Roberto Sánchez Benítez – författare

Literature and History in Carlos Fuentes: Imperfect Creations analyzes the work of Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012), one of the most widely recognized Mexican novelists. A lucid awareness of national and Ibero-American cultural and historical problems, his reflections on history, culture, politics, the international order, education, have contributed to its enrichment. This book is divided into five chapters that cover the path of the discussions on: a) the identity of the Mexican within the post-revolutionary culture, based on ontological and existentialist approaches; b) the understanding of language and modernity, as well as the danger that societies face thanks to populism; c) the understanding of literature based on desire, imagination, eroticism and its relationship with the visual image; d) as well as the understanding of the other borders of literature such as the policies that divide countries, specifically Mexico-United States, in one of the most profound reflections on the subject; e) to finish with the way in which Fuentes perceived himself in the Cervantes heritage, a dialogue from which he sought to extract representational elements of that modernity from which he sought to understand some of Mexico's dilemmas.

Octavio Paz: Ontology and Surrealism discusses poet Octavio Paz (1914–1998), one of Mexico´s most controversial intellectuals. Over several decades, Paz has been celebrated for his impact on literature and culture as a poet as well as an essayist, and he is recognized as a great thinker and as a student of German ontology and phenomenology. Roberto Sanchez Benitez analyzes in detail Paz’s training within the European philosophical thinking of the twentieth century, as well as in the artistic avant-garde, to illustrate the way in which philosophical, anthropological, linguistic, sociological, literary, and artistic proposals enriched his work and Mexican culture during the post-revolutionary period. Sanchez Benitez posits that Paz moved from a phenomenological ontology to a historicism of the human condition, wherein morality, politics, and the arts all reside in an ideological context where dogmatisms where impose in the face of a lack of internal criticism. This book explores the themes of the poetic act that Paz associated with his ontological and surrealist readings, leading up to when they were transformed by his experience in India and the assimilation of Eastern philosophies, along with going through a set of Western proposals relating to love, eroticism, and art. Scholars of literature, philosophy, Latin American Studies, and history will find this book particularly useful.