"It examines works by several of Ecuador's most important writers in terms of the interrelations of history and myth, of realism and magic or marvelous realism, and the problems of using orality and dialogism to actively undermine authoritative discourse."--BOOK JACKET.

This book follows several major European literary «echoes» still reverberating since the mysterious emergence of such archetypal figures as Faust, Hamlet, Quixote, and Don Juan alongside lingering ancient and medieval protagonists in the Renaissance. Four centuries of attempts to redefine «modern» identity are traced against the evolution of a new genre of totalizing encyclopaedic literature, the «humoristic» tradition which re-weaves the positive and negative strands of the European, and today also New World, «grand narrative.» The book's method, inspired by Joyce, is to «listen» to recurrent motifs in the cultural flow from Humanism to Postmodernism for clues to an identity transcending the personal.

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide career biographies of nearly fifty modern Spanish American poets, each tracing the development of the author's canon and the evolution of his or her reputation, and including a bibliography of works.

This major bibliographic work reflects the significant interest in Latin American literature as a creative force in the world today. Rela who has provided Latin American bibliography with many ground-breaking contributions, has created a single, comprehensive reference work for serious scholarship on Latin American literature with sources through 1986. Among the criteria used to determine which authors and works would be included are originality, critical appraisal, and the interest the work held for professors, researchers, and students. The works are divided into general sections; each section is broken down by country and by genre (poetry, prose fiction, drama, essay) and annotations are provided for many works. The book concludes with an author index.