Questions Of The Liminal In The Fiction Of Julio Cortazar

The Argentinian writer, Julio Cortazar was immersed in one of the most vibrant and revolutionary intellectual scenes of the last century, the Paris of the 1950s and 60s. This book shows that his work engages with and often foreshadows many of the problems which were to become central to so-called poststructuralist philosophy and poetics.

"The great Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar (1914-84) was immersed in one of the most vibrant and revolutionary intellectual scenes of the last century, the Paris of the 1950s and 60s. Yet his often highly cerebral work has never received the close philosophical attention it deserves. Moran's book fills this critical lacuna. Rather than indiscriminately applying 'theory' to Cortazar, it aims to show that his work both engages with and often foreshadows many of the problems which were to become central to so-called poststructuralist philosophy and poetics. This study demonstrates that Cortazar remains enduringly, problematically modern."

OrIoff shows that Cortázar did not become a political writer as a result of the Cuban Revolution, as is often claimed, but rather that the representation of the political was present in Cortázar's very first writings. The book analyses the evolution of the representation of distinct political elements throughout Cortázar's writings, mainly with reference to the novels and the so-called collage books, which have so far received only limited critical attention. The author also alludes to some short stories and refers to many of Cortázar's non-literary texts. Through this chosen corpus, the book follows a thematic thread, showing that politics was present in Cortázar's fiction from his very first writings, and not - as he himself tended to claim - only following his conversion to socialism. The study aims to show that contrary to what many critics have argued, this political conversion did not divide the writer into an irreconcilable before and after - the apolitical versus the political - but rather it simply shifted the emphasis of the representation of the political that already existed in Cortázar's writings. Carolina Orloff is an independent scholar working on research projects in the UK and in Argentina.

In recent years, schools have started introducing more inclusive syllabi emphasizing the works and ideas of previously overlooked or underrepresented writers. Readers of all ages can now explore the rich contributions of writers from around the world. These writers have various backgrounds, and unlike most writers from the U.S. or the United Kingdom, information on them in English can be difficult to find. Encyclopedia of World Writers: 1800 to the Present covers the most important writers outside of the U.S., Britain, and Ireland since 1800. More than 330 insightful, A-to-Z entries profile novelists, poets, dramatists, and short-story writers whose works are anthologized in textbooks or assigned in high school English classes. Entries range in length from 200 to 1,000 words each and include a biographical sketch, synopses of major works, and a brief bibliography. Dozens of entries are new to this edition and many existing entries have been updated and significantly expanded with new "Critical Analysis" sections. Coverage includes: Chinua Achebe Margaret Atwood Roberto Bolaño Albert Camus Khalid Hosseini Victor Hugo Mohammad Iqbal Franz Kafka Stieg Larsson Mario Vargas Llosa Naghib Mahfouz Gabriel García Márquez Kenzaburo Oe Marcel Proust Leo Tolstoy Emile Zola and more.

Praise for the print edition:"...a useful and engaging reference to the vast world of the novel in world literature."

James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) has been recognized as a central model for the Spanish American 'New Narrative'. Joyce's linguistic and technical influence became the unequivocal sign that literature in Spanish America had definitively abandoned narrow regionalist concerns and entered a global literary canon. In this bold and wide-ranging study, Jose Luis Venegas rethinks this evolutionary conception of literary history by focusing on the connection between cultural specificity and literary innovation. He argues that the intertextual dialogue between James Joyce and prominent authors such as Argentines Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar, Cuban Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Mexican Fernando del Paso, reveals the anti-colonial value of modernist form. Venegas explores the historical similarities between Joyce's Ireland during the 1920s and Spanish America between the 1940s and 70s to challenge depoliticized interpretations of modernist aesthetics and propose unsuspected connections between formal experimentation and the cultural transformations demanded by decolonizing societies. Jose Luis Venegas is Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.