O horror que nos rodeia : a violência social em contos de María Fernanda Ampuero e Mariana Enriquez

Abstract

This dissertation makes a bibliographic analysis of the narrative construction of the different types of horror in the short stories: "Subasta", present in the book Pelea de Gallos (2018), by María Fernanda Ampuero; "Biografía", from Sacrificios humanos (2021), also by Ampuero, and "Chicos que faltan", from Los peligros de fumar en la cama (2009), by Mariana Enriquez. Studying, in this way, the effect of fear, the sublime and the fascination with the macabre as an aesthetic artifice to generate empathy, identification, resistance and social criticism from the exploration of violence, the fantastic, the monstrous and the repulsive in these short narratives of Latin American horror written by women. The main objective of this study is to analyze the narrative construction for the effect of fear and the use of horror as an aesthetic device to generate empathy, identification, resistance, and social critique through the exploration of violence and repulsiveness in the three mentioned stories. Thus, the specific objectives are a) To outline the main characteristics of horror, terror, gothic, monstrous, fantastic, and repulsive, and the evolution of these fear narratives. b) To investigate, based on the concepts of the sublime and macabre fascination, the effects of short horror narratives. c) To analyze the selected stories according to the theories discussed. The main theoretical support are the notes from: Stephen King (2012) on horror literature; Edmund Burke (2016) on the effect of the Sublime; William Ian Miller (2024) about disgust; Kate Summerscale (2023) and Zygmunt Bauman (2008) about fear; and David Roas (2014) about the fantastic. In the first short story, one can perceive the horror caused by the fear of physical violence, the human monster, the repulse of the female body and the use of disgust as resistance against cruelty. In the second tale, there is the presence of gothic and supernatural elements, but the horror is focused on the hate speech against immigrants and xenophobic actions against the protagonist. In the last story analyzed, a city full of inequalities and social violence is the stage for supernatural elements to happen, exposing the discomfort and fear that the theme of the disappeared people brings to light. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]