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The Construction of Masculinity in Bryce Echenique’s Un mundo para Julius*

Abstract Bryce Echenique’s novel has been read as an illustration of the decadence of Peru’s mid twentieth-century oligarchy, which presages their fall and, alternatively, as a celebration of oral language. By concentrating on gender analysis, the present study draws on the novel’s orality to argue that, in spite of its seemingly arbitrary structure, Un mundo para Julius narrates, in a consistent, linear fashion, the protagonist’s crisis of masculine identification in the years leading up to his arrival at puberty. This crisis is triggered by the protagonist’s loss of his father in infancy, which leaves him without a clear masculine model. Julius’ quest to define a sensitive, aware masculinity capable of diverging from the machista extremes represented by his older brothers and stepfather illustrates the ways in which Bryce Echenique portrays masculinity as a construct, where changes in the details of how men present themselves may yield different gender identifications, and where femininity is defined by its relationship to oligarchical masculinity.