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A Twice-Told Tail: Reinaldo Arenas's “El Cometa Halley”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jorge Olivares
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Abstract

This essay analyzes the articulation of transgressive desires in Reinaldo Arenas's “El Cometa Halley,” a parodic continuation of Federico García Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba. I argue that by moving the Alba sisters from Spain to Cuba and liberating their repressed sexualities, Arenas pursues his fantasies of sexual freedom. Linking his rewriting of García Lorca to the historically significant arrival of Halley's comet in 1910, Arenas relies on the comet's phallic tail to set the story in motion. More specifically, “El Cometa Halley” sketches a preoedipal fantasy of mother-son incest that recurs in Arenas's life and work.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 117 , Issue 5 , October 2002 , pp. 1188 - 1206
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2002

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