Date of Submission

Spring 2022

Academic Program

Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literature

Project Advisor 1

Melanie Nicholson

Project Advisor 2

Timand Bates

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This project is comprised of four translations of the work of Mexican-Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, with an analysis that seeks to connect the works to Liquid Modernity, by postmodern philosopher Zygmunt Bauman. In short, I propose that Bolaño's darker tone and narrative structures are indicative not only of Bauman's concept of modernization, but they speak fully to the realities of life in the dawn of the information age; his stories consist of relationships decaying over telephone lines; a famous author forced to commit fraud to get by; a sixteen-year-old droupout who meets mysterious old nomad at the end of his life; and a man suffering from an apparent crisis as he haplessly watches fire-twirlers in the street. These stories are investigated individually through the lens of Liquid Modernity in order to create a more concrete interpretation of the work as it applies to modern life.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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