Spanish American Literature: A Collection of Essays – serie

This volume brings together papers on various theoretical questions that have been raised in recent debates in Spanish American literary studies. It provides varying perspectives and explores diverse theoretical approaches to colonial culture, testimonial writing, gender studies, postmodernism, ethnic issues, politics and nationalism, and other important subjects.

These critical studies propose innovative readings and overall reformulations of the texts and authors that stand as representative of the period for the contemporary reader. The first group of articles refers to reports, chronicles, and Renaissance epics, a vast block of texts that fall in most cases halfway between history and narrative fiction, and examine the experiences of the discovery, the conquest, and the colonization of the new territories. The second group concentrates on regionally marked texts from the Baroque period, especially those of the central figure of the Mexican nun poet and intellectual, Sor Juana In s de la Cruz. Finally, there are some essays on representative texts of the latter part of the colonial period.

The 19th century in Latin America begins with the weakening of the political institutions established by the Spanish Crown, the emergence of a native consciousness and the diffusion of the ideas of the French Revolution and the United States. These articles examine the phenomena that mark the onset of the new century: the series of revolutions and long military struggles for independence that placed large areas of territory under arms and resulted in the formation of strong and independent nation-states.

The greater body of Spanish American letters stands in somewhat of an ancillary relationship to the traditions that arose in Europe. Only at the end of the 19th century, with the emergence of modernismo, which was linked to European aesthetic movements such as French Parnassianism and Symbolism, there emerged a wave of literary innovations and experimentation that ushered in the modern era. This volume covers writers whose positions and reputations were established and consolidated prior to the crucial decade of the l960s.