The presentation given by Lecture Vallès sought to reconstruct and systematise the vision of literature as a game that is implicit in the work of Carlos Pujol, writer, critic and translator from Barcelona. To do this, she addressed the image analysis that the novelist creates of himself in his texts as a writer who plays and, according to his poetic theory of literature as a game, invites the reader to play.

At the end of her presentation, she shared the conclusions of the research, which proposes a definition of literature as a literary game of Cervantine tradition with five characteristic features: the forge through the fiction of a magic mirror; the aspiration to be art and entertainment in an never-ending inquiry into reality and appearance; the rejection of the instrumentalisation of literature and the utilitarianism of using fiction in the service of ideological or economic interests; the game with literary tradition, authority and the reader, with a demystifying attitude toward stereotypes; and finally, the fact of transmitting through the literary work an image of the author himself as auctor ludens who invites the “ludens reader” to participate in the game of literature.

This study by the Faculty of Humanities lecturer is part of the “Carlos Pujol: Literature and Humanism” research project.