Do the Americans Have a Common Literature?

by Firmat, Gustavo Perez; Zamora, Lois Parkinson (CON); Saldivar, Ramon David (CON); Benitez-Rojo, Antonio (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780822310723
• ISBN10: 0822310724
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-11-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

This volume takes an important step toward the discovery of a common critical heritage that joins the diverse literatures of North America and Latin America. Traditionally, literary criticism has treated the literature of the Americas as "New World" literature, examining it in relation to its "Old World"-usually European-counterparts. This collection of essays redirects the Eurocentric focus of earlier scholarship and identifies a distinctive pan-American consciousness. The essays here place the literature of the Americas in a hemispheric context by drawing on approaches derived from various schools of contemporary critical thought-Marxism, feminism, culture studies, semiotics, reception aesthetics, and poststructuralism. As part of their search for a distinctly New World literary idiom, the contributors engage not only the major North American and Spanish American writers, but also such "marginal" or "minor" literatures as Chicano, African American, Brazilian, and Queacute;becois. In identifying areas of agreement and confluence, this work lays the groundwork for finding historical, ideological, and cultural homogeneity in the imaginative writing of the Americas.Contributors.Lois Parkinson Zamora, David T. Haberly, Joseacute; David Saldiacute;var, Antonio Beniacute;tez-Rojo, Joseacute; Piedra, Doris Sommer, Enrico Mario Santiacute;, Eduardo Gonzaacute;lez, John Irwin, Wendy B. Faris, Reneacute; Prieto, Jonathan Monroe, Gustavo Peacute;rez Firmat

Table of Contents

Introduction: Cheek to Cheek

The Usable Past: The Idea of History in Modern U.S. And Latin American Fiction

Form and Function in the New World Legend

The Dialectics of Our America José

The Repeating Island

Through Blues

Plagiarized Authenticity: Sarmiento's Cooper and Others

The Accidental Tourist: Walt Whitman in Latin America

American Theriomorphia: The Presence of Mulatez in Cirilo Vallaverde and Beyond

Mysteries We Reread, Mysteries of Reading: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story

Also Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson

Marking Space, Charting Time: Text and Territory in Faulkner's "The Bear" and Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos

In-Fringe: The Role of French Criticism in the Fiction of Nicole Brossard and Severo Sarduy

Mischling and Métis: Common and Uncommon Languages in Adrienne Rich and Aimé

Césaire

The Strut of the Centipede: José

Lezama Lima and New World Exceptionalism

Notes

Index

Contributors

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