Bøker i Latin American Literature and Culture-serien

An early cameo of Latin American surrealism, Rosamel del Valle's erotic narrative of ecstasy and perdition creates the rhythm of the dream and the tempo of madness. Intermittently a waiflike young woman, Eva, intrudes into the daily routine of the writer. Her appearances are marked by a circle of red and the vision of a deep well with a star hanging over it. A tone poem of surrealist encounter, pursuit, and loss, Eva y la Fuga was written in 1930 and finally published posthumously in 1970, by Monte Avila Press in Venezuela. Anna Balakian offers here the first translation of the work into any other language. She brilliantly conveys in English the author's highly metaphoric language and the immediacy of surrealist experience, signaled in the narrative by frequent lapses into a haunting present tense.On their walks through the streets of Santiago, Eva and the narrator mingle in the fiesta atmosphere of the Chilean Amusement Park, with its gigantic Ferris Wheel. Bits of real-life dialogue float through the air. But the couple move on different wavelengths from the crowd and often from each other. Passing in and out of his life, Eva exercises a hypnotic fascination over the writer and makes an equally profound impression on the reader. This narrative is in the same genre as Gerard de Nerval's Aurelia, Andre Breton's Nadja, and Michel Leiris's Aurora, and should be counted among the most compelling works of twentieth-century surrealist literature.

Conveys the poet's vision of the realities of day-to-day life and describes the genesis of the poems.

A study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835-1852).

This text explores Latin American vanguardism's provocative and polemic nature. The movement was stimulated by the European avantgarde movements of the World War I era, but, as this book argues, it developed a very distinct voice and character.

Focusing on the hundreds of letters that Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain concerning his discoveries in the New World, this study analyzes questions concerning the authenticity and authority of the texts attributed to Columbus, and his much-discussed opinions of the Indians.

Jean de Lery had undertaken his arduous voyage to the land of Brazil in 1556, as a youthful member of the first Protestant mission to the New World. This title presents a translation of an early European account of life in the New World.

A narrative of the exploration of North America by Europeans (1528-36).

National consolidation and romantic novels go hand in hand in Latin America. This title shows how 19th century patriotism and heterosexual passion historically depend on one another to engender productive citizens.

This text examines the multiple narrative perspectives Donoso presents and traces a transformation in Donoso's works from complex stage performance to political forum. It illuminates a weaving of feminine and masculine aspects of artistic voice in his work.

This sombre biography of an urban slave who taught himself to read and write, and who ultimately achieved fame as a poet in Cuba's slave society, is presented in both Spanish and English. There is an introduction which sets the text in its historical and cultural context.

An epic that features an entire continent and its people.