Julián Herbert's "Canción de tumba" between postautonomy and intertextuality

Abstract

Julián Herbert’s Canción de tumba (2011), a collection of more or less linear narratives about the death of the author/narrator’s mother, presents many of the characteristics of what Josefina Ludmer would call "postautonomous literatures": postautonomy, according to Ludmer, implies the end of the literary institution as we know it and demands the arrival of a new, external paradigm of reading that allows for a more extensive understanding of such texts. However, it is difficult to ignore that the narrative technique in Canción de tumba, as well as its author/narrator/protagonist's awareness of it, represent one of its fundamental poetological bases. The most evident example of this phenomenon is the handling of intertextual references in the work, especially concerning 19th centruy literary poetics such as Symbolism and Decadentism. The use of quotations, paraphrases (serious or parodic), as well as references to other authors and literatures are frequently shown as invitations to discover the aesthetic and poetological foundations of the novel. By performing an analysis of some of these references, the purpose of this article is to explore to which extent a more complete understanding of what is considered postautonomous writing can be achieved by using methods that Ludmer would consider to be "obsolete" for this type of contemporary literature.