The ethosthrough homonymy

the Barranquilla group and the author-character in One Hundred Years of Solitudeand Living to Tell it

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the ethosof the characters Germán, Alfonso, Álvaro and Gabriel, from the fictional work One Hundred Years of Solitude(MÁRQUEZ, 2009), homonyms of the group of Barranquilla intellectuals quoted in the autobiography Living to Tell it(MÁRQUEZ, 2003): Germán Vargas, Alfonso Fuenmayor, Álvaro Cepeda Samudio and Gabriel García Márquez, whose social behavior is summarized by the fiction. For this purpose, a theoretical-analytical bridge is proposed between specific categories of two areas of knowledge: discursive ethos, from Rhetoric; and homonymy and onomatomancy, from Onomastics. In this study, homonymy and onomatomancy wereconsidered as cooperative agents for the construction of certain fictional ethé. Through the comparison of the construction of homonyms present in the fictional work and in Márquez’s autobiography, it was possible to associate the identities of the characters with the real entities (according to Márquez’s perspective), and to explain the imagetic and argumentative link present in the homonymic and onomatomantic phenomena. It is also possible to outline the identity-psychological perspective of such phenomena, mainly from the underground memory of La masacre de las bananeras, shared by the fictional entity -Gabriel -and the author-Gabriel García Márquez.