Presenter(s): Val Arbonias Flores (University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus)—History of the Americas
Faculty Mentor(s): Elidio La Torre Lagares (Comparative Literature)
Session 5.5: McNair Scholars Presentations
“The porteño writer Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952) prefigures in Latin American literature as one of the precursors of the fragmented novel in Argentina . His novel Museo de la Novela de la Eterna is a clear example of this with his 58 prologues, which represent an endless beginning . But in this fragmentation we discover as its readers one of its complications; its “unreadability” . By taking a digital humanities approach, this project focuses on converting selected chapters of the printed text of Museo to a hybrid hypertext (a printed text that also counts with digital elements like QR codes or hyperlinks) in hopes of increasing the readability of it . Through this process I hope to answer the following questions: Does Museo’s unreadability complication lie in its medium? What if by changing the medium we can better understand the aesthetics behind Macedenio’s work? What can this case study teach us about how to properly approach literary works that are deemed by many readers, not just scholars, as unreadable?