Baldomero Lillo's "El chiflón del Diablo," Allegory of the modern Chilean nation

Abstract

Traditional criticism has shown a marked tendency towards pigeonholing Latin American naturalism within the confines of European naturalist concepts. This fact is particularly noticeable in regard to Chilean writer Baldomero Lillo's Sub Terra (1904). My analysis of the short story "El Chiflón del diablo, " which belongs to that collection, intends to widen the limited interpretive scope of criticism on Latin American naturalism. I argue that in this story Lillo appeals to allegory to characterize modern Chile as part of a counterdiscursive project that serves to demythologize literary and social response to the organizing liberal discourse used in the nineteenth century to found the Chilean nation.