1st Edition

Latin American Literature Symptoms, Risks and Strategies of Poststructuralist Criticism

By Bernard McGuirk Copyright 1997
    282 Pages
    by Routledge

    282 Pages
    by Routledge

    Critical theory meets Latin American fiction in this bold and challenging analysis of literature and literary criticism through post-structuralist analysis. Focusing on Latin American literary and critical production from the 1890s to the 1990s, Bernard McGuirk highlights the confrontation between theory, politics and literature.
    The range of literatures discussed is extensive, including writings from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru. The symptomatic differences between and within cultures are illuminated by analysis of texts by such authors as:
    César Vallejo
    Jorges Luis Borges
    Rubén Darío
    Pablo Neruda
    Julio Cortázar
    João Guimarães Rosa
    Susana Thénon
    Carlos Fuentes
    Bernard McGuirk holds the Chair of Romance Literatures and Literary Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is currently President of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland.

    Chapter 1 Pre-; Chapter 2 Eurocentrism and the male gaze in Brazil; Chapter 3 On the meta-history of literature; Chapter 4 Reading, misreading and the resistance to modernity; Chapter 5 Poetry, pedagogy and untranslatability; Chapter 6 Beyond structural influence; Chapter 7 On the semi(er)otics of alterity; Chapter 8 Mirror × scissors; Chapter 9 Subjectivity, history, ideology; Chapter 10 Z/Z; Chapter 11 Post-;

    Biography

    Bernard McGuirk holds the Chair of Romance Literatures and Literar Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is currently President of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland.

    'McGuirk can take more credit than most for having been genuinely challenging, and, in the wider context, he is very aware of the institutional uses to which theory has been put.' ...'confidently penetrating close analysis.' - Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 98

    'This daring and thought-provoking book covers Latin America in the Twentieth Century, examining an expressive and very diverse range of modern literatures.' - Nossa America

    'This is a wonderful book. It is important to Vallejo and Borges criticism, for instance, because it contributes in powerful ways to renew or develop them. There are luminous insights throughout, both theoretical and literary-historical, critical and meta-critical. But the book is important, most of all, as a major contribution to a particular way of reading the cultural text, which no matter what critics might say, is thoroughly under-represented in Latin-American criticism.' - The Modern Language Review

    ' ... any reader will find it stimulating, let alone the expert in the field, for whom it will be no less appetizing.' - Turia Cultural Review