La feria: From the Manuscript and Other Genetic Documents to the Printed Edition

Abstract

In this article, I present a broad overview of the textual history of La feria (1963), by Juan José Arreola, in order to detail its genetic particularities. To do this, I resort to the various studies on the genesis of the novel, such as those by Sara Poot Herrera, Vicente Preciado Zacarías and Felipe Vázquez, precursors of the proposal that I present here. Thus, I carry out a critical dialogue with them and offer some findings that contribute to completing the Arreola’s inlay, among these: 14 fragments published in La Cultura en México in April 1962 and the “Diario íntimo” that Arreola wrote in 1941 and, in 1998, he recovered in El último juglar, and from which another 21 fragments emerge. In the end, I compare a selected passage from the manuscript of La feria, as well as from the two testimonies discovered during my recensio, with the version of the editio princeps. With these samples, I hope to trace the method of Arreola’s rewriting at the micro and macrotextual levels, and explore the virtues of a critical edition of the emblematic novel.