Roberto González Echevarria - Böcker

When Latin American writers burst on to the world literary scene in the now famous "Boom" of the sixties, it seemed as if an entire literature had invented itself overnight out of thin air. Not only was the writing extraordinary but its sudden and spectacular appearance itself seemed magical. In fact, Latin American literature has a long and rich tradition that reaches back to the Colonial period and is filled with remarkable writers too little known in the English-speaking world. The short story has been a central part of this tradition, from Fray Bartolome de las Casas' narrative protests against the Spanish Conquistadors' abuses of Indians, to the world renowned Ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges, to the contemporary works of such masters as Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rosario Ferre, and others. Now, in The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories, editor Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria brings together fifty-three stories that span the history of Latin American literature and represent the most dazzling achievements in the form. In his fascinating introduction, Gonzalez Echevarria traces the evolution of the short story in Latin American literature, explaining why the genre has flourished there with such brilliance, and illuminating the various cultural and literary tensions that resolve themselves in "magical realism". The stories themselves exhibit all the inventiveness, the luxuriousness of language, the wild metaphoric leaps, and uncanny conjunctions of the ordinary with the fantastic that have given the Latin American short story its distinctive and unforgettable flavour: from the Joycean subtlety of Machado de Assis's "Midnight Mass," to the brutal parable of Julio Ramon Ribeyro's "Featherless Buzzards," to the startling disorientation of Alejo Carpentier's "Journey Back to the Source" (which is told backwards, because a sorcerer has waved his wand and made time flow in reverse), to the haunting reveries of Maria Luisa Bombal's "The Tree". Readers familiar with only the most popular Latin American writers will be delighted to discover many exciting new voices here, including Catalina de Erauso, Ricardo Palma, Rubin Dario, Augusto Roa Bastos, Christina Peri Rossi, along with Borges, Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Cortazar, Vargas Llosa, and many others. Gonzalez Echevarria also provides brief and extremely helpful headnotes for the each selection, discussing the author's influences, major works, and central themes.Short story lovers will find a wealth of satisfactions here, in terrains both familiar and uncharted. But the unique strength of The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories is that it allows us to see the connections between writers from Peru to Puerto Rico and from the sixteenth century to the present--and thus to view in a single, unprecedented volume one of the most diverse and fertile literary landscapes in the world.

This casebook gathers a collection of ambitious essays about both parts of the novel (1605 and 1615) and also provides a general introduction and a bibliography. The essays range from Ramón Menéndez Pidal's seminal study of how Cervantes dealt with chivalric literature to Erich Auerbachs polemical study of Don Quixote as essentially a comic book by studying its mixture of styles, and include Leo Spitzer's masterful probe into the essential ambiguity of the novel through minute linguistic analysis of Cervantes prose. The book includes pieces by other major Cervantes scholars, such as Manuel Durán and Edward C. Riley, as well as younger scholars like Georgina Dopico-Black. All these essays ultimately seek to discover that which is peculiarly Cervantean in Don Quixote and why it is considered to be the first modern novel.

This casebook gathers a collection of ambitious essays about both parts of the novel (1605 and 1615) and also provides a general introduction and a bibliography. The essays range from Ramón Menéndez Pidal's seminal study of how Cervantes dealt with chivalric literature to Erich Auerbachs polemical study of Don Quixote as essentially a comic book by studying its mixture of styles, and include Leo Spitzer's masterful probe into the essential ambiguity of the novel through minute linguistic analysis of Cervantes prose. The book includes pieces by other major Cervantes scholars, such as Manuel Durán and Edward C. Riley, as well as younger scholars like Georgina Dopico-Black. All these essays ultimately seek to discover that which is peculiarly Cervantean in Don Quixote and why it is considered to be the first modern novel.

In the 1960s, Latin American literature became known worldwide as never before. Writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa all became part of the general culture of educated readers of English, French, German, and Italian. But few know about the literary tradition from which these writers emerged. This Very Short Introduction remedies this situation, providing an overview of modern Latin American literature from the late eighteenth century to the present. Roberto González Echevarría covers a wide range of topics, discussing the birth of Modernismo, the first Latin American literary movement; how the end of World War I and the Mexican Revolution produced the avant-garde; and how the Cuban Revolution sparked a movement in the novel that came to be known as the Boom. Within this narrative, the author covers many of the major writers of Latin American literature, from Andrés Bello and José María de Heredia through Borges and García Márquez to Fernando Vallejo and Roberto Bolaño. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Alejo Carpentier was one of the greatest Latin American novelists of the twentieth century, as well as a musicologist, journalist, cultural promoter, and diplomat. His fictional world issues from an encyclopedic knowledge of the history, art, music, and literature of Latin America and Europe. Carpentier’s novels and stories are the enabling discourse of today’s Latin American narrative, and his interpretation of Latin American history has been among the most influential. Carpentier was the first to provide a comprehensive view of Caribbean history that centered on the contribution of Africans, above and beyond the differences created by European cultures and languages. Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home, first published in 1977 and updated for this edition, covers the life and works of the great Cuban novelist, offering a new perspective on the relationship between the two.GonzÁlez EchevarrÍa offers detailed readings of the works La mÚsica en Cuba, The Kingdom of This World, The Lost Steps, and Explosion in a Cathedral. In a new concluding chapter, he takes up Carpentier’s last years, his relationship with the Cuban revolutionary regime, and his last two novels, El arpa y la sombra and La consagraciÓn de la primavera, in which Carpentier reviewed his life and career.

By one of the most original and learned critical voices in Hispanic studies- a timely and ambitious study of authority as theme and authority as authorial strategy in modern Latin American literature. An ideology is implicit in modern Latin American literature, argues Roberto GonzÁlez EchevarrÍa, through which both the literature itself and criticism of it define what Latin American literature is and how it ought to be read. In the works themselves this ideology is constantly subjected to a radical critique, and that critique renders the ideology productive and in a sense is what constitutes the work. In literary criticism, however, too frequently the ideology merely serves as support for an authoritative discourse that seriously misrepresents Latin American literature. In The Voice of the Masters, GonzÁlez EchevarrÍa attempts to uncover the workings of modern Latin American literature by creating a dialogue of texts, a dynamic whole whose parts are seven illuminating essays on seminal texts in the tradition. As he says, "To have written a sustained, expository book ... would have led me to make the same kind of critical error that I attribute to most criticism of Latin American literature.... I would have naively assumed an authoritative voice while attempting a critique of precisely that critical gesture." Instead, major works by Barnet, Cabrera Infante, Carpentier, CortÁzar, Fuentes, Gallegos, GarcÍa MÁrquez, Roa Bastos, and RodÓ are the object of a set of independent deconstructive (and reconstructive) readings. Writing in the tradition of Derrida and de Man, GonzÁlez EchevarrÍa brings to these readings both the penetrative brilliance of the French master and a profound understanding of historical and cultural context. His insightful annotation of Cabrera Infante's "Meta-End," the full text of which is presented at the close of the study, clearly demonstrates these qualities and exemplifies his particular approach to the text.

The consolidation of law and the development of legal writing during Spain’s Golden Age not only helped that country become a modern state but also affected its great literature. In this fascinating book, Roberto González Echevarría explores the works of Cervantes, showing how his representations of love were inspired by examples of human deviance and desire culled from legal discourse. González Echevarría describes Spain’s new legal policies, legislation, and institutions and explains how, at the same time, its literature became filled with love stories derived from classical and medieval sources. Examining the ways that these legal and literary developments interacted in Cervantes’s work, he sheds new light on Don Quixote and other writings.

The first European novel, exquisitely translated by Margaret Sayers Peden  A timeless story of love, morality, and tragedy, Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina is a classic of Spanish literature. Second only to DonQuixote in its cultural importance, Rojas’s dramatic dialogue presents the elaborate tale of a star-crossed courtship between the young nobleman Calisto and the beautiful maiden Melibea in fifteenth-century Spain. Their unforgettable saga plays out in vibrant exchanges, presented here in a brilliant new translation by award-winning translator Margaret Sayers Peden.  After a chance encounter with Melibea entrances Calisto, he enlists the services of Celestina, an aged prostitute, madam, and procuress, to arrange another meeting. She promptly seizes control of the affair, guiding it through a series of mishaps before it meets its tragic end. At times a comic character and at others a self-assertive promoter of women’s sexual license, Celestina is an inimitable personality with a surprisingly modern consciousness, certain to be relished by a new generation of readers.

The consolidation of law and the development of legal writing during Spain’s Golden Age not only helped that country become a modern state but also affected its great literature. In this fascinating book, Roberto González Echevarría explores the works of Cervantes, showing how his representations of love were inspired by examples of human deviance and desire culled from legal discourse. González Echevarría describes Spain’s new legal policies, legislation, and institutions and explains how, at the same time, its literature became filled with love stories derived from classical and medieval sources. Examining the ways that these legal and literary developments interacted in Cervantes’s work, he sheds new light on Don Quixote and other writings.

The novel Don Quixote, written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, is widely considered to be one of the greatest fictional works in the entire canon of Western literature. At once farcical and deeply philosophical, Cervantes’ novel and its characters have become integrated into the cultures of the Western Hemisphere, influencing language and modern thought while inspiring art and artists such as Richard Strauss and Pablo Picasso. Based on Professor Roberto González Echevarría’s popular open course at Yale University, this essential guide to the enduring Spanish classic facilitates a close reading of Don Quixote in the artistic and historical context of renaissance and baroque Spain while exploring why Cervantes’ masterwork is still widely read and relevant today. González Echevarría addresses the novel’s major themes and demonstrates how the story of an aging, deluded would-be knight-errant embodies that most modern of predicaments: the individual’s dissatisfaction with the world in which he lives, and his struggle to make that world mesh with his desires.

Edith Grossman, celebrated for her brilliant translation of Don Quixote, offers a dazzling new version of another Cervantes classic  “Compressed masterworks, containing great canvases and big ideas in just a few pages. . . . A pleasure.”—Kirkus Reviews  The twelve novellas gathered in Exemplary Novels reveal the extraordinary breadth of Cervantes’s imagination: his nearly limitless ability to create characters, invent plots, and entertain readers across continents and centuries. The assemblage of characters (eloquent witches, talking dogs, Gypsy orphans, and an array of others), the twisting plots, and the moral heart at the core of each short tale proved instantly irresistible to readers. Love is the overarching theme.  Now, as when it was published in Spain in 1613, the book brings readers pure entertainment, but also a subtle artistry that invites deeper investigation. Edith Grossman’s translation brings this timeless classic to English-language readers in an edition that will delight those already familiar with Cervantes’s work as well as those about to be enchanted for the first time. Roberto González Echevarría’s illuminating introduction to the volume serves as both an appreciation of Cervantes’s brilliance and a critical guide to the novellas and their significance.

Published in 1499 and centered on the figure of a bawd and witch, Fernando de Rojas' dark and disturbing Celestina was destined to become the most suppressed classic in Spanish literary history. Routinely ignored in Spanish letters, the book nonetheless echoes through contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature. This is the phenomenon that Celestina's Brood explores.Roberto GonzÁlez EchevarrÍa, one of the most eminent and influential critics of Hispanic literature writing today, uses Rojas' text as his starting point to offer an exploration of modernity in the Hispanic literary tradition, and of the Baroque as an expression of the modern. His analysis of Celestina reveals the relentless probing of the limits of language and morality that mark the work as the beginning of literary modernity in Spanish, and the start of a tradition distinguished by a penchant for the excesses of the Baroque. GonzÁlez EchevarrÍa pursues this tradition and its meaning through the works of major figures such as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, CalderÓn de la Barca, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel GarcÍa MÁrquez, NicolÁs GuillÉn, and Severo Sarduy, as well as through the works of lesser-known authors.By revealing continuities of the Baroque, Celestina's Brood cuts across conventional distinctions between Spanish and Latin American literary traditions to show their profound and previously unimagined affinity.