Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks

Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks
Author: Lesley Wylie
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1846311950

This volume offers a new reading of the Spanish-American novela de la selva genre, often interpreted as a belated imitation of European travel literature. Arguing against the commonly held opinion of the genre’s derivative nature, Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks examines how novela de la selva fiction reimagined the tropics from a Latin American perspective and redefined tropical landscape aesthetics and ethnography through parodic rewritings of European perspectives. Analyzing four emblematic novels of the genre, this book considers the crucial place of the jungle as a locus for the contestation of national and literary identity by post-independence Latin American writers.

A History of Colombian Literature

A History of Colombian Literature
Author: Raymond Leslie Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 773
Release: 2016-06-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 131649540X

In recent decades, the international recognition of Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez has placed Colombian writing on the global literary map. A History of Colombian Literature explores the genealogy of Colombian poetry and prose from the colonial period to the present day. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction that charts the development of a national literary tradition, this History includes extensive essays that illuminate the cultural and political intricacies of Colombian literature. Organized thematically, these essays survey the multilayered verse and fiction of such diverse writers as José Eustacio Rivera, Tomás Carrasquilla, Alvaro Mutis, and Darío Jaramillo Agudelo. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History also devotes special attention to the lasting significance of colonialism and multiculturalism in Colombian literature. This book is of pivotal importance to the development of Colombian writing and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike.

Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Identities in Chile

Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Identities in Chile
Author: Céire Broderick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2021
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1800348479

This book explores traditional and contemporary concerns surrounding gender and ethnicity in Chile through a textual analysis of historical novels depicting seventeenth-century figure, Catalina de los R�os y Lisperguer. Drawing on theories from the Global North and South, it incorporates postcolonial perspectives and decolonial feminist methodologies to expose patriarchal, Eurocentric hierarchies constructed during the colonial era, which remain in Chilean society today. Through close readings, the book demonstrates that it is in the inconsistent and fluid depictions of characters that identities are deconstructed and reconstructed in ways that defy and transform social norms. This is the first extended English-language study of this infamous historical figure, who is more widely known as la Quintrala. It is also the first to compare the literary portrayals by Mercedes Valdivieso and Gustavo Fr�as. Looking beyond the infamy which usually shapes interpretations of la Quintrala, the author presents these novels as an embodiment of the anxieties surrounding hybridity in Chile, where European heritage has traditionally overshadowed indigenous concerns, and patriarchal norms dominate the construction of gender. Written during a period of social and political upheaval in Chile, it makes a timely contribution to existing works in social and political science, popular culture and the ongoing discussions of this iconic figure.

Narrative and National Alleghory in Rómulo Gallegos's Venezuela

Narrative and National Alleghory in Rómulo Gallegos's Venezuela
Author: Jenni Maria Lehtinen
Publisher: MHRA
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1907322795

Venezuela's preeminent educator, politician, and most important author Rómulo Gallegos (1884-1969) left a lasting imprint on how Venezuelans conceive of their national history and identity. Jenni Lehtinen offers the first full-length study of Gallegos's later Venezuelan novels, 'Canaima' (1935), 'Pobre negro' (1937), and 'Sobre la misma tierra' (1943), which have been up to now eclipsed by the critical attention devoted to 'Doña Bárbara' (1929). By combining close-readings organized around national allegory and narrative structure with discussions about Gallegos's socio-political essays, the study reveals previously ignored, radical developments in the Venezuelan author's ideologies. Through her bold reinterpretation of the later novels, Lehtinen reveals Gallegos as a far more innovative writer than has been traditionally appreciated. Jenni Lehtinen completed her doctoral studies in Spanish American literature at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, where she has held various teaching posts and lectured on Nation and Narration.

Fictional Environments

Fictional Environments
Author: Victoria Saramago
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2020-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0810142619

Finalist, 2022 ASLE Ecocritical Book Award Fictional Environments: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America investigates how fictional works have become sites for the production of knowledge, imagination, and intervention in Latin American environments. It investigates the dynamic relationship between fictional images and real places, as the lasting representations of forests, rural areas, and deserts in novels clash with collective perceptions of changes like deforestation and urbanization. From the backlands of Brazil to a developing Rio de Janeiro, and from the rainforests of Venezuela and Peru to the Mexican countryside, rapid deforestation took place in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century. How do fictional works and other cultural objects dramatize, resist, and intervene in these ecological transformations? Through analyses of work by João Guimarães Rosa, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Clarice Lispector, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Victoria Saramago shows how novels have inspired conservationist initiatives and offered counterpoints to developmentalist policies, and how environmental concerns have informed the agendas of novelists as essayists, politicians, and public intellectuals. This book seeks to understand the role of literary representation, or mimesis, in shaping, sustaining, and negotiating environmental imaginaries during the deep, ongoing transformations that have taken place from the 1950s to the present.

Post-Global Aesthetics

Post-Global Aesthetics
Author: Gesine Müller
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2022-10-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110762218

Phenomena such as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, or the surge of political populism show that the current phase of accelerated globalization is over. New concepts are needed in order to respond to this exhaustion of the global project: the volume scrutinizes these responses in the aesthetic realm and under a "post-global" banner, while incorporating alternative, non-Western epistemologies and literatures of the post-colonial Global South.

Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics

Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics
Author: Jens Andermann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2023-09-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110775905

The Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics offers a comprehensive overview of Latin American aesthetic and conceptual production addressing the more-than-human environment at the intersection between art, activism, and critique. Fields include literature, performance, film, and other audiovisual media as well as their interactions with community activisms. Scholars who have helped establish environmental approaches in the field as well as emergent critical voices revisit key concepts such as ecocriticism, (post-)extractivism, and multinaturalism, while opening new avenues of dialogue with areas including critical race theory and ethnicity, energy humanities, queer-*trans studies, and infrastructure studies, among others. This volume both traces these genealogies and maps out key positions in this increasingly central field of Latin Americanism, at the same time as they relate it to the environmental humanities at large. By showing how artistic and literary productions illuminate critical zones of environmental thought, articulating urgent social and material issues with cultural archives, historical approaches and conceptual interventions, this volume offers cutting-edge critical tools for approaching literature and the arts from new angles that call into question the nature/culture boundary.

„Trust me – it’s paradise“ The escapist motif in Into the Wild, The Beach and Are You Experienced?

„Trust me – it’s paradise“ The escapist motif in Into the Wild, The Beach and Are You Experienced?
Author: Hannes Krehan
Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag)
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2014-02-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3954896850

The author analyzes three books on escapism and the various ways in which it is represented in them. He focuses on Alex Garland’s backpacker cult novel 'The Beach' and William Sutcliffe’s satire of the gap-year traveler 'Are You Experienced?' as well as Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book 'Into the Wild'.The first part of the analysis deals with the influence of literary genres like the Bildungsroman and travel literature. Unreliable narration as a narrative strategy is taken into consideration, as well as the colonial subtext of 'The Beach' and 'Are You Experienced?'. In 'Into the Wild' nature writing and road narratives are an integral part of the narrative.The second part deals with cultural aspects such as questions of authenticity that are raised during the narratives, the role of drugs as a means of escape, and also the problematic relationship between travelers and tourists. Finally, the author compares two film adaptations, Danny Boyle’s 'The Beach' (2000) and Sean Penn’s 'Into the Wild' (2007), with their corresponding literary source texts.

Football and Nation Building in Colombia (2010-2018)

Football and Nation Building in Colombia (2010-2018)
Author: Peter J. Watson
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2022-06-09
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1802070923

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM. This book explores the pivotal role that football played as part of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ national unity project centred on the peace process with the FARC. Football has huge political and social capital in Latin America, and has often been rhetorically deployed by governments for various ends; rarely, however, has football’s power and potential been used in such a deliberate, strategic and active way towards a national peace process and targeted such enduring divisions that have historically impeded a sense of a united nation and national identity. Football in Colombia is understood popularly as one of the few things capable of uniting the country, a belief that Santos seized upon as the national team had a successful campaign in the 2014 World Cup. This first book on Colombian football in English explores previous iterations of football nationalism in the country, including the El Dorado and ‘Narcofootball’ eras, before analysing Santos’ three-pronged strategy empowering professional and amateur football, including the use of political speeches and Twitter, legislation and public policy, and Sport for Development and Peace campaigns, with a particular focus on football in the FARC demobilisation and reincorporation camps following the historic peace agreement.