The Eve/Hagar Paradigm in the Fiction of Quince Duncan

Born in Costa Rica in 1940, Quince Duncan has penned an impressive body of work, including novels, short stories, essays, and literary and cultural criticism. Despite his reputation as Costa Rica's leading novelist, Duncan remains one of the least studied writers. Dellita Martin-Ogunsola seeks to remedy this inequity with The Eve/Hagar Paradigm in the Fiction of Quince Duncan. In this first book-length study devoted to Duncan's work, Martin-Ogunsola explores the issues of race, class, and gender in five of Duncan's major works published during the 1970s. Focusing primarily on the roles of women, Martin-Ogunsola uses the figures of Eve and the Egyptian slave Hagar to provide, through metaphor, an in-depth analysis of the female characters portrayed in Duncan's prose. Specifically, the Eve/Hagar paradigm is employed to examine how the essential characteristics of femininity play out in the context of ethnicity and caste.