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

An account of the literature of the Spanish-speaking Americas from the time of Columbus to Latin American Independence, this book examines the origins of colonial Latin American literature in Spanish, the writings and relationships among major literary and intellectual figures of the colonial period, and the story of how Spanish literary language developed and flourished in a new context. Authors and works have been chosen for the merits of their writings, their participation in the larger debates of their era, and their resonance with readers today.

This Very Short Introduction chronicles the trends and traditions of modern Latin American literature, arguing that Latin American literature developed as a continent-wide phenomenon, not just an assemblage of national literatures, in moments of political crisis. With the Spanish American War came Modernismo, the end of World War I and the Mexican Revolution produced the avant-garde, and the Cuban Revolution sparked a movement in the novel that came to be known as the Boom. Within this narrative, the author covers all of the major writers of Latin American literature, from Andr?s Bello and Jos? Mar?a de Heredia, through Borges and Garc?a M?rquez, to Fernando Vallejo and Roberto Bola?o.

This title explores the rich literary history of Spain which resonates with contemporary debates on transnationalism and cultural diversity. It introduces readers to the ways in which Spanish literature has been read in and outside Spain explaining misconceptions, outlining insights of scholarship and suggesting new readings.

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature examines the defining role of plants in cultural expression across Latin America, particularly in literature. From the colonial georgic to Pablo Neruda’s Canto general, Lesley Wylie’s close study of botanical imagery demonstrates the fundamental role of the natural world and the relationship between people and plants in the region. Plants are also central to literary forms originating in the Americas, such as the New World Baroque, described by Alejo Carpentier as “nacido de árboles.” The book establishes how vegetal imaginaries are key to Spanish American attempts to renovate European forms and traditions as well as to the reconfiguration of the relationship between humans and nonhumans. Such a reconfiguration, which persistently draws on indigenous animist ontologies to blur the boundaries between people and plants, anticipates much contemporary ecological thinking about our responsibility towards nonhuman nature and shows how environmental thinking by way of plants has a long history in Latin American literature.

"Transatlantic Translations refigures Latin American narratives outside of the current paradigm of 'victimization' and 'resistance'. Julio Ortega is more concerned to examine how what was different is constructed in terms of what was already known, and to explore what he terms 'the radical principle of the new intermixing. Tracing Latin American representations from the early modern era to our own in the work of Shakespeare, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Guaman Poma de Ayala, Juan Rulfo and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others, Ortega reveals that language was not solely a way for colonizers to indoctrinate and 'civilize, but also a means that enabled Latin Americans to argue and negotiate their versions and appropriations, and eventually to tell their own history. The coordinated essays in Transatlantic Translations enable the Old World and the New to meet and debate together in a new language."--BOOK JACKET.