ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I would like to present some ideas on how melodramatic representation and identification plays out in the work of Manuel Puig. I choose Puig because a signature of his oeuvre has been the masterfully crafted literary adaptation of cinematic melodrama forms into his narrative. 1 I also focus on his work because his sensibility to questions of sexuality and gender is the most nuanced among Latin American male writers of his generation. I want to see how a melodramatic tendency can be read in Puig’s rewriting of the novela rosa [the romance novel] in his Boquitas pintadas [translated as Heartbreak Tango, 1969]. 2 I also want to speculate on why melodrama takes on such a central place in Latin American cultures. In particular, I am interested in seeing how melodrama is delivered as a pedagogical practice, one that is always mediated. This requires that I first discuss certain conceptualizations of melodrama, then proceed to engage its Latin American difference.
