The three Antonios, in the novel El sueño de la historia, by Jorge Ed

Abstract

This text focuses on three historical characters: “The three Antonios”, with emphasis on the third character, who was born in Chile and whose name is José Antonio de Rojas. The three characters come from the novel The Dream of History (2000), by Jorge Edwards. Two of them were French and the third one was Chilean. The thing that they had in common was that they were influenced by the French Enlightenment. They lived in Chile during Spanish Colonialism at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century. This historical period was full of political, social and military conflicts, which led to the establishment of a Republic in Chile. However, this process of liberation was not unique for this country but took place in the whole American Continent. The text is characterized by a very parodic language and this parody has a specific function, i.e., to highlight identity related factors such as nation, language, class, gender and ethnicity. This is achieved by questioning and making illegitimate (invalid) the current discourse of historiography