Intertextual origins in El ingenio maligno by Rafael Ángel Herra

Abstract

The Costa Rican author’s latest novel, El ingenio maligno (2014), is announced to be the second part of a trilogy, the first book of which, El genio de la botella (1990), was structured in a very similar way. In both novels, the narrative situation is the same, in that they are dialogues between the genie and a dog. However, while in the first case, the oral tradition of the miracle tales is emphasized, in the second, the stories of the chapters are rewritings of texts about the origins of the universe. Thanks to the conversation between the main characters, we are able to travel through cultures and literatures of the world, from the Book of Genesis and the fundamental classical myths (such as Narcissus or Oedipus), to Kafka’s universe. In the twelfth chapter we even meet Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, and we are about to play with reality and appearance. In this article I am basically interested in Rafael Ángel Herra’s narrative techniques, in the way he can manage to connect the only slightly related
multi-layered intertextual fabric with the clear purpose of building a novel about the act of creation itself.