The rewriting of the myths in the novels Regarding Roderer and The Woman of the Master of Guillermo Martínez

Abstract

This article investigates the presence of myths in the first two novels by Argentine writer and mathematician Guillermo Martínez. Regarding Roderer is a story about the process of maturity and maladjustment to life, impregnated with universal signs and questions, with the elements of the Faustian myth in the stage of contemporary human knowledge, present at various levels of the text: exploring the limits of human knowledge, Martinez makes the narrator reject the pact with the Devil, but it takes away his life. His second novel, The Woman of the Master, deals with the myth of Prometheus inside the story, referring to such disparate themes as talent and betrayal, generosity and envy, desire and vanity, always putting the focus on literature. Therefore, our research is based not only on the aforementioned novels but also on the author’s own reflections on literature -from his first book of essays, The Formula of Immortality, until the last published, Literary Reason-, and also in the opinions of the writer expressed in the interviews we did with him on three occasions. Our goal is to show that Guillermo Martínez writes about universal themes with a new tension, proving that Faust and Prometheus are two sides of the same myth, which is still actual.