El laberinto (
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
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Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
for "The Labyrinth") is a 1974 novel by the Argentine writer
Manuel Mujica Lainez
Manuel Mujica LainezIn fact, the writer himself spelled his surnames without accents, as all his books published during his lifetime show. (11 September 1910 – 21 April 1984) was an Argentine novelist, essayist and art critic.
He is mainly ...
.
It purports to tell the story of Ginés de Silva, the boy shown holding a torch in the lower left-hand corner of
El Greco
Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El ...
's 1586 painting ''
The Burial of Count Orgaz
''The Burial of the Count of Orgaz'' ( es, El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz) is a 1586 painting by El Greco, a prominent Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect of Greek origin. Widely considered among his finest works, it illustrates a p ...
''.
This
picaresque
The picaresque novel ( Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corr ...
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood ( coming of age), in which character change is imp ...
presents, a rich and highly amusing series of pictures from the boy's
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsul ...
childhood in the 1570s to the old man's death in early colonial
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...
in the 1650s. Thus it connects, somehow, its author's
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...
-preoccupied novels (
''Bomarzo'' and ''
The Wandering Unicorn
' (known in English as ''The Wandering Unicorn'') is a 1965 fantasy novel by the Argentine author Manuel Mujica Lainez based on the legend of Melusine. Set in medieval France and Palestine of the Crusades, Mujica Lainez’s novel is a mixture of ...
'') with which it forms a kind of trilogy, with Mujica Lainez'
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the Capital city, capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata ...
cycle.
As usual with Manuel Mujica Lainez, the main love-story in this novel involves a same-sex relationship.
1974 novels
Novels by Manuel Mujica Lainez
Argentine bildungsromans
Novels set in Argentina
Picaresque novels
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