Las figuras del flâneur y del detective masculinos en la obra de Javier Marías y Antonio Muñoz Molina
Masculine Figures of Flâneur and Detective in the Work of Javier Marías and Antonio Muñoz Molina

Summary/Abstract: This article examines two literary figures – the flâneur and his supposed successor, the detective – in the work of two contemporary Spanish authors, Javier Marías and Antonio Muñoz Molina. The flâneur was originally identified with the bourgeois walker of nineteenth-century Paris. His identity, par excellence equivocal, has evolved in the following decades, becoming over time an urban detective. Both figures, traditionally identified with the representation of “male gaze”, have aroused the interest of representatives of gender studies. The narrators of the novels of Javier Marías and Antonio Muñoz Molina are male heroes, who move frequently from one place to another, live or reside abroad. They have in common their love of wandering the streets of an unknown city, with the feeling of incongruity with the prosaic life of its permanent residents. Another characteristic they share is that due to concurrence of peculiar circumstances, they often come to collaborate with secret institutions, performing the function of a detective. The objective of this essay is to analyze how the two contemporary authors use the figures of flâneur and detective to construct identities of their male protagonists.

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