Latin American literature
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Latin American literature refers to the literature of Latin America. The history of Latin American literature spans centuries, but has risen to its highest prominence in the second half of the 20th century, driven by the trend of magical realism.
Latin American literature generally consists of works written in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, though other languages may be included. Authors who write in English — such as Caribbean Nobel Prize winners V. S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott — are generally not regarded as Latin American writers.
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[edit] History
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An early height of Latin American literature was José Hernández's epic poem Martín Fierro (1872). The story of a poor gaucho drafted to fight a frontier war against Indians, Martín Fierro is considered the exemplar of "gauchesque" poetry – the Argentine genre of poetry centered around the lives of gauchos.
[edit] The Boom
After World War II, Latin America in general prospered in many areas due to the economic boom of the post-war period. Along with a significant economic boom came a literary boom. From 1960 to 1967, the major works of the Latin American literary boom were published, though a few major works came out in the preceding decade. Many of these novels were somewhat rebellious from the general point of view of Latin America culture. Authors crossed traditional boundaries, experimented with language, and often mixed different styles of writing in their works: e.g., a novel and poem in one. Structures of literary works were also changing. Latin American writers were inspired by authors such as Faulkner, Joyce, James, and Woolf, and they incorporated these authors' techniques into their writing. With these authors as inspirations, some literature lacked linearity, disregarding conventional rules, and oftentimes introducing techniques such as internal monologues. Along with being influenced by other North American and European authors, Latin American authors were inspired by each others' works. Because many of the authors knew one another and influenced each other, Latin American literature came to have its own distinct characteristics that became recognized worldwide.
Though the literary boom occurred while Latin America was having commercial success, the works of this period tended to move away from the positives of the modernization that was underway. Instead literary works focused on the problems and injustices that people were suffering across Latin America.
Political turmoil in Latin American countries such as Cuba at this time influenced the literary boom as well. Some works anticipated an end to the prosperity that was occurring, and even predicted old problems would resurface in the near future. Some historians believe that great authors emerge when a country is about to undergo a historical transformation. Their works foreshadowed the events to come in the future of Latin America, with the 1970s and 1980s full of dictatorships, economic turmoil, and Dirty Wars.
- Some novels of the literary boom
- El aleph (1949), Jorge Luis Borges
- Los pasos perdidos (1953), Alejo Carpentier
- Pedro Páramo (1955), Juan Rulfo
- Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (1958), Jorge Amado
- Los ríos profundos (1958), José María Arguedas
- A morte e a morte de Quincas Berro D'água (1959), Jorge Amado
- Hijo de hombre (1960), Augusto Roa Bastos
- El coronel no tiene quién le escriba (1961), Gabriel García Márquez
- La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Carlos Fuentes
- Sobre héroes y tumbas (1962), Ernesto Sábato
- La ciudad y los perros (1963) Mario Vargas Llosa
- Rayuela (1963), Julio Cortázar
- A paixão segundo G.H. (1964), Clarice Lispector
- Dona Flor e seus dois maridos (1966), Jorge Amado
- La casa verde (1966), Mario Vargas Llosa
- Paradiso (1966), José Lezama Lima
- Cien años de soledad (1967), Gabriel García Márquez
- Tres Tristes Tigres (1967), Guillermo Cabrera Infante
For more information on this topic consult Identity and Modernity in Latin America by Jorge Larrain. Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2000.
[edit] Prominent writers
Latin American winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature include Gabriela Mistral (1945), Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967), Pablo Neruda (1971), Gabriel García Márquez (1982), and Octavio Paz (1990). Other prominent writers include:
- Isabel Allende – prominent female writer
- Machado de Assis – Brazilian novelist
- Augusto Roa Bastos – Paraguayan anti-dictatorship novelist
- Jorge Luis Borges – acclaimed poet, short story writer, essayist, translator, and philosopher
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante – Cuban exile writer and translator of James Joyce
- Julio Cortázar – experimental Argentine writer
- Carlos Fuentes – influential Mexican novelist
- Manuel González Prada - freethinker and social critic who brought Peruvian thought into the 20th century
- José Hernández – Argentine writer, author of the Argentine national poem Martín Fierro
- José Carlos Mariátegui - Peruvian journalist, political philosopher, and activist, one of the most influential Latin American socialists of the 20th century
- Horacio Quiroga – Uruguayan writer often compared to Edgar Allan Poe
- Juan Rulfo – perhaps the first magical realist
- César Vallejo - Peruvian revolutionary poet, one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century
- Mario Vargas Llosa – leading Peruvian novelist
