Spanish American novels of the Boom period (1962-1967) attracted a world readership to Latin American literature, but Latin American writers had already been engaging in the modernist experiments of their North American and European counterparts since the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, the desire to be "modern" is a constant preoccupation in twentieth-century Spanish American literature and thus a very useful lens through which to view the century's novels. In this pathfinding study, Raymond L. Williams offers the first complete analytical and critical overview of the Spanish American novel throughout the entire twentieth century. Using the desire to be modern as his organizing principle, he divides the century's novels into five periods and discusses the differing forms that "the modern" took in each era. For each period, Williams begins with a broad overview of many novels, literary contexts, and some cultural debates, followed by new readings of both canonical and significant non-canonical novels. A special feature of this book is its emphasis on women writers and other previously ignored and/or marginalized authors, including experimental and gay writers.
Williams also clarifies the legacy of the Boom, the Postboom, and the Postmodern as he introduces new writers and new novelistic trends of the 1990s. Also of interest are: "Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology", edited by Stephen Tapscott; and "The writings of Carlos Fuentes" by Raymond Leslie Williams.
- ISBN10 0292791615
- ISBN13 9780292791619
- Publish Date 31 August 2003
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 13 July 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Texas Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 284
- Language English