El terror como enfermedad. Facundo y las fascinaciones de la barbarie en Sarmiento y en Gorriti

Abstract

The events that occurred right after the Battle of Tucuman (1812) between the Federal forces of Facundo Quiroga and the United Armies of General Lamadrid represent an episode of nineteenth-century Argentine history that seems to concentrate the horror caused by those who held power. There are at least two stories about this episode and its consequences: Chapter 12 of Facundo Quiroga by Sarmiento (1845) and “La novia del muerto” (1865) by Juana M. Gorriti. Sarmiento prefers focusing on the scene in which the ladies from Tucuman, after the battle, ask Quiroga about their relatives and he lays out the symptomatic feature of horror as ‘disease’. On the other hand, Gorriti prefers focusing on a love story and narrating how public acts affect the private world. This paper analyzes some elements of both Gothic and Romantic aesthetics and the appearance of bodies that are crossed by political horror.