Miradas entrecruzadas de espacios urbanos periféricos. Paisajes transitorios y transiciones narrativas en Los siete locos y Los lanzallamas.

Abstract

The article deals with views and settings of peripheral zones, and in particular with the urban industrial periphery of Buenos Aires, in Roberto Arlt’s novels Los siete locos (1929) and Los lanzallamas (1931). The aim is to highlight the making of literature from ugly, incoherent and anti-aesthetic places and also the significance that these places gain in the process of narration. The character’s topological transition from the outskirts of the city is combined with attempts to escape from the «pig’s life», in the sense of an abolition of established moral and legal values which culminates in criminal and conspiratorial activities, in inventions and deceit. The setting is presented as a complex element which plays a role that is not simply decorative.