In The Distant Relation Eoin Thomson presents innovative readings of canonical philosophic and literary texts, focusing on the distance that mediates the relation between word and thing, past and present, I and you. Through a novel convergence, itself arising from a field of philosophic and literary experimentation, he challenges previous traditions while demonstrating that his strategy is appropriate to the texts considered. The Distant Relation breaks down the artificial division between philosophy and literature by weaving contemporary philosophic arguments through (...) close readings of Carpentier, Rulfo, Paz, and Garcia Marquez. Thomson draws the reader into the largely uninhabited space between philosophy and literature, providing new critical strategies that allow text and reader to respond to the very distance they share. These strategies involve a reconceptualisation of distance that recognises the productive and affirmative nature of separation. The Distant Relation will attract anyone interested in the ongoing struggle to overcome conventional interpretations of language, time, and identity within the broader context of philosophical trends and Spanish American studies. Eoin S. Thomson is an independent scholar who has taught in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. (shrink)

If we admit that Latin-American literature is a part of what is called Western culture, why, I ask myself, has it not been able to influence any of the great literatures of the West, outside of the Spanish? To be more precise, when I speak of influencing, I am not referring to the historico-cultural event that signifies Latin America, which has changed the West, but specifically to literature, that is, writing, the book, the language, the contents, (...) the creative structure and the symbols. From its origins until today, Latin-American literature, like Jugoslavian literature—in spite of the Nobel prize awarded to Ivo Andric—or Bulgarian or Icelandic, remains a marginal phenomenon. It is produced within a closed circuit, having no real resonance except in Spain. Furthermore, it struggles between two guilt feelings: one, that of being late with regard to renovating currents of fashions of the day and the other, that of not responding to its own reality. Because of those burdens of a guilty conscience, it often feigns innovation by following outside models or exalting a nationalist realism that has not produced the slightest new form but only a mediocre art of propaganda. It simulates and copies, or it lags behind. It either tries to be up to date or pretends to overcome this uneasiness by inventing an intransigent Americanism, behaving like a telluric barbarian or accepting traditional popular forms that may produce works such as Martin Fierro, whose value for the Latin-Americans cannot be denied but whose range is limited. (shrink)

Volume 195 in the North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures series.

Slurs such as spic, slut, wetback, and whore are linguistic expressions that are primarily understood to derogate certain group members on the basis of their descriptive attributes and expressions of this kind have been considered to pack some of the nastiest punches natural language affords. Although prior scholarship on slurs has uncovered several important facts concerning their meaning and use –including that slurs are potentially offensive, are felicitously applied towards some targets yet not others, and are often flexibly used not (...) only derogatorily to convey offense towards out-group members but also non-derogatorily to convey affiliation with in-group members– the literature remains largely focused on slurs that typically target African Americans, male homosexuals, and sexually active females. Since no account of slurs that typically target Hispanics or Mexican-Americans has so far been proposed, here I offer the first systematic and empirically informed analysis of these that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Importantly, this article reviews over a dozen Spanish stereotypes and slurs and explains how the descriptive attributes involved in a stereotype associated with a slur can contribute to the predication of certain content in the application of that slur toward its target in context. This article further explains how the psychological effects of stereotype threat and stereotype lift can be initiated through the application of a relevant slur towards its target in context as well. -/- ----- -/- Las expresiones peyorativas tales como spic (‘spic’), slut (‘zorra’), wetback (‘espalda mojada’) y whore (‘puta’) son expresiones lingüísticas que se entienden principalmente para minusvalorar ciertos miembros de un grupo sobre la base de sus atributos descriptivos (como la raza o el sexo). Se ha considerado que las expresiones de este tipo conllevan algunos de los puñetazos más desagradables que el lenguaje natural puede proporcionar. Aunque la literatura especializada sobre expresiones peyorativas ha descubierto varios hechos importantes en cuanto a significado y uso –entre los que se incluyen que tales expresiones son potencialmente ofensivas, apuntan efectivamente hacia unos objetivos pero no hacia otros, y con frecuencia se utilizan con flexibilidad no sólo despectivamente para ofender a miembros por fuera de un grupo, sino que también de forma no despectiva para afiliar con miembros dentro de un mismo grupo–, tal literatura sigue centrada en gran medida en las expresiones peyorativas que típicamente apuntan contra los afroamericanos (nigger ‘negro’), los homosexuales varones (fagot ‘maricón’), y las mujeres sexualmente activas (slut ‘zorra’). En tanto que no se ha propuesto al momento dar cuenta de expresiones peyorativas dirigidas contra hispanos o mexicano-americanos, en este trabajo se ofrece el primer análisis sistemático y empíricamente informado de tales expresiones, tanto en sus usos despectivos y de apropiación. Es importante destacar que en este artículo se revisan más de una docena de estereotipos y expresiones peyorativas en español, además de explicar cómo los atributos descriptivos que participan de un estereotipo asociado con una difamación pueden contribuir a la predicación de determinados contenidos en la aplicación de esa expresión hacia su objetivo en contexto. Asimismo, en este artículo se explica cómo comienzan los efectos psicológicos de la amenaza estereotipada y el realce estereotipado cuando se emplea una expresión peyorativa relevante contra un objetivo en contexto. (shrink)

Children’s literature provides a critical method of socialization and familiarization with gender roles, providing examples, boundaries, and limitations for gender identity construction. While extensive research has been done on how children’s literature depicts both traditional and non-traditional gender roles, very little research has been published on the cultural differences between literary representations. The aim of the present paper is to describe the representations of social roles of men and women in American, Czech, and Spanish children’s books (...) published between 2010 and 2020. Three best-selling children’s picture books from each year from each respective culture were selected and analyzed, culminating in a thematic analysis of ninety-nine books. Using inductive thematic analysis, the study found all three cultures to be conservative in their depictions of gender roles, with Czech books as the most likely to feature traditional gender roles. Spanish books are more, and American books are the most subversive in their depiction of gender roles, containing an increasing number of non-traditional elements over an examined time period. (shrink)

Slurs such as spic, slut, wetback, and whore are linguistic expressions that are primarily understood to derogate certain group members on the basis of their descriptive attributes (such as their race or sex) and expressions of this kind have been considered to pack some of the nastiest punches natural language affords. Although prior scholarship on slurs has uncovered several important facts concerning their meaning and use –including that slurs are potentially offensive, are felicitously applied towards some targets yet not others, (...) and are often flexibly used not only derogatorily to convey offense towards out-group members but also non-derogatorily to convey affiliation with in-group members– the literature remains largely focused on slurs that typically target African Americans (nigger), male homosexuals (faggot), and sexually active females (slut). Since no account of slurs that typically target Hispanics or Mexican-Americans has so far been proposed, here I offer the first systematic and empirically informed analysis of these that accounts for both their derogatory and appropriative use. Importantly, this article reviews over a dozen Spanish stereotypes and slurs and explains how the descriptive attributes involved in a stereotype associated with a slur can contribute to the predication of certain content in the application of that slur toward its target in context. This article further explains how the psychological effects of stereotype threat and stereotype lift can be initiated through the application of a relevant slur towards its target in context as well. (shrink)

This book argues for a new reading of the political and ethical through the literatures of Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay from 1970-2000. Carlos Amador reads a series of examples from the last dictatorship and the current post-dictatorship period in the Southern Cone, including works by Augusto Roa Bastos, Roberto Bolaño, Ceferino Reato, Horacio Verbitsky, Nelly Richard, Diamela Eltit, and Willy Thayer, with the goal of uncovering the logic behind their conceptions of belonging and rejection. Focusing on theoretical concepts that make (...) possible the formation of any and all communities, this study works towards a vision of literature as essential to the structure of ethics. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture is a collective reflection on the value of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's work for the study of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture. The authors deploy Bourdieu's concepts in the study of Modernismo, avant-garde Mexico, contemporary Puerto Rican literature, Hispanism, Latin American cultural production, and more. Each essay is also a contribution to the study of the politics and economics of culture in Spain and Latin America. (...) The book, as a whole, is in dialogue with recent methodological and theoretical interventions in cultural sociology and Latin American and Iberian studies. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction and summary of my detailed study under preparation on the idea of Europe in contemporary Spanish thought. An historical interpretation of Spanish civilization from its earliest beginnings to the present time is presented in the article. I undertake the problem of Spain’s European vocation, specific features of its Christian culture, especially Iberian links with the Islamic world and the question of changes in Spanish identity. The article presents reflections on Europe by the (...) Generation of ‘98 Spanish writers and thinkers (chiefly Angel Ganivet, Miguel de Unamuno and Ramiro de Maeztu) who, in the face of defeat (1898) in the Spanish-American War, proclaimed a program of moral and cultural rebirth for Spain. Their ambivalent attitude towards Europe was rejected by José Ortega y Gasset and Salvador de Madariaga, both the most pro-European 20th century Spanish intellectuals. The problem of Spanishrelation to Europe was also widely discussed after the Civil War under General Franco regime. The evolution from initial isolation to a fuller integration with Europe of the regime and its conservative Catholic culture are also shown in the article. Much attention is devoted to the present-day civil and European Spain led by democratic socialists. (shrink)

Abstract:Latin American modernity/coloniality studies emerged in the early 1990s from a network of scholars focused on charting the nature and consequences of causal connections between the first appearances of modernity in Europe and Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1492. In this article, I address primarily epistemological and ontological issues raised by this literature for issues pertaining to the history and philosophy of science. The first section briefly summarizes the sixteenth century differences that were (...) the starting point of the modernity/coloniality analyses and points to just a few of the still-emerging feminist issues about this early era. The second section focuses on the distinctive epistemic and political stances that Latin American decolonial theorists use today to frame such analyses: they intend to do theory “otherwise.” This Latin American project has been conceptualized through Gloria Anzaldúa's influential “borderlands” thinking and aligns with the feminist standpoint methodology and other knowledge-from-below projects that have appeared in all of the social justice movements. (shrink)

This volume grew out of the experience of the First Inter-American Congress on Philosophy of Technology, October 1988, organized by the Center for the Philosophy and History of Science and Technology of the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagiiez. The Spanish-language proceedings of that conference have been published in Carl Mitcham and Margarita M. Peiia Borrero, with Elena Lugo and James Ward, eds., El nuevo mundo de la filosofta y la tecnolog(a (University Park, PA: STS Press, 1990). This (...) volume contains thirty-two papers, twenty-two summaries, an introduction and biographical notes, to provide a full record of that seminal gathering. Discussions with Paul T. Durbin and others - including many who participated in the Second Inter-American Congress on Philosophy of Technology, University of Puerto Rico in Mayagiiez, March 199- raised the prospect of an English-language proceedings in the Philosophy and Technology series. But after due consideration it was agreed that a more general volume was needed to introduce English-speaking readers to a growing body of literature on the philosophy of technology in the Spanish-speaking world. As such, the present volume includes Spanish as well as Latin American authors, historical and contemporary figures, some who did and many who did not participate in the first and second inter-American congresses. (shrink)

Compuesto por capítulos de diferentes especialistas en los estudios literarios que laboran en universidades de México, Europa y Estados Unidos, el libro Literatura aplicada en el siglo XXI: ideas y prácticas es el resultado de una invitación y de un esfuerzo para reflexionar sobre las posibilidades epistémicas del fenómeno literario como creación, recreación y programación. Parte de cuestionarse si el binomio clásico de estudiar/aprender ha perdido su sentido en la era de la tecnificación cibernética, es decir, de la inteligencia artificial (...) y de la paulatina robotización del mundo. Puesto que los algoritmos ya leen y escriben automáticamente, y son capaces de combinaciones y hasta de generar narrativas, nos pareció necesaria una mayor sensibilización de la palabra consciente. Una reflexión de la educación poética para diferenciarnos de las máquinas y también para entender su funcionamiento, así como reestablecer la reflexión o diálogo de los creadores con los críticos, y de los promotores de lectura con los teóricos de la lectura. Tal restablecimiento debería ser el desafío de los estudios literarios (universitariamente entendidos) en lo que resta del siglo XXI. De esta forma, los ensayos aquí reunidos hacen referencia a autores y obras del siglo XX y aun de otras centurias, pero con la intención de reflexionar sobre su aplicación en lo que va del presente siglo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 376-379 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World, by Diana de Armas Wilson; 254 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, $74.00. In Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World, Diana de Armas Wilson describes and analyzes the link between the birth of the New World in European consciousness and the (...) expression of that consciousness in the novels of Cervantes. Those of us whose teaching includes works from both Peninsular and Spanish American literature have long felt the need for a study that goes beyond a cataloging of Cervantes's references to the world beyond Europe, and those Cervantine scholars among us have variously hinted at and side-stepped the fullness of this issue. As it was with those exemplary figures of the age of exploration she examines, it is to Professor de Armas Wilson's great credit that she has risen to the challenge. Her analysis is well-organized, reasoned, thoughtful, and readable.De Armas Wilson's knowledge of previous and current research in Cervantine studies as well as genre, colonial and postcolonial, and gender studies is impressive. She also admits to participating "in the kinds of critique currently associated with cultural studies, although not without reservations regarding the alleged presentism of that discipline or its tendency to turn primary texts into commodities." I would respond that de Armas Wilson's concerns and techniques in this study are precisely the tools we need to help us define "cultural studies" to our students and to ourselves as scholars of various literatures and cultures.To begin her study, de Armas Wilson mentions many of Cervantes's literary and personal references to geographies, customs, and other contacts with the [End Page 376] world outside Spain. The first chapter, "The Americanist Cervantes," focuses on that material and includes a brief review of recent research--the latest "grande escrutinario" (Don Quijote, Part I, Chapter VI)--regarding what works might have been in Cervantes's library and/or the texts potentially available to him. Professor de Armas Wilson looks at Cervantes's references and the texts available to him through three lenses: imitation, influence, and intertextuality. She sees these methodologies as interdependent and argues that: "the intertextual practices in this book--based on a revised concept of intertextuality that includes the notion of agency and participates in a historical project--are as American as its central topic." (Finding myself in the process of completing this review on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I can only wonder what texts will not be influenced by the "historical project" of this day.)In the second chapter, "The Novel about the Novel," de Armas Wilson surveys Cervantes's status in Continental and Anglo-American criticism, reminding her readers of the polemic between scholars of the ancient novel and those who, bent on refusing to accept the Greco-Roman works as novels, designate them "romances." De Armas Wilson's contention that the Persiles is a "long exemplary novel," is convincingly depicted. Her arguments are based on the fact of the fictional time of the Persiles being within fifty years of the time when Cervantes wrote it, "its self-conscious theorizing, its rationalizing of 'miracles,' and its avowed imitation of Heliodorus' Aethiopica." She is not alone in arguing that Heliodorus' novel is the antithesis of a romance of chivalry. On these bases de Armas Wilson speaks not only to those who may not have recognized the importance of the Persiles because it has been called a romance (an often "despised or despicable" genre), but also to those of us who view consideration of the Persiles essential to an understanding of Don Quijote, if not a key to comprehending the major goals of all of Cervantes's works and his expression of the consciousness of his day.De Armas Wilson continues by arguing for "coevolutionary histories of the novel as alternatives to evolutionary ones." She bases her argument on echoes of widely disseminated accounts of happenings in the New World, (most significantly those of... (shrink)

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites (...) us to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

"Ana Luisa Sierra's thought-provoking essays deal with the way in which literary works reflect various latent perspectives of sex and gender and how a text may likewise construct a vision of gender, which may be subsequently incorporated into society.".

Building on recent literature on the history of political economy and Spanish imperial history, the article reconstructs the ideas that supported the colonial development of the meat industry in the Río de la Plata. Archival and printed sources are employed to illustrate the different arguments revolving around colonial economic development and imperial rule, in the words and practices of merchants, explorers, administrators and ministers. This way, it is possible to disclose the multiple imperial visions circulating in the (...) class='Hi'>Spanish Atlantic. The analysis suggests that economic reformism was not only a European intellectual and political movement but was shared and appropriated by Spanish Americans. They employed arguments in political economy to foster their agenda, namely the economic improvement of their territory in the broader context of the Spanish commercial empire. If a shared consensus around imperial political economy between Spanish and Spanish American vassals provided arguments supporting this colonial industry, the diverging economic interests, imperial rivalries, and the different geographical spaces of enunciation determined a variable dialectic between projects for the expansion of salted meat production and their realisation. (shrink)

This compilation of around 20 texts presents an heterogeneous spectrum of topics by authors such as: Diamela Eltit, Elvira Hernndez and Guadalupe Santa Cruz, among others who from a philosophical point of view the writings of George ...

"El XI Encuentro Internacional de Escritores de Monterrey organizado por el Consejo para la Cultura y las Artes de Nuevo León , tuvo como invitados a autores de México, Ecuador, Cuba, Estados Unidos, Perú, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Argentina y Nueva Zelanda. La sede del encuentro fue el Area Tierra del Museo de Historia Mexicana durante el 5, 6, y 7 de octubre de 2006"--Page 4 of cover.

Sin duda, Altazor o el viaje en paracaídas de Vicente Huidobro constituye una de las obras cumbre de la literatura hispanoamericana y, por extensión, de la literatura hispanoamericana. Indagar en su construcción literaria desde los códigos vanguardistas del erotismo como detonante, y de la estética de la sublimidad como marco de creación, constituye el mejor modo para comprender la poética del vacío y la sistematización de recursos literarios que articulan lo sublime. Así, el creacionismo singularmente y las Vanguardias, en general, (...) encuentran su demiurgo entrópico en la disolución de límites que dinamiza la sublimidad. (shrink)

Foucault and Latin America is the first volume to trace the influence of Foucault's theories on power, discourse, government, subjectivity and sexuality in Latin American thought.

A partir de un abordaje plural a los temas del sujeto, la modernidad y la decolonización, este volumen ofrece una imprescindible reflexión sobre aspectos pujantes de nuestro tiempo: ¿cómo redefinir la noción de sujeto de cara a los procesos de globalización, que incluyen dinámicas migratorias, flujos fantasmáticos de capitales reales y simbólicos y proliferación de mundos virtuales? ¿A partir de qué principios se negocia la relación entre contingencia y universalidad, ética y política, cultura y mercado? ¿Qué alcances tienen los proyectos (...) decolonizadores en un mundo marcado por la desaparición de la utopía? ¿A qué formas inéditas de hegemonía y subalteridad nos enfrenta el nuevo (des)orden global? Finalmente, ¿cuál es el lugar de América Latina en el espacio post o trans-nacional? Reconocidos pensadores entregan en este libro elaboraciones fundamentales para la comprensión de estas cuestiones, en las que se resume buena parte del pensamiento filosófico de nuestro tiempo. (shrink)

A distinguished group of authors reflects on problems currently enlivening the space shared by philosophy and literary theory in a series of chapters that range in scope from Plato to postmodernism.

The concept of “magic realism” raises many problems, both theoretical and historical. I first encountered it in the context of American painting in the mid-1950s; at about the same time, Angle Flores published an influential article in which the term was applied to the work of Borges;1 but Alejo Carpentier’s conception of the real maravilloso at once seemed to offer a related or alternative conception, while his own work and that of Miguel Angel Asturias seemed to demand an enlargement (...) of its application.2 Finally, with the novels of Gabriel García Márquez in the 1960s, a whole new realm of magic realism opened up whose exact relations to preceding theory and novelistic practice remained undetermined. These conceptual problems emerge most clearly when one juxtaposes the notion of magic realism with competing or overlapping terms. In the beginning, for instance, it was not clear how it was to be distinguished from that vaster category generally simply called fantastic literature; at this point, what is presumably at issue is a certain type of narrative or representation to be distinguished from realism. Carpentier, however, explicitly staged his version as a more authentic Latin American realization of what in the more reified European context took the form of surrealism: his emphasis would seem to have been on a certain poetic transfiguration of the object world itself—not so much a fantastic narrative, then, as a metamorphosis in perception and in things perceived . In García Márquez, finally, these two tendencies seemed to achieve a new kind of synthesis—a transfigured object world in which fantastic events are also narrated. But at this point, the focus of the conception of magic realism would appear to have shifted to what must be called an anthropological perspective: magic realism now comes to be understood as a kind of narrative raw material derived essentially from peasant society, drawing in sophisticated ways on the world of village or even tribal myth. Recent debates, meanwhile, have complicated all this with yet a different kind of issue: namely, the problem of the political or mystificatory value, respectively, of such texts, many of which we owe to overtly left-wing revolutionary writers .3 In spite of these terminological complexities—which might be grounds for abandoning the concept altogether—it retains a strange seductiveness which I will try to explore further, adding to the confusion with reference points drawn from the work of Jacques Lacan and from Freud’s notion of the “uncanny,” and compounding it by an argument that magic realism is to be grasped as a possible alternative to the narrative logic of contemporary postmodernism.4 1. See Angel Flores, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction,” Hispania 38 : 187-92.2. See Alejo Carpentier, “Prólogo” to his novel El Reino de este mundo ; the most useful survey of the debate remains Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria, “Carpentier y el realism magico,” in Otros Mundos, otros fuegos, ed. Donald Yates, Congreso International de Literature Iberoamericana 16 , pp. 221-31.3. See Angel Rama, La Novel en America Latina , and especially Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, De Mitólogos y novelistas , in particular the discussions of Gabriel García Márques and Alejo Carpentier.4. My own general frame of reference for “postmodernism” is outlined in my “Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 : 53-92. Frederic Jameson, William A. Lane Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University, is the author of The Prison-House of Language and The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. He is also a member of the editorial collective of Social Text. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Symbolic Inference; or, Kenneth Burke and Ideological Analysis” and “Ideology and Symbolic Action”. (shrink)

Literary space is that of the text; it is there that it exists, and it is there that it has an operative force. What is not in the text though is reality itself, irreducible to a written form. One of the functions of the narrative “I” is to produce this verbal space, to give a context for the motion which constitutes the novel; a space that is not a reflection of anything, but, rather, an invention of the invention which is (...) the narrator, whose perceptions engender it. Manuscript corrections as well as page proofs modified by the author show that these perceptions are progressively refined so as to be more convincing. Ricardo Gullón is the author of numerous books and articles on Latin American, English, French, Spanish, and American literature, art, and critical theory and has lectured extensively in the Americas and in Europe. Direcciones del Modernismo; Galdós, novelista moderno; and García Marquez, o el arte de contar are among his more influential books. A critical study of his works, La obra crítica de Ricardo Gullón, by Barbara Bockus Aponte was recently published in Spain. See also: "Spatial Form in Literature: Toward a General Theory" by W. J. T. Mitchell in Vol. 6, No. 3. (shrink)

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

American cultural technologies of the early nineteenth century shaped Nature and the synonymous "native" in contradictory ways: celebrating the wilderness but then transforming it by cultivation, mourning lost "natives" (both people and species) while also naturalizing the succession of new Euro-American settlers. Settler colonial geopolitics understood its own territorial claims in association with the retreats, migrations, and expansions of select species populations: cattle replacing American bison or Euro-Americans replacing Indians on the western frontier. In this way, Euro- (...) class='Hi'>American descendants of settlers who then considered themselves "natives" could be the natural stewards to "preserve" or "reform" wild remnants of nature while also identifying against the encroachment of the Old World. Technological arts as varied as moving panoramas and picturesque sketches depicted and enacted civilization overtaking the wild frontier through visual tours. This chapter explores how the sketch fits into technologies of seeing accompanying American settler colonialism and points to moments when it suggests ecological processes of ongoing passage rather than terminal extinction or succession. (shrink)

This book contains thirteen original essays about Puritan culture in colonial New England. Prompted by the growing interest in secular studies, as well as postnational, transnational, and postcolonial critique in the humanities, American Literature and the New Puritan Studies seeks to represent and advance contemporary interest in a field long recognized, however problematically, as foundational to the study of American literature. It invites readers of American literature and culture to reconsider the role of seventeenth-century (...) Puritanism in the creation of the United States of America and its consequent cultural and literary histories. It also records the significant transformation in the field of Puritan studies that has taken place in the last quarter century. In addition to re-reading well known texts of seventeenth-century Puritan New England, the volume contains essays focused on unknown or lesser studied events and texts, as well as new scholarship on post-Puritan archives, monuments, and historiography. (shrink)

An American teacher of literature and poetry living in Montréal, Curtis Brown, recovers Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) as a ‘virus novel’, venturing an integrated response to two literary questions occasioned by the recent pandemic: What might the contemporary ‘Covid novel’ look like? And how did the Spanish flu of 1918–1919—which infected a third of the world's population and killed 50 million—leave literary traces so few and faint? Brown tracks the genesis of An American (...) Tragedy in Dreiser's personal life, his research in microbiology and his general interest in plagues to show how a form traditionally associated with the ‘individual moral adventure’ was repurposed for an institutional epic of viral contagion and systemic malaise. Charting the vicissitudes of Dreiser's reputation over a century, and presenting his formal innovations as widely assimilated, largely unrecognized, and more relevant than ever, Brown concludes that a writer's influence, like a virus, can disappear into ubiquity. (shrink)

This collection of essays intends to challenge conventional notions of what constitutes an American national literature. The new reading of Hegel in recent philosophy and critical theory subjects history and language to a thorough critique. Yet the connection of Hegel to American discourse has largely gone unexplored, and literary theorists have scarcely begun to interrogate the priorities of Hegelianism implicit in American literary history. The essays collected in Theorizing American Literature thus organize their arguments (...) around the necessity to rethink the process of historicizing American literature and to redefine the terms of discussion of some of its most familiar authors. (shrink)

In this chapter we will try to show how the introduction of Darwinian evolutionary theory transformed metaphysics, and in particular, the philosophical understanding of the temporality of being. In the interests of brevity, we will focus on two particularly significant aspects of the impact of Darwinism on Latin America. We will consider, first, how the new evolutionary thought transformed past notions of temporality. Second, we will discuss the ways in which the ideas of regression and extinction, viewed as essential components (...) of the evolutionary process, problematized the nature of progress and civilization. We trace these developments in the work of three central figures of Latin American thought: José Martí, José Rodó, and Euclides da Cunha. All three of these men were extraordinarily versatile thinkers, and each has been the subject of voluminous secondary literature. But the first two, unlike some other influential figures—such as, famously, Domingo Sarmiento of Argentina—were hardly self-professed Darwinians. Still, we have chosen to discuss them because of this last fact, and not despite it. As for da Cunha, though he accepted the basic canons of the new evolutionary theory, he remained ambivalent about its application. All three struggled, each in his own way, to come to terms with the Darwinian legacy, and each found his thinking profoundly shaped by this struggle; they offer us three different, unique perspectives on the impact of Darwinism. The magnitude of the new evolutionism can only be understood if we consider the wide range of discussion it triggered in consequence of its profound philosophical impact. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Metaphysics and Epistemology Ethics and Politics Aesthetic Worldviews References Further Reading.

Although not exactly continuous, the Native American challenge to the canon, as I have tried to show, has been of comparatively long standing. Nonetheless, inasmuch as Native American literary production and Euramerican writing influenced by it have only barely begun to enter the courses in and the anthologies of general American literature, that challenge cannot be said to have been effective as yet. No doubt it will take more time for poets and teachers to recognize what (...) Native American literatures aboriginally were and, to some extent, still are; to recognize when and if the influence of these literatures is present in work by Native and non-Native writers. It is only since the 1950s and 1960s that philological and structural work has begun to make this recognition possible in any case.It is only more recently still that an adequately sophisticated criticism for these literatures has begun to develop, with the publication of Abraham Chapman’s basic and eclectic collection of essays, Literature of the American Indians: Views and Interpretations ; Karl Kroeber’s uneven but valuable introduction to the subject, Traditional Literatures of the American Indian: Texts and Interpretations ; and Hymes’ “In Vain I Tried to Tell You”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics , a collection of Hymes’ seminal and indispensable work. The broadest and most sophisticated collection of essays—gathering work by Hymes, Tedlock, Toelken, Kroeber, and others—has only just appeared: Smooting the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature is edited by Brian Swann, a poet and translator of Mative American song.61 These developments are encouraging for Native American literatures. As American society continues to move away from anthropocentrism and textual authority, the Native tradition may for the first time effectively assert its claim upon the canon of American literature. 61. For his translations, see, for example, Swann’s Song of the Sky: Versions of Native American Songs and Poems . Swann works from texts, not performances, from English language versions, not transcriptions of Native languages; as a result, he has made a point of insisting, “These poems of mine are not translations” but instead “versions” of Native American poetry. Although he has given up specific claims to authenticity, Swann has nonetheless shown how much can be done by the non-Native poet and scholar responding to the Native tradition as a powerful source. Arnold Krupat is a member of the literature faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the coeditor of the University of Nebraska Press’ Native American Autobiography Series and is currently completing an anthology of Native American autobiographies, Indian Lives. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “An Approach to Native American Texts,” appeared in the December 1982 issue. (shrink)

Literature from the United Kingdom and the United States represents the cultural expression of those peoples' lived experiences. Reading British and American literature may also aid in our understanding of the values, worldview, and ideological underpinnings of western civilization. Therefore, this thesis examines the mythological and religious themes in British and American literature using literary works from both countries. Greek Myth is the source and soil of ancient Greek literature. Ancient Greek and Roman (...) class='Hi'>literature is a rich treasure for later generations to understand myths, providing creative materials for later British and American writers. It can be said that myths and religious ideas gave birth to great literary works and some immortal poets. Among them, "_Wuthering Heights_" is the main representative work of 19 th -century literature and occupies an important position in British and American literary history. Based on this, this paper discusses British and American literature's religious and cultural characteristics in "_Wuthering Heights_", mainly from the perspective of environment description and plot shaping. I hope this research can play a role in attracting jade. (shrink)

Examining the literature of slavery and race before the Civil War, Maurice Lee demonstrates for the first time exactly how the slavery crisis became a crisis of philosophy that exposed the breakdown of national consensus and the limits of rational authority. Poe, Stowe, Douglass, Melville, and Emerson were among the antebellum authors who tried - and failed - to find rational solutions to the slavery conflict. Unable to mediate the slavery controversy as the nation moved toward war, their writings (...) form an uneasy transition between the confident rationalism of the American Enlightenment and the more skeptical thought of the pragmatists. Lee draws on antebellum moral philosophy, political theory, and metaphysics, bringing a fresh perspective to the literature of slavery - one that synthesizes cultural studies and intellectual history to argue that romantic, sentimental, and black Atlantic writers all struggled with modernity when facing the slavery crisis. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Philosophical Context in Jena around 1800 A Metaphysics of Freedom Analytic and Synthetic Philosophy Metaphysics of Humanity Socioeconomic Philosophy The Natural World Harmonious Freedom Krause's Philosophy in Spain Ideal de la humanidad (the ideal of humanity) Latin American Reception Conclusion References Further Reading.

This article looks at the ways in which Spanish American women exploited the political and social turmoil of the late 18th and early 19th centuries to move beyond their traditional sphere of influence in the home. Women directly participated in the Túpac Amaru Rebellion (1780–1781) and in the Wars of Independence (1810–1825) providing funding, food supplies, infrastructure and reinforcements for the troops, and nursing the wounded. Others contributed by taking part in the physical fighting (both openly and disguised (...) as men) and a few led troops into battle. This article looks at some of the individuals behind the statistics and reveals their determination to participate despite the punishments imposed on women found guilty of disloyalty to the Spanish crown. Spanish colonial law had to be amended to ensure that women dissidents were given as equally harsh sentences as men. In the immediate post-independence period, rather than be seen as misfits or a threat to the patriarchal system, several of these women were given national awards. (shrink)

An attempt to reinterpret American literature "as a kind of imaginative and experimental projection" of the "American Dream"--the ideal of perfect freedom and democracy. The author's critical and methodological principles, unfortunately, are never quite made clear.--L. H.

This study examines the changing role of art and artist during the turn-of-the-century period, offering a consideration of the multiple dichotomies of art and life, aesthetics and economics, production and consumption, and centre and periphery.

This book argues that the negotiation of agency is central not only to the experience of war but also to its representation in cultural expressions, ranging from a notion of disablement, expressed in victimization, immobilization, traumatization, and death, to enablement, expressed in the perpetration of heroic, courageous, skillful, and powerful actions of assertion and dominance. In order to illustrate this thesis, it provides a comprehensive analysis of literary representations of the American War of Independence from 1775, the beginning of (...) the war, up until roughly 1860, when the Civil War marked a decisive historical turning point. As the first national war, it has an unquestionably exemplary status for the development of American conceptions of war. The in-depth study of exemplary texts from a variety of genres and by authors like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Sedgwick, William Gilmore Simms, and Herman Melville, demonstrates that the overall character of Revolutionary War literature presents the war as a forum in which collective and individual agency is expressed, defended, and cultivated. It uses the military environment in order to teach the values of discipline and self-subordination to a communal good, which are perceived as basic principles of a Republican virtue to guide the actions of the autonomous individual in a popular democracy. (shrink)

This Guide to the archive presents political theory’s engagement with American literature via a focus on the tension between the real and the imaginative as a source for politics.