Re-visioning the Spanish Baroque: The Ekphrastic Dimension of Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins by Carlos Fuentes

Abstract

Carlos Fuentes’s short story collection Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (1989) is characterized by a strong pictorial dimension. While some stories are indebted to the fantastic imaginary of Francisco de Goya, several passages in the story “Reasonable People” can be seen as a narrative transfiguration of religious paintings by the Spanish Baroque artist Francisco de Zurbarán. More concretely, we intend to read “Reasonable People” as a narrativization of Zurbarán’s portraits of martyred virgins. We will therefore read the story in constant interaction with Fuentes’s essays on the Baroque and Zurbarán in particular. The analysis of this “pictorial” discourse in Constancia will lead us to revise the Baroque in the work of Fuentes.