A “Clearing in the Jungle": Adolescence in Martín Adán’s La casa de cartón

Abstract

While critics of La casa de cartón have all considered Martín Adán’s only novel within the cosmopolitan vein of Spanish American vanguardismo, the present study questions this classification by showing how the narrative’s nameless protagonist distances himself from not only 19th century tropes and discourses that had characterized literary production, but also from those of his contemporaries. An exploration of Adán’s multiple parodies of literary production in Spanish America, as well as the alternative for collective cultural expression embodied in the trope of adolescence, points to the need to reconsider how we, as critics, approach and, ultimately, organize the canon.