Multiperspectivism and Narrative Complexity in Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Time of the Hero and The Feast of the Goat
Abstract
This article examines multiperspectivism and narrative complexity as defining structural and aesthetic principles in Mario Vargas Llosa's The Time of the Hero (1963) and The Feast of the Goat (2000). Using narratological frameworks of Gérard Genette, Mikhail Bakhtin and Mieke Bal, the study examines how Vargas Llosa employs polyphonic narration, variable focalisation and non-linear temporality to build a layered critique of authoritarian power and moral complicity. Through close comparative textual analysis, the article argues that the multi-perspectival technique is not an ornamental form but an ideological instrument. In refusing a single authoritative voice, both novels implicate the reader as an active interpreter of competing truths and enact, at the level of form, the instability of power and identity they thematise at the level of content. The results add to the academic discussion about the narrative poetics of Latin America and the politics of literary form.