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This dissertation provides an analysis of Victoria Ocampo's autobiography, a text unjustly neglected until recently. Essays from Testimonios are also studied to complete some of the important themes and ideas of the autobiography. The aim of this work is to examine the creation of the textual "I."
The introductory chapter situates the figure of Ocampo within the Argentinian autobiographical tradition and outlines her biography. In reviewing the existing criticism, it points out the few valuable articles that recognize her literary worth.
Chapter I focuses on the character's quest for autonomy and for a language capable of representing the self. The house as a metaphor of language is used to illustrate the quest of a place for the feminist voice of the narrator as well. Chapter II studies the necessity of the "I" to read herself in the texts of others, and to adulterate them in order to make them her own. This act of transgression is effectively coupled in the autobiography with an act of adultery that nearly displaced Ocampo, as a woman, to the margins of society and effectively impels her to write. Chapter III analyses the creation of the metaphor of the body and its power of seduction. Ocampo rejects certain metaphors as misrepresentations of the self, and she creates new ones to reenact the game of seduction. Chapter IV deals with the role of memory as the repository of shreds that relate the personal "I" to the history of a Nation. Through it, the narrator enters its National library and bequeathes her writings to future generations.
The study shows the fragmentary nature of the textual "I," its relations to works of fiction and its desire to inaugurate a feminist tradition.