Lost worlds : Latin America and the imagining of empire / Kevin Foster.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Foster, Kevin, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stereotypes (Social psychology) in literature.

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Latin America--In literature.

Latin America.

Latin America--Foreign public opinion.

Physical Description:

xvii, 262 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Pluto, 2009.

Summary:

Think of Latin America and what do you see? Escape? Adventure? Chaos? Oblivion? In Lost Worlds Kevin Foster explores how these and other stereotypes about the continent came into being and what their continuing currency tells us about ourselves. Foster argues that over the last 200 years Latin America has served the English speaking west as an imaginary realm where its highest hopes and deepest anxieties might be realised or assuaged. Examining a range of texts, from Southey's epics to Naipaul's essays, from Conan Doyle's gentlemen adventurers to Kerouac's restless hipsters, from the ruined Missions of Paraguay to the urban chaos of 1970s Argentina, this book examines the role that Latin America has played in British, US and Australian endeavours to resolve the key moral and political crises facing the English speaking west in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Contents:

Introduction: The Half-Light 1

1 News From Nowhere 14

2 Adventures and Anxieties 38

3 The Last of England 77

4 South of the Border 114

5 Dreaming of Pele 147

6 Fearful Symmetry 173

Conclusion: Southward Ho! 196.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780745315133

0745315135

0745315089

9780745315089

OCLC:

298778137