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Durán, Javier. José Revueltas: una poética de la disidencia. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 2002. 329 pp.
Durán's study presents a Bakhtinian influenced reading of Revueltas' work that principally focuses on four novels, Los muros de agua, Los días terrenales, Los errores, and El apando. While some studies have signaled contradictions and conflicts between the Mexican author's ideology and his aesthetics, this book focuses on the strain of dissidence that links Revueltas' political activity and his literature. Adapted from a dissertation, the study emphasizes an evolving stance as it examines the novels chronologically and integrates the author's autobiographic writings as guiding referents. Andrea Revueltas and Philippe Cheron's preface opens by placing Duran's discussion in the context of other work on Revueltas and describes the latter's dissidence as both critique and self-critique (18). To address his topic, the critic proposes to analyze three fundamental aspects of the texts treated: "Ia relación entre ideología y técnica narrativa," "el vínculo entre ideología y disidencia, a través de la temática de la prisión," and "el tema del grotesco" (30). The study uses reader-friendly theoretical discussions, close readings, and an attentiveness to social context to offer suggestive readings of Revueltas' novels within a unified trajectory.
Though the book refers to a number of critics and critical tendencies, the work of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, a near contemporary...