On Friday, November 12, 1:30pm, in Hall of Languages 101, the English Department Graduate Colloquium will convene (in person), with a presentation from our own Professor Erin Mackie on her recent research, soon to be published in Latin American Literary Review (Fall 2021).

Prof. Mackie will present “Angels of Allegory and Experience: Laura Restrepo’s The Angel of Galilea (Dulce compañía) and Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings'”

Abstract: Establishing an intertextual relation between Restrepo’s novel and García Márquez’s story, this paper examines how Restrepo’s paired commitment to socio-political relevance and to broad legibility shapes her novel’s engagement with the legacy of magic realism and with discursive, especially novelistic, conventions more generally. A comparative analysis of thematic and formal features highlights how this commitment molds Dulce compañía’s recapitulation of the theme of the angel of flesh and blood within an updated, urban context, and in a commercially successful novel with an international readership. Focusing on narrative and figurative, especially allegorical, discourses, I consider that while the angel allegory in “A Very Old Man” is used to excavate literary-rhetorical issues of representation (as argued by Carlos Rincón), in Dulce compañía it is oriented towards the preservative revelation of popular forms of belief that emerge from the lived experience of violence and abandonment.

Colloquium attendance is required of all PhD students currently in coursework.