Postmodern Parody In Latin American Literature

This book examines postmodern parody in Latin American literature as the intersection between ideology construction and deconstruction. Parody’s chief task is to deconstruct and criticize the ideologies behind previous texts. During this process, new ideologies are inevitably constructed. However, postmodernism simultaneously recognizes the partiality of all ideologies and rejects their enthronement as absolute truth. This raises the question of how postmodern parody deals with the paradox inherent in its own existence on the threshold between ideology construction/deconstruction and the rejection of ideology. This book explores the relationship between parody and ideology, as well as this paradox of postmodern parody in works written by writers ranging from early twentieth-century poets to the most recent novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Mario Vargas Llosa. The analyses include such authors as Cristina Peri Rossi, Manuel Puig, Luisa Valenzuela, Enrique Sánchez, Roberto Bolaño, Claudia Piñeiro, Margarita Mateo Palmer, Boris Salazar and Rosario Ferré.

Focusing on fiction from the 1970s to the present, Williams discusses the new generation of postmodern writers, which includes the Cuban Severo Sarduy, the Argentine Ricardo Piglia, the Chilean Diamela Eltit, the Puerto Rican Luis Rafael Sanchez, the Mexicans Jose Emilio Pacheco and Carmen Boullosa, the Colombians Albalucia Angel and R. H. Moreno-Duran, and the Ecuadorian Jorge Enrique Adoum, as well as many others. With topics of discussion ranging from political agendas, subversion, and parody to truth claims, marginalism, and the testimonio, Williams' argument not only supports postmodernism as a legitimate movement, but he also extends its authority from the North Atlantic region to the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Southern Cone.

This Handbook offers a comprehensive examination of Gabriel García Márquez's life, oeuvre, and legacy, the first such work since his death in 2014. It incorporates ongoing critical approaches such as feminism, ecocriticism, Marxism, and ethnic studies, while elucidating key aspects of his work, such as his Caribbean-Colombian background; his use of magical realism, myth, and folklore; and his left-wing political views. Thirty-two wide-ranging chapters coverthe bulk of the author's writings, giving special attention to the global influence of García Márquez.

Postmodernity in Latin America contests the prevailing understanding of the relationship between postmodernity and Latin America by focusing on recent developments in Latin American, and particularly Argentine, political and literary culture. While European and North American theorists of postmodernity generally view Latin American fiction without regard for its political and cultural context, Latin Americanists often either uncritically apply the concept of postmodernity to Latin American literature and society or reject it in an equally uncritical fashion. The result has been both a limited understanding of the literature and an impoverished notion of postmodernity. Santiago Colás challenges both of these approaches and corrects their consequent distortions by locating Argentine postmodernity in the cultural dynamics of resistance as it operates within and against local expressions of late capitalism. Focusing on literature, Colás uses Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch to characterize modernity for Latin America as a whole, Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman to identify the transition to a more localized postmodernity, and Ricardo Piglia’s Artificial Respiration to exemplify the cultural coordinates of postmodernity in Argentina. Informed by the cycle of political transformation beginning with the Cuban Revolution, including its effects on Peronism, to the period of dictatorship, and finally to redemocratization, Colás’s examination of this literary progression leads to the reconstruction of three significant moments in the history of Argentina. His analysis provokes both a revised understanding of that history and the recognition that multiple meanings of postmodernity must be understood in ways that incorporate the complexity of regional differences. Offering a new voice in the debate over postmodernity, one that challenges that debate’s leading thinkers, Postmodernity in Latin America will be of particular interest to students of Latin American literature and to scholars in all disciplines concerned with theories of the postmodern.

This volume examines Latin American literature in the context of a complimentary audiovisual culture dominated by mass media such as photography, film, and the Internet. The articles gathered here, all of them published for the first time, critically assess Latin American media theories (Garcia Canclini et al.), pointing out their strengths and shortcomings; show how literary works have been able to sustain their visibility in a highly competitive media ecology, accommodating to pop and mass culture while at the same time reaffirming the authority of the literary intellectual. Overall, the book's foregrounding of the impact of mass media on Latin American literature opens the critical debate on an increasingly essential subject.

Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2005), winner of the prestigious Cervantes prize, is one of the most important Latin American writers of the twentieth century. This commemorative collection consists of articles by nine scholars reflecting upon the postmodern nature of the Paraguayan author s literary production and his place in world literature. The volume includes articles on the author s screenplays, his masterpiece, the dictator novel I The Supreme, his short stories, feminist approaches to Roa Bastos s novels, reflections on the writer s Guarani poetry, and a study of the complex, intertextual relationships between his novel El fiscal and his other texts.

The Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater provides users with an accessible single-volume reference tool covering Portuguese-speaking Brazil and the 16 Spanish-speaking countries of continental Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Entries for authors, from the early colonial period to the present, give succinct biographical data and an account of the author's literary production, with particular attention to their most prominent works and where they belong in literary history.