Earl E. Fitz is Professor of Portuguese, Spanish, and Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University and the coauthor, with Elizabeth Lowe, of Translation and the Rise of Inter-American Literature.

“This book is 'old fashioned' yet visionary. Old fashioned because it is impervious to neoliberal university trends within 2000s hemispheric studies. Cutting edge because there is something truly astonishing about Fitz's four-decade-long commitment to the humanities and to literature as a comparative and multilingual field of study. It is a major work from an inter-Americanist pioneer who has served as the single greatest custodian of Literature of the Americas in print and in the classroom.” - Antonio Barrenechea, University of Mary Washington, author of America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies

• Introduction1. Chapter One: The Iberian Origins2. Chapter Two: Indigenous America3. Chapter Three: The Literature of Discovery and Conquest4. Chapter Four: The Flowering of Latin American Letters5. Chapter Five: The Enlightenment and Independence6. Chapter Six: The Nineteenth Century7. Chapter Seven: Rubén Darío, Machado de Assis, and End-of-Century BrillianceConclusionBibliography

Earl E. Fitz is Professor of Portuguese, Spanish, and Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University and the coauthor, with Elizabeth Lowe, of Translation and the Rise of Inter-American Literature.

“This book is 'old fashioned' yet visionary. Old fashioned because it is impervious to neoliberal university trends within 2000s hemispheric studies. Cutting edge because there is something truly astonishing about Fitz's four-decade-long commitment to the humanities and to literature as a comparative and multilingual field of study. It is a major work from an inter-Americanist pioneer who has served as the single greatest custodian of Literature of the Americas in print and in the classroom.” - Antonio Barrenechea, University of Mary Washington, author of America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies

• Introduction1. Chapter One: The Iberian Origins2. Chapter Two: Indigenous America3. Chapter Three: The Literature of Discovery and Conquest4. Chapter Four: The Flowering of Latin American Letters5. Chapter Five: The Enlightenment and Independence6. Chapter Six: The Nineteenth Century7. Chapter Seven: Rubén Darío, Machado de Assis, and End-of-Century BrillianceConclusionBibliography