From the whimsical idealism of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote to the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, Spanish-language literature has substantially enriched the global literary canon. This volume examines the vibrant prose and dynamic range of both Spanish and Latin American authors, whose narratives are informed as much by their imaginations as the turbulent histories of these native lands. Influenced by a plethora of diverse cultures, these tales truly tell a global story.

This is the first monograph to consider the significance of madness and irrationality in both Spanish and Spanish American literature. It considers various definitions of ‘madness’ and explores the often contrasting responses, both positive (figural madness as stimulus for literary creativity) and negative (clinical madness representing spiritual confinement and sterility). The concept of national madness is explored with particular reference to Argentina: while, on the one hand, the country’s vast expanses have been seen as conducive to madness, the urban population of Buenos Aires, on the other, appears to be especially dependent on psychoanalytic therapy. The book considers both the work of lesser-known writers such as Nuria Amat, whose personal life is inflected by a form of literary madness, and that of larger literary figures such as José Lezama Lima, whose poetic concepts are suffused with the irrational. The conclusion draws attention to the ‘other side’ of reason as a source of possible originality in a world dominated by the tenets of logic and conventionalised thinking.

A revised, updated edition of Jean Franco's "Introduction to Spanish-American Literature", first published in 1969.

A foundational text in the emerging field of Latin American and Iberian food studies

A vivid account of the literary culture of the Spanish-speaking Americas from the time of Columbus to Latin American Independence, this Very Short Introduction explores the origins of Latin American literature in Spanish and tells the story of how Spanish literary language developed and flourished in the New World. A leading scholar of colonial Latin American literature, Rolena Adorno examines the writings that debated the justice of the Spanish conquests, described the novelties of New World nature, expressed the creativity of Hispanic baroque culture in epic, lyric, and satirical poetry, and anticipated Latin American Independence. The works of Spanish, creole, and Amerindian authors highlighted here, including Bartolomé de las Casas, Felipe Guaman Poma, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Andrés Bello, have been chosen for the merits of their writings, their participation in the larger literary and cultural debates of their times, and their resonance among readers today. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

The fantastic has been particularly prolific in Hispanic countries during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, largely due to the legacy of short-story writers as well as the Latin-American boom that presented alternatives to the model of literary realism. While these writers’ works have done much to establish the Hispanic fantastic in the international literary canon, women authors from Spain and Latin America are not always acknowledged, and their work is less well known to readers. The aim of this critical anthology is to render Hispanic female writers of the fantastic visible, to publish a representative selection of their work, and to make it accessible to English-speaking readers. Five short stories are presented by five key authors. They attest to the richness and diversity of fantastic fiction in the Spanish language, and extend from the early twentieth to the twenty-first century, covering a range of nationalities, cultural references and language specificities from Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Argentina.