Literature of the Americas

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Jenaro Prieto’s Satirical Novel Un muerto de mal criterio (1926) and the Problem of Posthumous Narration

2026

This article focuses on the novel Un muerto de mal criterio (1926) by Chilean writer and public figure Jenaro Prieto (1889–1946). It aims, on the one hand, to introduce this text, which has been completely understudied by Russian scholarship, and, on the other, to consider it in the context of the theoretical problem of posthumous narration (or narration from beyond the grave), i.e., the narration of a character who, in the conventional reality of the work’s inner world, is represented as a dead person. The novel’s relationship with tradition of posthumous narrative is examined, particularly with the novel by the Brazilian author J.M. Machado de Assis Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881), as well as with the genres of “dialogues of the dead,” vision, and pamphlet. It is shown that while Prieto’s novel is somewhat “archaic” in some respects (for example, the possible justification for the hero’s afterlife experience as a vision provoked by illness is characteristic of an early stage in the formation of afterlife narratives, which has already been over by this point), in others it represents a new development. Thus, if we accept the version that the hero died but was resurrected by medical art, this is a rare and astonishing example of posthumous narrative, in which the deceased narrator returns from the afterlife. Given the calendar setting, it’s concluded that Un muerto de mal criterio fits into the “Christmas story” genre, where the hero experiences a trial that is presented to him as a chance to rethink his life. Furthermore, while the motif of the afterlife judgment is a constant in posthumous narratives, it’s highly unusual that the hero is not the object of the judgment, but its subject, receiving (and subsequently rejecting) the status of an afterlife judge.

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