Fantastic Short Stories by Women Authors from Spain and Latin America

Fantastic Short Stories by Women Authors from Spain and Latin America
Author: Patricia García
Publisher: Iberian and Latin American Studies
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Fantasy fiction, Spanish
ISBN: 9781786835086

This critical anthology renders visible the twentieth-century Spanish and Latin American traditions of the female fantastic, which presented alternatives to the model of literary realism. Not sufficiently known to readers, the five key short stories by Emilia Pardo Bazán, Amparo Dávila, Rosario Ferré, Cristina Fernández Cubas, and Ana María Shua collected in the book cover a range of cultural references and language specificities from Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Argentina. They attest to the richness and diversity of fantastic fiction in the Spanish language. Corresponding analyses provide social contexts and feminist interpretations of such popular fantastic tropes as the revenant, the monster, the doll, the double, the haunted house, and the werewolf.

Fantastic Short Stories by Women Authors from Spain and Latin America

Fantastic Short Stories by Women Authors from Spain and Latin America
Author: Patricia Garcia
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 178683510X

It includes introductions to the life and work of female authors who are not very well known in the Anglophone world due to the lack of translations of their works. This critical work with a feminist focus will provide a helpful framework for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the UK and US. A wide-ranging bibliography will be of great assistance to those looking to pursue research on the fantastic or on any of the specific writers and texts. This book is endorsed by the British Academy as part of the project Gender and the Fantastic in Hispanic Studies, and by an established international network, namely the Grupo de Estudios sobre lo Fantástico, based in the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

I the Supreme

I the Supreme
Author: Augusto Roa Bastos
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1984898140

I the Supreme imagines a dialogue between the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator known as Dr. Francia and Policarpo Patiño, his secretary and only companion. The opening pages present a sign that they had found nailed to the wall of a cathedral, purportedly written by Dr. Francia himself and ordering the execution of all of his servants upon his death. This sign is quickly revealed to be a forgery, which takes leader and secretary into a larger discussion about the nature of truth: “In the light of what Your Eminence says, even the truth appears to be a lie.” Their conversation broadens into an epic journey of the mind, stretching across the colonial history of their nation, filled with surrealist imagery, labyrinthine turns, and footnotes supplied by a mysterious “compiler.” A towering achievement from a foundational author of modern Latin American literature, I the Supreme is a darkly comic, deeply moving meditation on power and its abuse—and on the role of language in making and unmaking whole worlds.

Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture

Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture
Author: Lloyd Hughes Davies
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1786835762

This is the first monograph to consider the significance of madness and irrationality in both Spanish and Spanish American literature. It considers various definitions of ‘madness’ and explores the often contrasting responses, both positive (figural madness as stimulus for literary creativity) and negative (clinical madness representing spiritual confinement and sterility). The concept of national madness is explored with particular reference to Argentina: while, on the one hand, the country’s vast expanses have been seen as conducive to madness, the urban population of Buenos Aires, on the other, appears to be especially dependent on psychoanalytic therapy. The book considers both the work of lesser-known writers such as Nuria Amat, whose personal life is inflected by a form of literary madness, and that of larger literary figures such as José Lezama Lima, whose poetic concepts are suffused with the irrational. The conclusion draws attention to the ‘other side’ of reason as a source of possible originality in a world dominated by the tenets of logic and conventionalised thinking.

Latin America and Existentialism

Latin America and Existentialism
Author: Edwin Murillo
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2023-06-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1837720010

Latin America and Existentialism is a preliminary intellectual history, prioritising literature and contextualising Latin American philosophical contributions from the 1860s to the late 1930s, decades that coincide with the canon’s foundational years. This study takes a Pan-American approach to move the critical focus away from the River Plate, a region that has received some critical attention. In doing so, it focuses on existentially-neglected writers such as Brazil’s Machado de Assis and Graciliano Ramos, José Asunción Silva from Colombia, Cuba’s Enrique Labrador Ruiz, and the Chilean María Luisa Bombal. Underappreciated Latin American philosophical voices and existentialism’s canonical perspectives allow the author to discuss the many problems concerning the experiencing ‘I’ of these authors, and to consider such existential themes as ethical vacuity, forlornness, the crisis of insufficiency, the conundrum of choice, and the enigma of authentic being. The concentration on Latin America’s existentially-hued interest in the human condition is an invitation to the reader to reconsider the peripheral status in the existentialism canon.

The Urban Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century European Literature

The Urban Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century European Literature
Author: Patricia García
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2022-01-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030837769

The Urban Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century European Literature explores transnational perspectives of modern city life in Europe by engaging with the fantastic tropes and metaphors used by writers of short fiction. Focusing on the literary city and literary representations of urban experience throughout the nineteenth century, the works discussed incorporate supernatural occurrences in a European city and the supernatural of these stories stems from and belongs to the city. The argument is structured around three primary themes. “Architectures”, “Encounters” and “Rhythms” make reference to three axes of city life: material space, human encounters, and movement. This thematic approach highlights cultural continuities and thus supports the use of the label of “urban fantastic” within and across the European traditions studied here.

Women, Memory and Dictatorship in Recent Chilean Fiction

Women, Memory and Dictatorship in Recent Chilean Fiction
Author: Gustavo Carvajal
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786838052

This study is the only book in English to analyse Chilean memory culture using an interdisciplinary angle (memory studies, gender studies, literature in post-dictatorship Chile) It includes comprehensive material, from award-winning authors (Diamela Eltit, Carlos Franz, Arturo Fontaine), rising stars of the Chilean literary scene (Nona Fernández) to first-time published novelists (Pía González, Fátima Sime) It is the only book in English that focuses on women, memory and dictatorship in contemporary Chile from a cultural and literary perspective. It offers a new way of comprehending Chilean memory culture, considering gender and literature as two key elements in this cultural approach to the recent past.

Theatre Censorship in Spain, 19311985

Theatre Censorship in Spain, 19311985
Author: Catherine O'Leary
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2023-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786839830

This is a comprehensive study of the impact of censorship on theatre in twentieth-century Spain. It draws on extensive archival evidence, vivid personal testimonies and in-depth analysis of legislation to document the different kinds of theatre censorship practised during the Second Republic (1931–6), the civil war (1936–9), the Franco dictatorship (1939–75) and the transition to democracy (1975–85). Changes in criteria, administrative structures and personnel from these periods are traced in relation to wider political, social and cultural developments, and the responses of playwrights, directors and companies are explored. With a focus on censorship, new light is cast on particular theatremakers and their work, the conditions in which all kinds of theatre were produced, the construction of genres and canons, as well as on broader cultural history and changing ideological climate – all of which are linked to reflections on the nature of censorship and the relationship between culture and the state.

Reform, Rebellion and Party in Mexico, 18361861

Reform, Rebellion and Party in Mexico, 18361861
Author: Brian Hamnett
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2022-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786838524

Between 1836 and 1861, Mexico’s difficulties as a sovereign state became fully exposed. Its example provides a case study for all similarly emerging independent states that have broken away from long-standing imperial systems. The leaders of the Republic in Mexico envisaged the construction of a nation, in a process that often conflicted with ethnic, religious, and local loyalties. The question of popular participation always remained outstanding, and this book examines regional and local movements as the other side of the coin to capital city issues and aspirations. Formerly an outstanding Spanish colony on the North American sub-continent, financial difficulties, economic recession, and political divisions made the new Republic vulnerable to spoliation. This began with the loss of Texas in 1836, the acquisition of the Far North by the United States in 1846–8, and the European debt-collecting Intervention in 1861. This study examines the Mexican responses to these setbacks, culminating in the Liberal Reform Movement from 1855 and the opposition to it.