El juego de los géneros: La ambigüedad genérica en El juego del ángel de Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the genre of a novel influences the interpretation and understanding of its story, in particular in the novel The Angel’s Game, written by the Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón. In the thesis two genres are being investigated, the gothic and the fantastic, in an attempt to determinate the genre of the novel. Due to the generic determination, it is possible to analyze the importance of genre in the understanding of the book. The analysis leads to the conclusion that The Angel’s Game should be considered a hybrid novel, since there are several typical features of both the gothic and the fantastic. Based on the theoretical features of the two genres and the analysis of the book, the conclusion is made that a novel’s genre does influence the interpretation of the text. Especially, the interpretation of the story would change if the novel would be considered only gothic or only fantastic, so the most accurate interpretation of the story would be attained by regarding the book as a hybrid novel, with features of both genres taken into consideration.