El Viejo Mundo vs. el Nuevo Mundo. Avatares picarescos y candidianos en Asuntos de un hidalgo disoluto

Shuttling between the old world and the new world both culture- and archetypology-wise, the contribution at hand aims to ferret out the similarities and contrasts woven into the rich tapestry of Asuntos de un hidalgo disoluto, through which the Columbian novelist Héctor Abad Faciolince is carefully threading the following different heroic typologies: the picaresque, the candidesque and that represented by the chief male character of the novel under scrutiny. Firmly grounded in the analysis of said similarities and contrasts, the idiosyncratically fashioned protagonist will then emerge not merely as a coalescence of the typologies in question, but also, paradoxically enough, in sharp contrast, or, on occasion, as a perfect complement or even corrective thereto. The paper further seeks to shed light on the continual shift of the Columbian (anti)hero from candid- to picaroon-like stances, with an additional focus placed on memorizing, remembering and consigning to oblivion, and, more importantly even, on the intertextual dialogue which these techniques are orchestrating between authors, continents, ages and cultural heritages.