Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalan from the Department of Comparative Literature will give a lecture entitled ‘Visions of the Abyss: Manet, Lowry, Bolaño, and the Ghost of Maximilian of Austria’ at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, part of the School of Advanced Studies at the University of London, on Thursday 22 January at 7pm.
The tragic story of the rise and fall of Maximilian of Austria (1832-1867), the Hapsburg archduke-turned-Emperor of Mexico, has generated scores of legends, dramas, novels, paintings, and films. Maximilian was executed by a firing-squad in Querétaro, Mexico, and his proud and beautiful consort, Charlotte of Belgium, descended into madness. Patricia’s paper will conduct a transnational reading of the imperial narrative by examining its representation in French, British, and Latin American art and literature through a comparative analysis, particularly exploring its significance in the works of Édouard Manet, Malcolm Lowry, and Roberto Bolaño.
Patricia will begin with a discussion of Manet’s series of artistic compositions centred on the political theme of the French invasion of Mexico and its tragic conclusion. Entitled L’Exécution de Maximilien (1867-1869), the paintings represent a thinly-veiled critique of the Imperial régime of Napoleon III. She will then examine Malcolm Lowry’s association of Maximilian in the novel Under the Volcano (1947), which uses the motif of Faustian damnation with the dualistic conception of Mexico as an ‘infernal paradise’. Lowry endorses the age-old construction of the gringo who is ruthlessly shot by bandits. She will conclude with a discussion of Bolaño’s revisionist historiography of Maximilian’s adventure in his posthumous novel Woes of the True Policeman (2011), in which he returns to the theme of the horrors of history as fictionalised in 2666 (2004) by using the narrative of Maximilian as a symbol for the traumatic consciousness of Mexico.
Further details of the event can be found on the School of Advanced Studies website:
http://events.sas.ac.uk/imlr/events/view/16547/