The Latin American Route of Doctor Faustus: Donoso’s El lugar sin límites and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano

Abstract

In this article we argue that José Donoso’s famous invocation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus in El lugar sin límites (1966) is mediated by the influence of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (1947) –a novel that addresses the topic of Mexican hell, and which in turn is textually based on Marlowe’s drama. We claim that in Mexico, 1965, precisely where Donoso wrote El lugar sin límites, and where, shortly before his arrival, UNAM’s Revista de la Universidad had published an issue exclusively devoted to Under the Volcano, José Donoso and Malcom Lowry cross literary paths and negotiate Christopher Marlowe’s hellish legacy on Latin American soil