Composición escénica y visual en los cuentos de Silvina Ocampo

Abstract

Silvina Ocampo belonged to a prestigious intellectual group in Argentina that had its heyday in the 1930s with the foundation of Sur, the most important intellectual magazine in Latin America until the 1950s. The writers surrounding Silvina Ocampo achieved more fame and received more critical attention than she did; for this reason her work has not been given the importance it deserves. It is only in the last twenty years that the Ocampo’s literary production has begun to be studied and valued both inside and outside of Argentina. Various studies have mentioned the interest that Silvina Ocampo had in painting and music, but she also felt a great enthusiasm for theatre. This passion, which has essentially been overlooked, had an impact on the writer, influencing the way she conceived her stories. In many of her stories, there are plenty of theatrical elements, such as masks, costumes, mirrors, and doubles, where it is possible to observe the construction of scenarios. Theatricality becomes a way for Ocampo to envision her short stories, their structure, and their development. In my dissertation I show that form and function come together in her work and that theatricality serves as a literary device for displaying the different conflicts within Argentina, a nation riven by political ideologies and social changes that have dominated the public sphere during the Peronist period, the military dictatorships, and throughout the difficult return to democracy.