Vibrancy and desolation in Fernanda Trías’ Mugre rosa (2020)

Journal article

Mugre rosa (2020), by Uruguayan author Fernanda Trías, portrays a dystopian world devastated by a plague linked to environmental toxicity. It is also, I argue, a work of extraordinary vividness that evinces a concern about literary form and language. Trías’s style – her intricate use of description, formal and structural innovations, and figurative expression— possesses a vibrancy that works against the desolation enfolding through the diegesis. This essay probes how the novel’s concerns intersect with questions explored in fields such as ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. It also delves into the particularities of Trías’s style, parsing the implications of her use of language and form, which alternatively expand, nuance, transform, and collide with premises established at a diegetic level. Throughout the discussion, attention is given to the novel’s affective resonances and to its engagement with the nonhuman. The essay seeks to illuminate how Mugre rosa intervenes in the debate about the agency of literature in the Anthropocene.

Authors: Vázquez-Medina, O

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Journal: Bulletin of Spanish Studies
• Volume: 100
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 735-762
• Publication date: 2023-11-21
• Acceptance date: 2023-07-03
• DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2023.2262863
• EISSN: 1478-3428
• ISSN: 1475-3820
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR; Anthropocene; nonhuman; dystopia; affect; Fernanda Trías; Mugre rosa