Culture November 14, 2012

The grotesque is central to much of Spanish novelist Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s work. After witnessing horrifying political violence in Latin America and his native Spain in the early years of the 20th century, Valle-Inclán developed the style he called esperpento, which sought to bring out “the comic side of the tragedy of life.” In works of esperpento, reality is contorted until actors come to physically resemble the unwholesomeness of their actions. Evil isn’t so banal when seen though Valle-Inclán’s eyes. Valle-Inclán set the standard for his invented genre with Tyrant Banderas, a novel about an absolute dictator who blows his