Shattered Innocence. The resource of the Grotesque in Pelea de gallos by María Fernanda Ampuero.

Abstract

Few years ago, María Fernanda Ampuero came suddenly to the literary world, standing out in Latin America and even in the United States with her anthology of stories Pelea de gallos. This paper starts with the concept of “dispositio”: the order of ideas in a rhetorical discourse, which has —also— been used by literary studies to refer to the sequence in narrative, or the specific accommodation that exists in an anthology. In this way, Ampuero’s book has a discourse of maturity, violence and aging. In the same way, the grotesque is an element that resonates strongly in these texts, so that, we can know the intensity of the criticisms of: machismo, misogyny and contempt for another human being have through uses of metaphors or descriptions. This work generates links from story to story and ends up developing a social complaint established throughout the book.