An Emilito Explainer
Vivíparo,
Ovíparo
These are terms that have been applied to the writing process, as
far as Emilito knows, only by the Spanish philosopher/author Miguel de
Unamuno.
Escritores vivíparos
and escritores ovíparos
(Emilito notes that a literal
translation would be "viviparous writers" and "oviparous writers,"
phrases that are not used in English.)
Anthony McCann, in a
master's thesis at the National University of Ireland, has a good
explanation of the process of the escritor
vivíparo
:
"Despite [Unamuno's] reluctance to establish conventional generic
distinctions among his prose works, he has, nevertheless, made one
basic distinction which has proved useful to his critics who seek to
enhance understanding of his work by identifying and analyzing its
basic types. This is the distinction . . . between what he called
an escritor
ovíparo,
who does the research into the historical background of his novel,
writes preliminary sketches of his characters, and carefully plans the
structure of his entire work, and that of the escritor
vivíparo,
who writes a
lo
que salga
['according to whatever comes out'], without previous conscious
preparation, in a burst of spontaneous creativity."
Return to home page
Return to Lagos History #1
Return to Victorina