essay explores the relationship between parody, melodrama and writing in the metafictional novels La tia Julia y el escribidor by Mario Vargas Llosa and La amante de Shakespeare by Rodrigo Parra Sandoval. This comparative reading of the two novels, based on the notion of literature memory, pretends to establish a dialogue between both texts, particularly in terms of their similarities and differences, around three fundamental topics: the way in which they parody melodrama and its derived contemporary forms (feuilleton, radionovelas and romance novels), the parodies they construct of the writer characters within the diegetic level of the novels and, finally, how these multiple parodies pose a series of challenges for the reader. In conclusion, this dissertation argues that both novels parody melodrama in a similar fashion (in terms of its style and themes), particularly in the suppression of the happy ending typical of this genre. Moreover, both novels present three characters that write but, in both texts, these same characters and their parody raise the question of what it means to be a writer (or its comic foil, an escribidor, an incompetent writer), as well as the question about the subject (modern or postmodern) that underlies each novel, definable by the relation between each writer-character and their text. Finally, it was concluded that, even though both novels parody the melodramatic happy ending and the notion of what it is to be a writer, the parodic ethos, i.e, the intention behind the parody, is different for each novel. In Vargas Llosa s case, his parody of melodrama appears to be the materialization of a desire to pay homage, in a critical way, to a tradition he feels indebted to. On the other hand, for Parra Sandoval, the parody constitutes a criticism to the reception modes promoted by the popularity of paraliterary forms such as the romance novels written by Corin Tellado. Regarding the parodization of the writing figures, both authors seem to question the conflictive relationship between popular culture and high culture by highlighting that both are constructed with the same language and the same linguistic resources, therefore presenting postmodernist ideas. However, given the notion of the subject brought forth by each novel, it is possible to argue that Parra Sandoval s novel is closer to the logics of the postmodernist Latin- American narrative while Vargas Llosa s text, by proposing an homogeneous notion of the subject, is still attached to the traditional modernist Latin-American literature.