Redefining Latin American Historical Fiction

Current scholarship on Latin American historical fiction has failed to take feminism and postcolonialism into account. This study uses these important contemporary discourses as a starting point for a new definition of the Latin American historical novel that includes national identity, magical realism, historical intertextuality, and symbolism.

"The fictionalized explorers and conquistadors represented in this corpus all identify with certain aspects of Amerindian culture - significantly, those elements that are most distinct from European culture, such as cannibalism and human sacrifice - but also feel the need to distance themselves from these "others" in order to protect their own European cultural identity. In most cases, the conquistadors themselves are represented as outsiders within the enterprise of imperialism, due to ethnic, religious, or sexual differences from the norm. This representation turns the gaze inward toward the "other" within European culture, underscoring the complex origins of Latin American cultures in the violent encounter between the Amerindians and the conquistadors." "By examining these issues, Lopez's Latin American Novels of the Conquest illuminates the ways in which Latin American novelists used their literary imaginations to embody their ambivalence regarding their own transcultural heritage as children of both the colonized and the colonizer."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Contemporary Latin American fiction establishes a unique connection between masquerade, frequently motivated by stigma or trauma, and social justice. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines philosophy, history, psychology, literature, and social justice theory, this study delineates the synergistic connection between these two themes. Weldt-Basson examines fourteen novels by twelve different Latin American authors: Mario Vargas Llosa, Sergio Galindo, Augusto Roa Bastos, Fernando del Paso, Mayra Santos-Febres, Isabel Allende, Carmen Boullosa, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Marcela Serrano, Sara Sefchovich, Luisa Valenzuela, and Ariel Dorfman. She elucidates the varieties of social justice operating in the plots of contemporary Latin American novels: distributive, postmodern/feminist, postcolonial, transitional, and historical justices. The author further examines how masquerade and disguise aid in articulating the theme of social justice, why this is important, and how it relates to Latin American history and the historical novel.

Beginning with the 1979 publication of Alejo Carpentier's El arpa y la sombra, the New Historical Novel has become the dominant genre within Latin American fiction. In this at-times tongue-in-cheek postmodern study, Seymour Menton explores why the New Historical Novel has achieved such popularity and offers discerning readings of numerous works. Menton argues persuasively that the proximity of the Columbus Quincentennial triggered the rise of the New Historical Novel. After defining the historical novel in general, he identifies the distinguishing features of the New Historical Novel. Individual chapters delve deeply into such major works as Mario Vargas Llosa's La guerra del fin del mundo, Abel Posse's Los perros del paraíso, Gabriel García Márquez's El general en su laberinto, and Carlos Fuentes' La campaña. A chapter on the Jewish Latin American novel focuses on several works that deserve greater recognition, such as Pedro Orgambide's Aventuras de Edmund Ziller en tierras del Nuevo Mundo, Moacyr Scliar's A estranha nação de Rafael Mendes, and Angelina Muñiz's Tierra adentro.

The Latin American novel burst onto the international literary scene with the Boom era--led by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa--and has influenced writers throughout the world ever since. García Márquez and Vargas Llosa each received the Nobel Prize in literature, and many of the best-known contemporary novelists are inspired by the region's fiction. Indeed, magical realism, the style associated with García Márquez, has left a profound imprint on African American, African, Asian, Anglophone Caribbean, and Latinx writers. Furthermore, post-Boom literature continues to garner interest, from the novels of Roberto Bolaño to the works of César Aira and Chico Buarque, to those of younger novelists such as Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Alejandro Zambra, and Valeria Luiselli. Yet, for many readers, the Latin American novel is often read in a piecemeal manner delinked from the traditions, authors, and social contexts that help explain its evolution. The Oxford Handbook of the Latin American Novel draws literary, historical, and social connections so that readers will come away understanding this literature as a rich and compelling canon. In forty-five chapters by leading and innovative scholars, the Handbook provides a comprehensive introduction, helping readers to see the region's intrinsic heterogeneity--for only with a broader view can one fully appreciate García Márquez or Bolaño. This volume charts the literary tradition of the Latin American novel from its beginnings during colonial times, its development during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, and its flourishing from the 1960s onward. Furthermore, the Handbook explores the regions, representations of identity, narrative trends, and authors that make this literature so diverse and fascinating, reflecting on the Latin American novel's position in world literature.

This book offers a substantial examination of how contemporary authors deal with the complex legacies of authoritarian regimes in various Spanish-speaking countries. It does so by focusing on works that explore an under-studied aspect: the reliance of authoritarian power on medical notions for political purposes. From the Porfirian regime in Mexico to Castro’s Cuba, this book describes how such regimes have sought to seize medical knowledge to support propagandistic ideas and marginalize their opponents in ways that transcend specific pathologies, political ideologies, and geographical and temporal boundaries. Medicine, Power, and the Authoritarian Regime in Hispanic Literature brings together the work of literary scholars, cultural critics, and historians of medicine, arguing that contemporary authors have actively challenged authoritarian narratives of medicine and disease. In doing so, they continue to re-examine the place of these regimes in the collective memory of Latin America and Spain.