The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War

by Rodriguez, Jaime Javier

• ISBN13: 9780292722453
• ISBN10: 0292722451
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780292774575
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-05-15
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr
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Summary

The literary archive of the U.S.-Mexican War (18461848) opens to view the conflicts and relationships across one of the most contested borders in the Americas. Most studies of this literature focus on the war's nineteenth-century moment of national expansion. InThe Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War, Jaime Javier Rodriacute;guez brings the discussion forward to our own moment by charting a new path into the legacies of a military conflict embedded in the cultural cores of both nations. Rodriacute;guez's groundbreaking study moves beyond the terms of Manifest Destiny to ask a fundamental question: How do the war's literary expressions shape contemporary tensions and exchanges among Anglo Americans, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans? By probing the war's traumas, anxieties, and consequences with a fresh attention to narrative, Rodriacute;guez shows us the relevance of the U.S.-Mexican War to our own era of demographic and cultural change. Reading across dime novels, frontline battle accounts, Mexican American writings and a wide range of other popular discourse about the war, Rodriacute;guez reveals how historical awareness itself lies at the centre of contemporary cultural fears of a Mexican "invasion," and how the displacements caused by the war set key terms for the ways Mexican Americans in subsequent generations would come to understand their own identities. Further, this is also the first major comparative study that analyzes key Mexican war texts and their impact on Mexico's national identity.

Author Biography

Jaime Javier Rodrguez is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Texas in Denton.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction: Narratives, Borders, Dreams	p. 1
U.S.-Mexican War Novelettes and Dime Novels: Cousins, Seducers, Bandits	p. 17
Tales of Chivalry	p. 28
Encounter on the Frontier	p. 56
Fictive Facts	p. 81
Antinarratives of the U.S,-Mexcan War	p. 110
Nation and Lamentation: The Catalysis of Mexicanidad	p. 153
Mexican Self-Consciousness: El monedero and the Quest to Reform Mexico	p. 182
Mexican American Visions: Grief and Liberation in Global Time-Space	p. 207
Epilogue: Narrative Arcs, Arrows of Time	p. 249
Appendix: Novelette Titles	p. 255
Notes	p. 257
Bibliography	p. 289
Index	p. 301
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