Una caminata provinciana: Digresión y peregrinación en A Luján (una novela peregrina) de Ariel Magnus

This article analyzes the representation of pilgrimage in relation to a digressive discourse on the province in the novel A Luján (una novela peregrina) (2013), by the Argentine writer Ariel Magnus. Considering the sacred dimension of the journey associated with pilgrimage, this text focus on the ways in which the experience of urban walking problematizes the concept of center and periphery by using a discourse that mixes humor and irony. In tune with the connection between walking and thinking, digression is used as a rhetorical tool that offsets the discourse and defines an aesthetic characterized by textual wandering. In the construction of a religious imaginary about the province, the novel uses irony to refer to the meaning of the spiritual walk under the mundane conditions of the tourist trip, and plays with the traditional figures associated with the pilgrim and the tourist.