Contemporary South American fiction is rife with urgency, politics, and history, as well as narrative mischief, layering, and literary gamesmanship. It is a highly self-conscious stream of writing, with novelists in conversation–and conflict–with earlier writers, with their contemporaries, and with novelists of their own creation. Highly divergent stylists have perforce engaged with the legacies of colonialism, authoritarianism, and repressions of the body, mind, and spirit. We will begin with two major progenitors—Mexican novelist/photographer Juan Rulfo (for whom the silence of the land spoke, and whose characters occupy a liminal space between extinction and survival), and Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine poet who re-invented the short story, turning fact and fantasy inside out. Every writer on our syllabus is in some way connected to one or both of these giants. We’ll read the highly innovative Roberto Bolaño and Cesar Aire, as well as the rebellious Carmen Boullosa, Lina Meruane, and Guadalupe Nettel.
Learning Outcomes:
* You will do close readings of complex literary texts;
* You will write well-considered and carefully revises analyses of our readings;
* You will participate regularly in group discussion;
* You will be exposed to some dynamics of literary and cultural translation.
Delivery Method: Fully in-person
Course Level: 2000-level
Credits: 4
T/F 2:10PM - 4:00PM (Full-term)
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Course Frequency: Every 2-3 years
Categories: All courses , Fully In-Person , Literature
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