Earl E. Fitz

The Evolution of Literature in the Americas

A Timeline and Commentary

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

A literary and, to a lesser degree, socio-political, history of America, from its indigenous past to 2026, the book offers the reader a great deal of information about America, understood not merely as the domain of one nation but as a giant, hemispheric complex, one full of fascinating interactions and relationships.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Seitenzahl: 632
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. April 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 246mm x 174mm
• ISBN-13: 9781032733395
• ISBN-10: 103273339X
• Artikelnr.: 72109607

Autorenporträt

Earl E. Fitz is Professor of Portuguese, Spanish, and Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University, where he regularly teaches courses on Brazilian literature, inter-American literature, literary history, and translation. He is the author of many articles and some fifteen books on these topics.

Inhaltsangabe

Dedications
1. Introduction. Inter-American Literature as Academic Discipline: A
Definition and a Statement of Principles and Praxis. What inter-American
literature is, what its study means, why it matters, and how it's currently
being done; different approaches, different results; the pioneering role
historians have played in inter-American study; early Brazilian
inter-Americanists and the case for Brazil in the larger inter-American
project; language study and the importance of the comparative method; some
recommendations.
2. The Pre-Columbian World as Foundation and as an Enduring Ancient
Tradition.
Our common New World heritage; Canada, or kanata, a Huron word for village
or community; Tenochtitlán, the fabulous Aztec citadel; Nezahualcóyotl, the
great poet and philosopher-king; the vast Incan empire; the Iroquois
Confederation, the place of women in it, and Marxism; the nature of oral
literature and its social significance; the enduring power of Native
American literature and culture; the ongoing importance of our indigenous
heritage to the inter-American project.
3. The Fifteenth Century: The Inter-American Experience Begins to Take
Shape.
America as an idea and its collective invention versus America as political
and cultural reality; visions (and revisions) of the New World as earthly
Eden, a terrestrial paradise; Spain, England, Portugal, and France in 1492,
1497,1500, 1534, and, once again, England (now intending to settle) in
1607; Indigenous America and late fifteenth-century Europe; the European
traditions that will be implanted in the New World and the impacts these
will have on how culture and literature in the Americas will develop; the
startlingly contrastive discovery letters of Spain's Colón and Portugal's
Caminha and the very different traditions these represented and, in the New
World, begat; the oral traditions of Native America and the written
traditions of Europe; drama as a genre and the special role it played in
cultural communication; the seeds of conflict.
4. The Sixteenth Century: Brazil and Spanish America Blaze a Trail.
Indigenous America; epic struggles between the powerful Aztec, Mayan, and
Incan empires and the Spanish conquistadores; Luso-Brazilian différance;
the clash of worlds hitherto unknown to each other; exemplary genres and
the emergence of outstanding writers: Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, Bernal
Díaz del Castillo, Álvar Núñes Cabeza de Vaca, Pêro Vaz de Caminha, José de
Anchieta, and Manuel da Nóbrega; key differences between Spain in the
Americas and Portugal in the Americas; the birth of what will become two
very distinct literary traditions, the Spanish American and the Brazilian;
early French (and Portuguese) claims to Canada; Newfoundland (a disputed
territory) and the voyages of Gaspar Corte-Real and Giovanni da Verrazano;
Jacques Cartier; the French, their failure to make allies of the Iroquois
Confederation, and the fur trade.
5. The Seventeenth Century: England Arrives in the New World.
Jamestown, 1607, and Québec, 1608; Samuel de Champlain and the
establishment
of New France; the importance of the Iberian Baroque to literary and
cultural
development in Spanish America and Brazil; early Brazilian identity and
brasilidade;
the Puritan "plain style" and the intellectual and rhetorical arabesques of
the Spanish
American and Brazilian Baroque; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the New World's
first
great writer, intellectual, and feminist; Gregório de Matos ("the Devil's
Mouthpiece")
and Antônio Vieira; Vieira and Sor Juana: the first inter-American literary
dispute; the
French-Canadian Jesuit Relations; the importance of literacy and
educational systems
to the development of literature in the Americas; Catholicism and the
Jesuits versus
Protestantism and the Puritans; the development of letters, both religious
and secular.
6. The Eighteenth Century: The Inter-American Project Becomes both More
Viable and More Complex.
Religious and political conflict; the long struggle between France and
England for control of North America comes to an end on the Plains of
Abraham, on the outskirts of Montréal; revolution in New England, decadence
and decline in Spanish American life and letters; steady growth and
consolidation in Brazil; Brazilian Ufanismo; the "special relationship"
between Brazil and the United States begins to sprout; the emergence of two
distinct literary traditions, the North American "plain," pragmatic, and
(in the English tradition) realistic mode versus the elaborate, opulent,
and imaginative Latin American mode; the English influence in Canada versus
the English influence in the United States; survivance and Québec's
struggle to maintain its own linguistic and cultural identity; New World
literature and the American revolution, new issues of influence and
reception; political independence and cultural independence in the
Americas.
7. The Nineteenth Century: Inter-Americanism Begins to Flower.
Political independence comes to Latin America: the Spanish American
experience versus the Brazilian; Canadian Confederation and Canada's
relationships with Great Britain and its New World neighbors; a synchrony
of European influence, periodization, thematics (nature, independence, and
miscegenation being three prime examples), and genre development in the
Americas; the earliest novels; politics, slavery, a sharp increase in
specific cases of inter-American influence and reception; the Confederation
Poets; the importance of Poe and Whitman to the rest of the Americas; the
portrayal of the Indian; differing American cultural identities; the
special importance of Romanticism in the Americas; the concept of Nuestra
América begins to take shape; Brazilian literature and a new consciousness
of women, their identities, and their places in society; the questions of
race and identity; the importance of Realism and the emergence of New World
narrative, Machado de Assis and Henry James; Naturalism and its unique
place in inter-American literary history; poetry, prose fiction, and five
end-of-century gems: Henry James, Sara Jeannette Duncan, Émile Nelligan,
Rubén Darío, and Machado de Assis.
8. The Twentieth Century: Changing Patterns of Influence.
Unease in Canada and Latin America over the growing economic and political
power of the United States; issues of political, economic, and cultural
influence; Modernism in the Americas; American Studies and the United
States vis-à-vis the rest of the Americas; the case of Faulkner; the 1960s
and the "Boom" era; Canada's "Quiet Revolution" and the new Canadian novel;
Machado, Borges, Lispector, Márquez, and Barth and the influence of "Latin
American" literature on writers and critics in the United States; the
connections between Canadian, Spanish American, Brazilian, and Caribbean
literature in the 1960s and 1970s; the importance of translators and
translation to the rise of inter-American literature; new issues of
influence and reception; García Márquez, realismo mágico, and
English-Canadian narrative; Eduardo Galeano's epic American vision; the
1982 International Comparative Literature Association's recognition of
inter-American literature as an emergent discipline; the growing importance
of Canada, the Caribbean, Spanish America, and Brazil as leaders in the
inter-American project; the special role of Brazil.
9. The Twenty-First Century: A Look Back and a Look Forward.
Trends and developments; the formal entrance of Canadian literature into
the inter-American game; new possibilities for a rapidly developing field;
Américanité; the importance of Comparative Literature as a discipline to
the inter-American project; American Studies, International American
Studies, and International Inter-American Studies; What is being done? What
needs to be done? How can interested students and scholars become involved?
Inter-American literature and the United States; pride and prejudice,
American style; immigration and the Hispanization of the United States; the
future of inter-American literature and its relationship with the
disciplines of History and Latin American Studies and with the various
national literature departments involved; American literature (understood
in its hemispheric sense) and World Literature
10. Conclusion