Perspective and temporality in “El camino” by Miguel Delibes: From ambiguity to paradox

Abstract

The aim of the article is to explore the narrative composition of the novel El camino by Miguel Delibes focusing on its perspectival and temporal structuring. It is argued that ambiguous perspective is one of the key aspects of its compositional features. This narrative technique is used to mix multiple perspectives in a manner that ends up creating paradoxical representations in depicting the narrative episodes. The article claims that such perspectival configurations, which are to a large extent also based on the temporal dimension, have to be described in terms of networks of local perspectival choices and are best understood via the concept of compression of perspectives.