Jorge Malabia and Juan Carlos Onetti: The water falling over the uncovered body

• Grant number: 25/22639-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2026
• End date: January 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Laura Janina Hosiasson
• Grantee: Muriel Keller Tavares
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project seeks to take a first step in the study of Juan Carlos Onetti's work by analysing the narrator-character Jorge Malabia, one of the pillars of the construction of his fictional world, who appears in several of his short stories, novellas, and novels. First, a brief introduction to the author's work and his place in the Latin American literary scene of the 20th century is provided, as well as the relationship between his work and that of William Faulkner, another great exponent of world literature of the period and one of his inspirations. Next, we analyse the short story 'El Álbum', in particular the intertextual episode with Shakespeare's King Lear, as a crucial and defining point in Malabia's trajectory in Onetti's work, attempting to understand its reverberations in the way he interacts with the world around him and with its other inhabitants. Based on this, we analyse the construction of Malabia as a character in terms of the autonomy that Onetti gives him in his relationship with the outside world, as well as his reliability as a narrator, to study the way in which it all converges into a narrative in which the "real" of the story and the imagined become confused, seeking ways to elucidate this relationship. Finally, Malabia's position in Onetti's work is considered as one of an alter ego of the author, exemplified in his aspirations as a writer and in how both interact with their respective worlds with a certain rebelliousness. In so doing, other avenues are explored to interpret the character's other appearances in Onetti's work and, consequently, the writer's literary production as a whole and the tools he employs in its construction, serving to outline a gateway to a body of work that might be difficult for first-time readers to access. (AU)