Representaciones y elaboraciones de la homosexualidad en la literatura costarricense

Abstract

In literature published throughout the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century, we find what can be called a literary series about homosexuality. In the history of Costa Rican literature, in the early-20th century we find Jenaro Cardona’s novel La esfinge del sendero (1914) and just after the first half of the last century, Jose Leon Sanchez’s La isla de los hombres solos (1963), which presents homosexuality as part of prison violence. It wasn’t until the late-20th century that literature abandoned the allusions that excluded everything related to sexuality to adopt a new way of bringing not only homosexuality, but sexuality in general, out of the closet.
The illustrative value of these publications proposes a reinterpretation of the Costa Rican State and the role of its institutions, which gave rise to the significance of this gesture in contemporary Costa Rican literature.