Animals as a narrative strategy in the Ribeyrian narrator

Abstract

The essay proposes a study of how animals constitute narrative support for the narrator in the work of Julio Ramón Ribeyro. This “Ribeyrian” narrator is characterized by his observant and reflective nature, but he does not get involved in the interiority of the characters or the environments in which the stories take place. Faced with this, it is proposed that, in the stories “Los gallinazos sin plumas” (1955) and in “Tristes querellas en la vieja quinta” (1974), animals allow us to explore the inner decadence of the characters and anticipate the events of the narration.