The evanescence of utopias: from the rogue to the bohemian. Las máscaras del héroe (1996) by Juan Manuel de Prada
Abstract
In this article I intend to analyse Las máscaras del héroe by Juan Manuel de Prada, focalising on its leitmotiv: bohemianism and disillusion in the decadent and modernist period between 19th and 20th century. The study is based in the first half of the novel, since it is here where what I have called utopias’ evanescence can be observed. Picaresque and Bohemianism are the two great utopias in Spanish literature, because they were conceived as a free, anarchic and unconcerned way of life which, unfortunately, results in poverty and sometimes in crime, when not in death. To sum up, my aim is analysing the novelistic elements that Prada has used to get a faithful representation of baroque picaresque and fin-de-siècle bohemianism.
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