Date of Award

Spring 2023

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Major

LACS: Hispanic/Arabic Studies

First Advisor

Priscilla Meléndez

Abstract

In 2012 the Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez, who has frequently been called “The Princess of Horror,” traveled through the South of the United States, recording her journey in two crónicas later published in 2015: “Un viaje espeluznante al sur del río Ohio” (“A Horrifying Trip to the South of the Ohio River”) and “Blues, pobreza, y vudú y la tierra de Elvis” (“Blues, Poverty, and Voodoo and the Land of Elvis”). Coming from a tradition of the Latin American Gothic and a self-proclaimed lover of the Southern Gothic, Enríquez implements these two styles of terror and the uncanny into the already hybrid genre of the crónica, which in the Latin American context has been succinctly defined as narrative journalism. Through this monstruous amalgamation, Enríquez brings her audience’s attention to the many and continued social-political failures of the American South and their similarities to Argentina’s. Despite her criticisms, Enríquez also uses the Gothic to express her complex, and terrifying, love for the American South. This project seeks to add to the minimal, yet growing, scholarly interest in and conversations about the importance of the Gothic to Latin American literature and journalistic writing.

Comments

Senior thesis completed at Trinity College Hartford CT for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in LACS: Hispanic/Arabic Studies.

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