Julio Cortázar and katábasis: Classic Substrate in Rayuela’s Chapter 36
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Abstract
The narrative work of Julio Cortázar (1914-1984) is crossed by the search for new ways of narrating, far from the traditional structure of the story that, however, presents echoes of the ancient orality of the epic and, above all, by themes and classically crafted motifs, especially references of all kinds to ancient Greece. In this sense, chapter 36 of Rayuela, his most famous novel, describes a katábasis, in whose sequence the novelist places various mythological, religious and philosophical allusions that clearly indicate his insertion into the Classical Tradition. The objective of the article is to analyze these references and explain their meaning within the framework of katábasis as a means of understanding, in that sense, ‘rayuela’ itself as a journey to the underworld.
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