The twentieth-century Spanish American novel / Raymond Leslie Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Raymond L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spanish American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Spanish American fiction.

Physical Description:

xi, 266 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

20th century Spanish American novel

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2003.

Summary:

Spanish American novels of the Boom period (1962-1967) attracted a world readership to Latin American literature, but Latin American writers had already been engaging in the modernist experiments of their North American and European counterparts since the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, the desire to be "modern" is a constant proccupation in twentieth-century Spanish American literature and thus a very useful lens through which to view the century's novels. In this pathfinding study, Raymond L. Williams offers the first complete analytical and critical overview of the Spanish American novel throughout the entire twentieth century. Using the desire to be modern as his organizing principle, he divides the century's novels into five periods and discusses the differing forms that "the modern" took in each era. For each period, Williams begins with a broad overview of many novels, literary contexts, and some cultural debates, followed by new readings of both canonical and significant non-canonical novels. A special feature of this book is its emphasis on women writers and other previously ignored and/or marginalized authors, including experimental and gay writers. Williams also clarifies the legacy of the Boom, the Postboom, and the Postmodern as he introduces new writers and new novelistic trends of the 1990s.

Contents:

Part I The Literary Tradition and Modern Science, 1900-1921 1

1 Novelistic and Cultural Contexts at the Turn of the Century 3

2 Rereading Spanish American Classics 19

Part II Traditional and Modernist Aesthetics, 1922-1940 35

3 Novelistic and Cultural Contexts in the 1920s and 1930s 37

4 Rereading Spanish American Criollista Classics 53

5 Rereading Novels of Vanguardia 69

Part III The Rise of the Modernist Novel, 1941-1961 87

6 Novelistic and Cultural Contexts of Latin American Modernism 89

7 Rereading Spanish American Modernist Novels 105

Part IV Modern and Cosmopolitan Works, 1962-1967 123

8 Novels and Contexts of the Boom and Beyond 125

9 Rereading Novels of the Boom 137

10 Rereading the Spanish American Novel beyond the Boom 149

Part V Toward a Postboom, Feminist, and Postmodern Novel, 1968-1999 163

11 Novelistic and Cultural Contexts in the 1970s and 1980s 165

12 Rereading the Spanish American Novel of the 1970s and 1980s 193

13 Modern, Postmodern, and Transnational: The Latin American Novel in the 1990s 205.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [239]-249) and index.

ISBN:

0292791615

OCLC:

50447955