Discourse of Postmodern Issues in Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the postmodernist elements of magic realism as well as other postmodernist issues found in Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. It will look at how Llosa uses magic realism to present the story of an indigenous tribe that refuses to surrender to the demands of change and to a so-called civilization. The paper investigates how magic realism is used to tell the story of a man seeking an identity, eventually finding it as a chronicler and the voice of a people and a culture he is obsessed to preserve from the clutches of a physical or worse mental colonization. It will also show how Llosa contrasts a uniform view of culture typical of modernism with the hybridity emphasized by postmodernism basing it on his shift in ideology and style of writing.