The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel

The diverse countries of Latin America have produced a lively and ever-evolving tradition of novels, many of which are read in translation all over the world. This Companion offers a broad overview of the novel’s history and analyzes in depth several representative works by, for example, Gabriel García Márquez, Machado de Assis, Isabel Allende and Mario Vargas Llosa. The essays collected here offer several entryways into the understanding and appreciation of the Latin American novel in Spanish-speaking America and Brazil. The volume conveys a real sense of the heterogeneity of Latin American literature, highlighting regions whose cultural and geopolitical particularities are often overlooked. Indispensable to students of Latin American or Hispanic studies and those interested in comparative literature and the development of the novel as genre, the Companion features a comprehensive bibliography and chronology and concludes with an essay about the success of Latin American novels in translation.

THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO

THE LATIN
AMERICAN NOVEL

EDITED BY

EFRAÍN KRISTAL
University of California, Los Angeles

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521532198

© Cambridge University Press 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-10 0 521 82533 4 hardback
ISBN-10 0 521 53219 1 paperback
ISBN-13 978 0 521 82533 7 hardback
ISBN-13 978 0 521 53219 8 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

PIERS ARMSTRONG is an Australian-born Brazilianist. He has taught at UCLA and USC in California, and at the Federal University of Bahia and at the State University of Feira de Santana in Brazil. Since 2002 he has been Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. His first book, Third World Literary Fortunes (1999), contrasts the international receptions of Brazilian literature, Spanish American literature, and Brazilian popular culture. His second book, Cultura Popular na Bahia & Estilística Cultural Pragmática (2002), is an introduction to cultural studies in the context of Bahia.

DANIEL BALDERSTON is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Iowa. Recent publications include Borges, realidad y simulacros (2000) and El deseo, enorme cicatriz luminosa: ensayos sobre homosexualidades latinoamericanas (2004). He is also the co-editor of Voice-Overs: Translation and Latin American Literature (2002) and the Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900–2003 (2004).

ROY C. BOLAND OSEGUEDA is Professor of Spanish in La Trobe University, Honorary Professor of Spanish in the University of Queensland, and Director of the Centre of Galician Studies of Australia. He has been Visiting Professor in many universities, including UCLA, Complutense, Santiago de Compostela, and Lund. He has published widely on Latin American literature and is the current editor of Antipodas, the Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies of Australia and New Zealand. His most recent books are Culture and Customs of El Salvador (2001) and Una rara comedia. Vision and revision de las novelas de Mario Vargas Llosa (2003).

STEVEN BOLDY teaches at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on Latin American narrative, including The Novels of Julio Cortazar (1980) and The Narrative of Carlos Fuentes (2002).

CATHERINE DAVIES is a Professor in the Department of Hispanic and Latin American Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her research addresses issues relating to cultural production, gender, and nationalism in Spain and Spanish America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is currently working on nineteenth-century Latin American literature and history, in particular the Wars of Independence, and is preparing gendered readings of independence discourse (the writings of Simón Bolívar and Andrés Bello among others). She is Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Board project “Gendering Latin American Independence” (2001–2006). Her numerous publications include the following books: A Place in the Sun? Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba (1997), Spanish Women’s Writing (1849–1996), ed. with Anny Brooksbank Jones (1998), Latin American Women’s Writing: Feminist Readings in Theory and Crisis (1996).

MICHELLE CLAYTON is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, and Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published several articles on modern Peruvian and Southern Cone writers and is currently preparing a manuscript on Cesar Vallejo’s Trilce.

BRIAN GOLLNICK is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, specializing in Mexican literature, regionalism, and subaltern studies. He has published several articles on contemporary Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies. His current research focuses on literature from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

STEPHEN HART is Professor of Hispanic Studies at University College London, England, and holds an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima. He was recently awarded the “Orden al Merito por Servicios Distinguidos” by the Peruvian Government. He is co-editor of the Critical Guides series and commissioning editor of Tamesis. His main publications are A Companion to Spanish American Literature (1998), Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies (2003), and Cesar Vallejo: autografos olvidados (2003). He is currently preparing a book on Latin American film.

JOHN KING is Professor of Latin American Cultural History at the University of Warwick. He has authored and edited some ten books on Latin American cinema, literature, and cultural history. His most recent publications include Magical Reels: A History of Cinema in Latin America (expanded edition, 2000) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture (2004).

EFRAÍN KRISTAL is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at UCLA. He is author of The Andes Viewed from the City: Literary and Political Discourse on the Indian in Perú (1987), Temptation of the Word: The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa (1998), and Invisible Work: Borges and Translation (2002).

SUZANNE JILL LEVINE is a distinguished translator and Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Her most recent book is a literary biography Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions (2000), published in Spanish in 2002. Her other publications include an early study of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1975) and The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction (1991), as well as numerous essays, articles, chapters, interviews, reviews, and creative translations of major Latin American and Hispanic writers. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN Award for Career Achievement in Hispanic Studies, and several grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

NAOMI LINDSTROM is a Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and affiliated with Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Her numerous publications include The Social Conscience of Latin American Writing (1998) and Early Spanish American Narrative (2004).

WILLIAM LUIS Professor of Spanish at Vanderbilt University, is the author of several books, including Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative (1990), Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States (1997), Culture and Customs of Cuba (2001), and Lunes de Revolución: Literatura y cultura en los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana (2003). He has held teaching positions at Dartmouth College, Washington University in St. Louis, SUNY Binghamton, and Yale University. Born and raised in New York City, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on Latin American, Caribbean, Afro-Hispanic, and Latino US literatures.

ISMAEL P. MÁRQUEZ is Professor and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. His research interests include Spanish American literature, Peruvian narrative, Andean narrative, and indigenista literature. He is author of La retórica de la violencia en tres novelas peruanas (1994) and of edited volumes on Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, and Edgardo Rivera Mártinez.

MARTA PEIXOTO is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, New York University. In addition to several articles on Brazilian poetry and fiction, she has published two books: Poesia com coisas: uma leitura de Joao Cabral de Melo Neto (1983) and Passionate Fictions: Gender, Narrative and Violence in Clarice Lispector (1994), the latter forthcoming in Portuguese as Ficcoes apaixonadas.

PHILIP SWANSON is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has published extensively on Latin American literature, including books on the New Novel, José Donoso, and Gabriel García Márquez. His most recent books are Latin American Fiction: A Short Introduction and the edited volume The Companion to Latin American Studies. He is currently completing a book on Isabel Allende. Professor Swanson has taught in a number of universities in Europe and the USA.

JOSÉ J. MARISTANY is the author of Narraciones peligrosas: Resistencia y adhesión en las novelas del Proceso (1999) and co-editor of several collections on Argentine literature and culture, as well as of the journal  Anclajes. He teaches Argentine literature and literary theory at the Universidad Nacional de La Pampa and at the Instituto del Profesorado Joaquín V. González in Buenos Aires.

CLAIRE WILLIAMS is Lecturer in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at the University of Liverpool. Her research has focused mainly on lusophone women’s writing, particularly Clarice Lispector, Maria Gabriela Llansol, and Lìlia Momplé. Wider interests include storytelling and virtual orality, maternal genealogies, and literary representations of the Brazilian favela. Recent publications include the co-edited volume Closer to the Wild Heart: Essays on Clarice Lispector (Oxford: Legenda/European Humanities Research Council, 2002) and the forthcoming The Encounter Between Opposites in the Works of Clarice Lispector (2004). Dr. Williams is an assistant editor of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies and vice-president of Women in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies (WiSPS).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to the contributors of this volume for their knowledge and insight. I would also like to thank Ray Ryan and Alison Powell at Cambridge University Press for their editorial guidance, and Jacqueline French for her sedulous, skillful copy-editing. A UCLA Faculty Senate Grant supported the project, as did the Institute for Advanced Study at La Trobe University in Australia, where I worked on the project as a Visiting Fellow. Carole Viers offered indispensable assistance with the final page-proof corrections. Special thanks to Romy Sutherland, John King, Deborah Cohn, Roy C. Boland Osegueda, Suzanne Jill Levine, Kelly Austin, Ryan Kernan, and José Luis Passos for their advice and support.

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

The titles of original works in the text are followed by an English translation in parentheses. Dates refer to the first publication unless indicated otherwise. A literal translation is provided in quotation marks for those works where no published translation is available. Quotations from original works are followed by the relevant page numbers of the cited edition and an English translation in parentheses. The corresponding page numbers of published translations are also given. Where translations are those of the individual contributors to this volume, this is noted in the text.

CHRONOLOGY