2 - Transposed Words: Mapping Intertextuality in Leonardo Padura Fuentes' Máscaras

Summary

In this chapter I shall focus on the Cuban novel Máscaras by Leonardo Padura Fuentes in the light of intertextuality. Most critics, including Stephen Wilkinson (2000; 2006), Carlos Uxó (2006), José Antonio Michelena (2006), Sara Rosell (2006), Clemens Franken Kurzen (2009) and Antonio Aiello Fernández (2010) have focused their attention on how Padura has transformed traditional detective fiction in Cuba. Padura Fuentes himself has contributed to this approach by inserting himself in this tradition when revisiting the detective genre in his article ‘Modernidad y postmodernidad: la novela policial en Iberoamérica’ (1999). Some scholars have also paid particular attention to the critiques concerning political and sexual intolerance that the novel expresses (Wilkinson 2000; 2006; Aiello Fernández 2010), while a more recent study by James Buckwalter-Arias (2010: 111–51) critically examines the extent to which Máscaras could be considered a synthesis of political and aesthetic writing. Critics have also tried to analyse the character of Mario Conde from a psychological perpective (Wilkinson 2000; 2006; Franken K. 2009).

I am interested, however, in the increasing use of intertextuality in recent Cuban narrative, particularly post-1990, in the work of writers such as Padura Fuentes, Abilio Estévez, Reinaldo Arenas, Yanitzia Canetti and Jesús Díaz, which confirms the dialogism present in recent Cuban narrative. These authors use intertextuality for different aims, which range from the literary to the political attacks we find in Arenas's texts.