The The City and the Dogs

the authoritarianism and the body docilization in the military institution

Abstract

The corpus of this study is the literary work La ciudad y los perros, published in 1963, written by the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. The narrative reports about the cadets’ daily life from a Military School called Leoncio Prado, which does not exist only in fiction, and it is a famous institution in Lima, Peru, institution where Vargas Llosa was a student. The focus of the analysis is how literature deals with the formation in military institutions, taking into account the power relations that lead the operation of the school. Therefore, we based our research on Foucault's postulates (2013), as he focuses are on power, discipline and docile bodies, which are concepts with extreme importance for the analysis proposed to be done. Likewise, Mario Vargas Llosa (2004, 2013) promotes our research, referring to the construction of the characters. Thus, this study presents an analysis from the approach to literary criticism of socio-historical basis.

KEYWORDS: La ciudad y los perros; Authoritarianism; Docile bodies; Military Institution; Power Structures.