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What happened in Spanish American fiction after the Boom? Can we define the Post-Boom? What are its characteristics? How does it relate to the Boom itself? Is Post-Boom the same as Postmodernism or something quite different? Shaw traces the emergence of a different kind of writing which began to ...

What happened in Spanish American fiction after the Boom? Can we define the Post-Boom? What are its characteristics? How does it relate to the Boom itself? Is Post-Boom the same as Postmodernism or something quite different? Shaw traces the emergence of a different kind of writing which began to displace the Boom in the mid-1970s and has flourished ever since. More reader-friendly, more concerned with the here and now of Latin America, the writers of the Post-Boom have explored new areas of Spanish American life and incorporated characters from new social groups, especially young working-class and lower middle-class figures with their distinctive "pop" culture and freewheeling life-style. Shaw suggests that, while some Boom writers have moved toward the Post-Boom, Post-Boom narrative is distinctively different from that of the older movement and cannot be readily assimilated into Postmodernism.

As the quincentenary of Columbus's first voyage was approaching, Latin American authors vied to finish novels rewriting the conquest in order to have them published in 1992. Surprisingly, few of these novels attempted to reconstruct the indigenous perspective on this historical moment, focusing ...

As the quincentenary of Columbus's first voyage was approaching, Latin American authors vied to finish novels rewriting the conquest in order to have them published in 1992. Surprisingly, few of these novels attempted to reconstruct the indigenous perspective on this historical moment, focusing instead on representing the European conquerors. Kimberle Lopez considers five of these works: Juan Jose Saer's El entendado; Herminio Martinez's Diario maldito de Nuno de Guzman; Abel Posse's El largo atardecer del caminate; and Homero Aridjis's 1492: Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezon de Castilla and Memorias del Nuevo Mundo. She explores how their authors represented the conquest from the fictionalized perspective of the conquistador, ultimately deconstructing the rhetoric of empire through the representation of ambivalence.

Lopez proposes that the anxiety of identification expressed within these novels entails a fear of losing ego boundaries, which provokes the simultaneous fascination and aversion felt by the colonizer toward the colonized. The fictionalized and would-be conquistadors all identify with certain aspects of Amerindian culture -- significantly, those elements that are most distinct from European culture, such as cannibalism and human sacrifice -- but also feel the need to distance themselves from these "others" in order to protect their own European cultural identity. In most cases, the conquistadors themselves are represented as outsiders within the enterprise of imperialism, due to ethnic, religious, or sexual differences from the norm. This representation turns the gaze inward toward the "other" within European culture, underscoring the origins of Latin American cultures in theviolent encounter between the Amerindians and the conquistadors.

Body of Writing focuses on the traces that an author's "body" leaves on a work of fiction. Drawing on the work of six important Spanish American writers of the twentieth century, Rene Prieto examines narratives that reflect -- in differing yet ultimately complementary ways -- the imprint of the ...

Body of Writing focuses on the traces that an author's "body" leaves on a work of fiction. Drawing on the work of six important Spanish American writers of the twentieth century, Rene Prieto examines narratives that reflect -- in differing yet ultimately complementary ways -- the imprint of the author's body, thereby disclosing insights about power, aggression, transgression, and eroticism.

Healthy, invalid, lustful, and confined bodies -- as portrayed by Julio Cortazar, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Severo Sarduy, Rosario Castellanos, and Tununa Mercado -- become evidence for Roland Barthes's contention that works of fiction are "anagrams of the body". Claiming that an author's intentions can be uncovered by analyzing "the topography of a text", Prieto pays particular attention not to the actions or plots of these writers' fiction but rather to their settings and characterizations. In the belief that bodily traces left on the page reveal the motivating force behind a writer's creative act, he explores such fictional themes as camouflage, deterioration, defilement, entrapment, and subordination. Along the way, Prieto reaches unexpected conclusions regarding topics that include the relationship of the female body to power, male and female transgressive impulses, and the connection between aggression, the idealization of women, and anal eroticism in men.

This study of how authors' longings and fears become embodied in literature will interest students and scholars of literary and psychoanalytic criticism, gender studies, and twentieth-century and Latin American literature.