Where was Brazil in the so-called "Latin American" literary Boom? Third World Literary Fortunes posits a response contrasting the figures of Jorge Amado, "vulgar" but uniquely successful in capturing Brazilian popular energies in literature, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa, "Brazil's Joyce."

Did Ireland produce a more radical and ambitious literature in the straitened circumstances of the first half of the twentieth century than it has managed to do since it began to ‘modernize’ and become more affluent from the 1960s onwards? Has Irish modernism ceded place to a prevailing naturalism that seems gritty and tough-minded, but that is aesthetically conservative and politically self-thwarted? Does the fixation with ‘de Valera’s Ireland’ in recent narrative represent a necessary settling of accounts with a dark, abusive history or is it indicative of a worrying inability on the part of Irish artists and intellectuals to respond to the very different predicaments of the post-Cold War world? These are some of the questions addressed in Outrageous Fortune. Scanning literature, theatre, film and music, Joe Cleary probes the connections between capital, culture and criticism in modern Ireland. He includes readings of James Joyce and the Irish modernists, the naturalists Patrick Kavanagh, John McGahern and Edna O’Brien, and comments too on what he terms the ‘neo-naturalism’ of Marina Carr, Patrick McCabe and Martin McDonagh. He concludes with a provocative analysis of the cultural achievement of the Pogues.

Brazilian Railway Culture examines the cultural relationship Brazil has had with its railways since tracks were first laid by British, American and French engineers in the nineteenth century. ‘Railway’ and ‘Brazil’ are words not often found in the same sentence. Yet each year over seven hundred million passengers are carried by train in the major urban centres, and tens of thousands of visitors enjoy heritage steam rides at over a dozen restored lines and museums. Brazilian Railway Culture starts from the premise that Brazilian society and culture is not just samba, football and sex. The book takes a journey through Brazilian cultural output from 1865 to the present day, examining novels, poetry, music, art, film and television, as well as autobiographies, written histories, and museums to uncover ways in which the railway has been represented. This interdisciplinary study engages with theories of informal empire and postcolonialism, Latin American studies, cultural studies, film and television studies, literary criticism, art history and criticism, museum and heritage studies, as well as railway studies. This is a supplementary text for use by students on both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It will also be of interest to academics, researchers, and railway historians across a range of disciplines.

Explores the affective, ethical, and political demands that difficult reading places on readers of midcentury Latin American literature The radical formal experiments undertaken by writers across Latin America in the mid-twentieth century introduced friction, opacity, and self-reflexivity to the very act of reading. Dwelling in Fiction: Poetics of Place and the Experimental Novel in Latin America explores the limitations and the possibilities of literature for conveying place-specific forms of life. Focusing on authors such as José María Arguedas, João Guimarães Rosa, and Juan José Saer, who are often celebrated for universalizing regional themes, Ashley R. Brock brings a new critical lens to Latin American writers who were ambivalent toward their era’s “boom.” Beyond mere resistance to or critique of the commodification and political instrumentalization of rural topics and types, this countertrend of critical regionalism positions readers themselves as outsiders, pushing them to engage their senses, to train their attention, and to learn to dwell in unknown textual landscapes. Dwelling in Fiction draws on a transnational community of thinkers and writers to show how their midcentury aesthetic practices of sensorial pedagogy anticipate contemporary turns toward affect, embodiment, decoloniality, and ecological thought.

What is 'Latin American Studies'? This companion gives a concise and accessible overview of the discipline. Covering a wide range of topics, from colonial cultures and identity to US Latino culture and issues of race, gender and sexuality, this book goes beyond conventional literary companions and situates Latin America in its historical, social, political, literary and cultural context. This essential book provides the key introductory information on the subject and will be especially useful for students taking or considering taking courses in Hispanic or Latin American Studies. Written by an international team of experts, each chapter supplies the necessary basic information and a sound introduction to central ideas, issues and debates. In addition to 12 chapters on the main topics in Latin American Studies, the companion includes an introduction, time chart, glossary and suggestions for further reading.

The Carnivalesque Defunto explores the representations of death and the dead in Brazil’s collective and literary imagination. The recurring stereotype of Brazil as the land of samba, soccer, and sandy beaches overlooks a more complex cultural heritage in which, since colonial times, a relationship of proximity and reciprocity has been cultivated between the living and the dead. Robert H. Moser details the emergence of a prominent motif in modern Brazilian literature, namely the carnivalesque defunto (the dead) that, in the form of a protagonist or narrator, returns to beseech, instruct, chastise, or even seduce the living. Drawing upon the works of esteemed Brazilian writers such as Machado de Assis, Érico Veríssimo, and Jorge Amado, Moser demonstrates how the defunto, through its mocking laughter and Dionysian resurrection, simultaneously subverts and inverts the status quo, thereby exposing underlying points of tension within Brazilian social and political history. Incorporating elements of both a celestial advocate and an untrustworthy specter, the defunto also serves as a metaphor for one of modern Brazil’s greatest dilemmas: reconciling the past with the present. The Carnivalesque Defunto offers a comparative framework by juxtaposing the Brazilian literary ghost with other Latin American, Caribbean, and North American examples. It also presents a cross-disciplinary approach toward understanding the complex relationship forged between Brazil’s spiritual traditions and literary expressions.

"Examines how racial identity and race relations are expressed in the writings of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), Brazil's foremost author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries"--Provided by publisher.