Ars Erotica: Analyzing "Arcadia" and "Eva Luna" Anonymous 12th Grade

“Language is not a neutral instrument.”[1]

Literature is never without an ideology, whether intended by the writer, interpreted by the reader, inherent in the language, or implied by the context. Thus, an author or a playwright’s particular manipulation of medium – a particular style – always serves a purpose; the author's, or the audience’s. The heroine’s characterisation, the erotic scenes, and the intertextuality in Isabel Allende’s écriture féminine Eva Luna (1987) exhibit the vital potential of sexual and creative female expression. Furthermore, the novel’s revision of the postcolonial genre, magical realism, for the female Subaltern contextualises the problematic decisions and experiences of women in Latin American society. The characterisation of women, the satirical devices, and the cyclical structure of Tom Stoppard’s comedy of ideas Arcadia (1993) could represent the struggle for the inclusion of the feminine psyche and Eros into patriarchal epistemology. Though segregated by their cultural and historical context, both texts are unified by their feminist discourse on women’s sexuality; in other words, they are instances of ars erotica [2].

The titular character’s development, through intertextuality and metafiction,...