LA IMAGEN DE ESCRITOR DE CORTÁZAR EN ROBERTO ARLT: APUNTES DE RELECTURA

Abstract

This article analysesRoberto Arlt: Apuntes de relectura, the prologue that Julio Cortazar writes for Arlt’s complete works, 1981. Here, it is analyzed the image Cortazar constructs of himself and his vision about literature. It is postulated that Cortazar introduces himself as a public speaker who questions the traditional representations of what «being a good writer» means and, in turn, he signifies Roberto Arlt’s role in Argentinian literature, points out his literary conditions and argues against the aesthetic criteria used, for a long time, to judge him. In order to examine the sense Cortazar elaborates in his discourse and the thesis which supports his arguments, some theories coming from varied theoretical schools, several of them, from discourse analysis, such as the old rhetoric (Barthes, 1974) and the new rhetoric (Perelman, 1997), have been used. Moreover, to do this analysis, Gramuglio’s categories ofimage, self-image and anti-image (Gramuglio, 1988) as well as the rhetoric category of ethos (Barthes, 1974) and premises, especially of values and a scale of values(Perelman, 1997), have also been applied.