Reinventing the Americas
Comparative Studies of Literature of the United States and Spanish America

This volume provides a basis for the comparative study of literature of the United States and Spanish America.

Bell Gale Chevigny (Edited by), Gari Laguardia (Edited by)

9780521112567, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 June 2009

364 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.53 kg

This volume provides a basis for the comparative study of literature of the United States and Spanish America. Previous studies in comparative literature have stressed the influence of Europe on the United States or on Latin America as the creator of the 'New World'. In this book, the editors argue the necessity of a comparative study of the relation between literatures of North, Central, and South America. The first part looks at literature and the historical imagination; the second section focuses on the voice and vision of women; and the final essays are devoted to perspectives on literary criticism. Together the essays discuss the work of prominent Spanish American novelists such as Pablo Armando Fernandez, Luisa Valensuela, Edmundo Desnoes, Neruda, Paz and Borges as well as writers from the United States including Melville, Whitman, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens.

Preface
Part I. History and the Literary Imagination: 1. Introduction Gari Laguardia and Bell Gale Chevigny
2. 'Insatiable Unease': Melville and Carpentier and the search for an American hermeneutic Bell Gale Chevigny
3. The fiction of national formation: The Indigenista novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Rosario Castellanos Cynthia Steele
4. Supplying demand: Walt Whitman as the liberal self Doris Sommer
5. Caliban as poet: Reversing the maps of domination Susan Willis
6. Mrs Williams's William Carlos Julio Marzan
7. Dreams of Two Americas Pablo Armando Fernandez
Part II. The Lives and Fictions of American Women: 8. Introduction Bell Gale Chevigny
9. This life within me won't keep still Electa Arenal
10. Interview with Margaret Randall Bell Gale Chevigny
11. An invitation to understanding among poor women of the Americas: The Color Purple and Hasta No verte, Jesus Mio Lisa Davis
12. The other face of the phallus Luisa Valenzuela
13. Plotting women: Popular narratives for women in the United States and in Latin America Jean Franco
Part III. Perspectives on Literary Criticism: 14. Introduction Gari Laguardia
15. Northrop Frye, modern fantasy, centrist liberalism, antimarxism, passing time and other limits of American academic criticism Gene Bell-Villada
16. Marvelous relaism/marvelous criticsm Gari Laguardia
17. Bridge over troubled waters Edmundo Desnoes
18. The poet as critics: Wallace Stevens and Octavio Paz Michael Wood
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]