The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel provides an accessible introduction to an important World literature. While many of the authors covered—Aira, Bolaño, Castellanos Moya, Vásquez—are gaining an increasing readership in English and are frequently taught, there is sparse criticism in English beyond book reviews. This book provides the guidance necessary for a more sophisticated and contextualized understanding of these authors and their works. Underestimated or unfamiliar Spanish American novels and novelists are introduced through conceptually rigorous essays. Sections on each writer include: *the author's reception in their native country, Spanish America, and Spain *biographical history *a critical examination of their work, including key themes and conceptual concerns *translation history *scholarly reception The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel offers an authoritative guide to a rich and varied novelistic tradition. It covers all demographic areas, including United States Latino authors, in exploring the diversity of this literature and its major themes, such as exile, migration, and gender representation.

In Search of the Sacred Book studies the artistic incorporation of religious concepts such as prophecy, eternity, and the afterlife in the contemporary Latin American novel. It departs from sociopolitical readings by noting the continued relevance of religion in Latin American life and culture, despite modernity's powerful secularizing influence. Analyzing Jorge Luis Borges's secularized "narrative theology" in his essays and short stories, the book follows the development of the Latin American novel from the early twentieth century until today by examining the attempts of major novelists, from María Luisa Bombal, Alejo Carpentier, and Juan Rulfo, to Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and José Lezama Lima, to "sacralize" the novel by incorporating traits present in the sacred texts of many religions. It concludes with a view of the "desacralization" of the novel by more recent authors, from Elena Poniatowska and Fernando Vallejo to Roberto Bolaño.

Contemporary Latin American Literature reflects the wealth of great writers of Latin America over the last hundred years, including Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Noble Prize winners Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. The selections--almost 100 works in their original form--include English definitions for difficult Spanish words.

"Offers an array of disciplinary views on how theories of globalization and an emerging postnational critical imagination have impacted traditional ways of thinking about literature."--Samuel Amago, author of Spanish Cinema in the Global Context: Film on Film Moving beyond the traditional study of Hispanic literature on a nation-by-nation basis, this volume explores how globalization is currently affecting Spanish and Latin American fiction, poetry, and literary theory. Taking a postnational approach, contributors examine works by José Martí, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Junot Díaz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Cecilia Vicuña, Jorge Luis Borges, and other writers. They discuss how expanding worldviews have impacted the way these authors write and how they are read today. Whether analyzing the increasingly popular character of the voluntary exile, the theme of masculinity in This Is How You Lose Her, or the multilingual nature of the Spanish language itself, they show how contemporary Hispanic writers and critics are engaging in cross-cultural literary conversations. Drawing from a range of fields including postcolonial, Latino, gender, exile, and transatlantic studies, these essays help characterize a new "world" literature that reflects changing understandings of memory, belonging, and identity.

"As a narrative device, irony in the Latin American novel has been treated before in a rather fragmented, non-systematic way. It needed a cohesive study based on close textual examination of several major novels. Professor Tittler has done just that and done it well. This book is the best and most comprehensive study of the ironic mode that we have."-Myron I. Lichtblau, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Syracuse University In this book Jonathan Tittler explores some of the many possibilities that the concept of irony holds for literary criticism. Identifying irony as a characteristic property of Spanish-American fiction, Tittler offers close readings of seven important novels: Carlos Fuentes' The Death of Artemio Cruz, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo, Manuel Puig's Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers, Mario Vargas Llosa's Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Julio Cortazar's A Manual for Manuel, and Isaac Goldemberg's The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner. Tittler begins with a comprehensive review of existing theories of irony, in all of which the concept of narrative distance plays a major role. Next he proposes his own innovative model for critical reading made up of two basic forms of irony, which he terms "static" and "kinetic." He then applies the model systematically to his readings of the texts-four in the static mode, and three in the kinetic, linguistically self-conscious mode. Tittler concludes by reflecting on the relationship between irony and the novel, asserting that in the light of actual events in Spanish America, the novels themselves, and the critical discourse in which they are evoked, may be regarded as ironic phenomena.

This Very Short Introduction chronicles the trends and traditions of modern Latin American literature, arguing that Latin American literature developed as a continent-wide phenomenon, not just an assemblage of national literatures, in moments of political crisis. With the Spanish American War came Modernismo, the end of World War I and the Mexican Revolution produced the avant-garde, and the Cuban Revolution sparked a movement in the novel that came to be known as the Boom. Within this narrative, the author covers all of the major writers of Latin American literature, from Andr?s Bello and Jos? Mar?a de Heredia, through Borges and Garc?a M?rquez, to Fernando Vallejo and Roberto Bola?o.

The subject matter is topical: madness has universal and enduring appeal. The positive aspects of the irrational, particularly its potential for cultural renewal, are given more prominence than has been the case in the past. The coverage is wide-ranging: new critical angles enrich our understanding of major writers while the appeal of lesser-known figures is highlighted, often by means of a comparative perspective.