FROM ORAL LITERATURE TO THE FILM YANA-WARA: FOLK HORROR AS INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION

Cabrejo J.C. · Metafora (2026) · DOI: 10.36286/mrlad.v3i6.263

Resumen

The article examines Yana-Wara (2023), by Óscar and Tito Catacora, as a case of intersemiotic translation from oral literature into the cinematic language. Drawing on Zavala’s proposal of narrative glossematics (inspired by Hjelmslev) and on contributions from the semiotics of Greimas and Fontanille, it distinguishes substance and form in the planes of expression and content, in order to trace the transit of the mythical figure of the anchanchu from oral narrative—documented in transcriptions and ethnographies—to its audiovisual configuration within the folk horror subgenre. The corpus includes the film, the transcription of the tale “Los músicos encantados,” and Fernández Juárez’s ethnographies on the anchanchu. The article argues that Yana-Wara updates this entity from oral literature through three operations: (1) reproducing, in mise en abyme, features of oral literature within cinematic fiction; (2) attenuating the horror component by means of a narrative structure close to Greek tragedy; and (3) preserving the Aymara worldview that sustains the text’s ideology (substance of content) around the figure of the anchanchu, even as it appropriates globally employed genre codes. This last aspect is also examined in light of Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere.

Instituciones: Universidad de Lima