A Literary Study of Magical Realism in Hombres de Maíz

As a precursor of Magical Realism,MiguelÁngel Asturias uses bold narrative structure,fantastic skills and a style full of images,symbols and musical effects to endow Hombres de Maíz with an unmistakable singularity.As a literary study of this book from the perspective of Magical Realism,this paper aims to uncover in detail the presence of this literary formula in this novel,taking into consideration the contributions of this literary Nobel to Latin American literature and the domestic and foreign contexts of that time.

Planet Earth Strikes Back:Landscapes of Toxicity in Latin American Fiction

This essay discusses how contemporary Latin American literature(Argentina,Brazil,and Colombia)employs the discourse of toxicity-condensed in the metaphor of bio-engineering and mutation-to process and interrogate what Jason Moore has called the“Capitolecene.”Moore proposes to understand the“accumulation of capital,the pursuit of power,and the co-production of nature in dialectical unity.”This essay considers how the co-production of nature,impelled by greed(a recurring allegory of capitalism)goes terribly wrong by generating toxic biomes.As such,these texts function as ecocritical allegories of the Capitolecene(specifically in its iteration as biocapitalism)and its human and environmental consequences.

Saga-Like World-Fractals: Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Sagarana, and the Literatures of the World

This article presents and discusses Joao Guimaraes Rosa as an outstanding Brazilian author whose literary work,especially Sagarana,expresses aesthetically different ways of lifeforms between human beings,animals,plants,and landscapes.Movement and transformations are the basic principles in which the melody of prose expresses itself as a language in and as motion.Although based in Brazilian culture,Rosa shows the conviviality of different logics which are not reduced to one myth of the Brazilian people,but produce multiple ways of coexistence between different life-forms and culture narratives.The translingual title ttSagarana,'already alludes to the transitions between two languages,regions,and cultures:the Icelandic“saga-”and the Tupic-Word“rana”which means“similar”or“alike.”The interpretation figures out the correlation of different provenances(“Herkiinfte”)which emerge from Rosa’s craft of storytelling.In its center,the Sertao arises as a region of nature whose forces are connected with the life of human beings.As fractal of the world,it symbolizes Brazilian relations as a world of its own and at the same time as a part of the world of others.From this point of view the essay turns world literature upside down:it emphasizes on the one hand that the epoch of world literature since Goethe has come to an end and that the meridian has shifted to Latin America.On the other hand it can be observed that the lusophonic world between Brazil and Angola,Portugal and Kap Verde develops new perspectives on literatures of the world beyond the fixed coordinations of periphery and center.Rosa's ways of world making already shift the perspective from the local to the global as a miniatured model of a universe which reveals interpretations of a better understanding of the world as world fractals.

The Latin American Publishing Circuit in the 21st Century:Following the Trajectory of Cesar Aira

This essay poses a question about the identity of Latin American literature in the 21st century.In the 1960s and 1970s,the Latin America Boom received recognition both locally and internationally,becoming the dominant means of defining Latin American literature up to the present.This essay explores new ways to understand this notion of Latin America in the literary scene.The case of the Argentine writer Cesar Aira is relevant for analyzing alternative publishing circuits that connect various points of the region.These publishing houses foster a defiant way of establishing the value of literature.