El azar y la teoría

Abstract

El sueño de la historia, a novel by Jorge Edwards, narrates, on the one hand, the relation between Joaquín Toesca, the XVIII century architect of La Moneda palace, and his unruly wife Manuela Fernández, and, on the other hand, the life of “El Narrador” towards the end of the Chilean military dictatorship. The paper is divided into three “avenues of sense”, in which different possibilities of experimenting with Edwards’ text are explored. From these avenues, the most important one is the one that explores the intertextual relations found in the text. The significance of this lies in the fact that El sueño de la historia has an origin never mentioned by its author: an obscure historical novel –La Pequeña Quintrala de Joaquín Toesca– written by Ilda Cadiz Avila, an elderly lady from Concepción. Cadiz’ text is not only the point of departure of Edwards’ text: the latter simply plagiates the former. The study also explores the narrative system that operates in the analyzed text, and examines the meanings of “stealing” in contemporary theory.