La ficción crítica de Manuel Ramos Otero o el cuentero como crítico queer.

In this essay I analyze the particular re-flexion of genres that Manuel Ramos Otero executes in the story "El cuento de la mujer del mar" (1979). I argue that the writer in this narrative elaborates what I call critical fiction, that is, a writing practice in which the "fabulous storyteller" becomes a literary critic, thus blurring the discursive boundaries that separate fiction from literary criticism, biography from literary criticism, and biography from autobiography. Ramos Otero creates a critical fiction of the life and work of the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos, who, like him, lived in exile in New York. Beyond the specular relations between both figures of the Puerto Rican literary canon, I propose that the writer fabricates a reading scene in which de Burgos appears as a pivotal figure of Puerto Rican literature and a precursor of his own fictional work. The poet becomes, in Ramosoterian fiction, a queer diva who questions the monumentalization of her figure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]