La configuración del mundo narrativo de Yo el supremo de Augusto Roa Bastos

grantor: University of TorontoA phenomenological hermeneutical study of Yo el Supremo (1974), the novel by the Paraguayan Augusto Roa Bastos, is undertaken in this dissertation. This analysis deals with the study of the internal organization of the text and the extensive textual referentiality of the novel before turning to an interpretative examination. Writing uses the language of the writer's community. Literary language assimilates the values and judgments fostered by the community. Thus it could be said that no text is entirely original, for it is constructed from a web of references that are taken and transformed from other texts. Yo el Supremo is constructed as an intertext. Its structure is based upon other texts from History, Philosophy, Chronicles, and Guarani cosmogony and myth. Bakhtin's theory that the framework surrounding discourse is responsible for its new meaning is put to the test in this investigation by analyzing the semantic and pragmatic changes of those texts in the new contextualization. Mario J. Valdes' hermeneutical phenomenology has served as theoretical background for my approach to the study of Yo el Supremo and indeed for my understanding of Bakhtin's literary theory.Ph.D