SOURCE: "Parody Island: Two Novels by Bioy Casares," in Hispanic Journal, Vol. 4, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 43-9.

In the following essay, Levine asserts that The Invention of Morel and A Plan for Escape comment on the nature of literature by parodying and synthesizing "a whole tradition of utopic works." Levine particularly notes the novellas' ties to H. G. Wells's dystopic work The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896).

Parody in the new Latin American novel has become a central theme in Hispanic criticism, and one of the first writers to theorize on this subject was Cuban novelist Severo Sarduy. In an essay-parody on Manuel Puig's Boquitas pintadas in which (in the spirit of Don Quijote, Part II) Puig's provincial Argentine women gossip about the sophisticated Parisian transvestites of Sarduy's Cobra, Sarduy defines a concept of parody which goes beyond that of "burlesque imitation" ["Notas a las Notas … A propósito de...