details the novel's contribution to the development of the New Colombian Theatre.Alvaro Cepeda Samudio's La casa grande (1962) is recognized as an important Colombian novel closely related to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien anos de soledad (1967). However, its historic, cultural, and thematic closeness to Garcia Marquez's famous novel has much overshadowed La casa grande, which continues to be BHS 92.1 (2015)