THE PICTORIAL METAPHOR IN EL JARDÍN DE LAS DELICIAS (1999) BY VIOLETA BARRIENTOS

Morales J.M.P. · Metafora (2025) · DOI: 10.36286/mrlad.v3i6.246

Resumen

This article undertakes a detailed analysis of the ekphrasis developed between the poetry collection El jardín de las delicias by Peruvian writer Violeta Barrientos, published in 1999, and the celebrated homonymous pictorial work by the Flemish painter Jheronimus Bosch, also known as Hieronymus Bosch. Barrientos’s poetic text not only appropriates the visual language of the painting but also reworks it in order to propose a renewed interpretation of the medieval imaginary. Through a sustained dialogue between the literary and the pictorial, the author constructs an interpretation grounded in the figurative field of metaphor, in which simile, allegory, and synesthesia play a central role. In this way, the text unfolds an alternative vision of the body, desire, and pleasure. To examine this creative and hermeneutic process, the concepts of General Textual Rhetoric will be employed, as our interest lies in identifying the functioning of rhetorical figures related to ekphrasis, insofar as this device operates in service of metaphor. Furthermore, the category of pleasure will be addressed through an approach that articulates queer studies with psychoanalysis, with the aim of deepening the understanding of how the work challenges and resignifies normative notions of sexuality and representations of the body.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal