The decline and fall of the lettered city : Latin America in the Cold War / Jean Franco.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Franco, Jean.

Series:

Convergences (Cambridge, Mass.)

Convergences

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Latin American literature.

Literature and society--Latin America.

Literature and society.

Latin America--Civilization--1948-.

Latin America.

Physical Description:

viii, 341 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The cultural Cold War in Latin America was waged as a war of values--artistic freedom versus communitarianism, Western values versus national cultures, the autonomy of art versus a commitment to liberation struggles--and at a time when the prestige of literature had never been higher. The projects of the historic avant-garde were revitalized by an anti-capitalist ethos and envisaged as the opposite of the republican state. The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City charts the conflicting universals of this period, the clash between avant-garde and political vanguard. This was also a twilight of literature at the threshold of the great cultural revolution of the seventies and eighties, a revolution to which the Cold War indirectly contributed. In the eighties, civil war and military rule, together with the rapid development of mass culture and communication empires, changed the political and cultural map. A long-awaited work by an eminent Latin Americanist widely read throughout the world, this book will prove indispensable to anyone hoping to understand Latin American literature and society. Jean Franco guides the reader across minefields of cultural debate and histories of highly polarized struggle. Focusing on literary texts by García Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos, and Juan Carlos Onetti, conducting us through this contested history with the authority of an eyewitness, Franco gives us an engaging overview as involving as it is moving.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

I. Conflicting Universals

1. Killing Them Softly: The ColdWar and Culture

2. Communist Manifestos

3. Liberated Territories

II. Peripheral Fantasies

4. Antistates

5. The Black Angel of Lost Time

6. The Magic of Alterity

III. A Cultural Revolution

7. Cultural Revolutions: Trouble in the City

8. The Seduction of Margins

9. Bodies in Distress: Narratives of Globalization

10. Obstinate Memory: Tainted History

11. Inside the Empire

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674263574

067426357X

9780674037175

0674037170

OCLC:

923111848