“Traigo una historia para los que tienen fe”: Antígona Pérez, sucesora puertorriqueña de la heroína griega

Abstract

A young indomitable woman who studies History, Antigone Perez, waits for her death in an imaginary and discredited Spanish-American state governed by Generalissimo Creón Molina. The protagonist and the oppressor’s names of The passion according to Antígona Pérez anticipate Luis Rafael Sanchez’s version, settled in a severe and constant criticism of fraud in different and complementary demonstrations at some point in the twentieth century and in a decadent society. In captivity, this young woman suffers misunderstanding and is gradu-ally abandoned. She will be shot on charges of insurrection and treason against her country. By means of a hermeneutical approach that combines the main sui generis featuresof myth –accepting its time-lessness, teaching, nearness, potential virtuality and peculiarities, in particular the persistence of the motive–, similarities and differences will be analyzed in the new treatment. Even though the temporal, spatial and axiological circumstances are displaced, the antinomy between freedom and individual responsibility-state authority remains. Therefore, the article explores what myth-poetic, emotional and intellectual charge the protagonist and her opponents cast; which function or functions the choir performs, which indicative signifi cance the new literary piece confirms and whether the final result can be qualified as a temporary or a universal achievement.