Manuscripts, unpublished drafts, notebooks and personal correspondence: behind the writing of Jorge Ibargüengoitia´ s Las muertas

Abstract

Our main objective in this article is to analyze the creative process that went into the writing and rewriting of Ibargüengoitia’s novel Las muertas during the years 1965-1976. To this end we offer a study of the novel’s first unpublished draft, written in 1965 and entitled El libro de las Poquianchis, of the author’s personal correspondence with Joy Laville, his working notebooks and the final published version of the novel, completed in 1976. We draw conclusions regarding the narrator’s voice, the structure and ending of the novel, the author-reader contract, and the author’s poetics.