Damn the suit and the tailor who made it: power struggle between the narrator and the editor in Nuevas coplas y cantares del temible bardo Eudomóndaro Higuera alias el Tuerto

Victoria Carpenter

Research and Innovation Service

Research Output:

Contribution to journal

Article

Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

The collection of poems by a supposedly long-dead Sinaloan poet Eudomóndaro Higuera (referred to in the study as ‘the Narrator’) Nuevas coplas y cantares del temible bardo Eudomóndaro Higuera alias el Tuerto, is an intriguing reading material. Compiled and annotated by Mario Bojórquez (who will be referred to as ‘the Editor’), it contains a strange mix of bawdy lyrics, insulting epitaphs, and soul-searching coded poems. The collection presents a challenge to the reader, who is forced to choose between the Narrator’s often simplistic writing and the Editor’s high academic analyses thereof. Using the theory of text ownership, I will analyse this contradictory combination to determine who – if anyone – controls the text of the collection. I will explore the roles of the narrator and the editor, taken up by both the Narrator and the Editor, in order to challenge the apparent parodic nature of the collection.