Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater
By (author) Richard Young, Odile Cisneros
Publication date:
18 December 2010Length of book:
748 pagesPublisher
Scarecrow PressISBN-13: 9780810850996
The Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater provides users with an accessible single-volume reference tool covering Portuguese-speaking Brazil and the 16 Spanish-speaking countries of continental Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Entries for authors, ranging from the early colonial period to the present, give succinct biographical data and an account of the author's literary production, with particular attention to their most prominent works and where they belong in literary history.
The introduction provides a review of Latin American literature and theater as a whole while separate dictionary entries for each country offer insight into the history of national literatures. Entries for literary terms, movements, and genres serve to complement these commentaries, and an extensive bibliography points the way for further reading. The comprehensive view and detailed information obtained from all these elements will make this book of use to the general-interest reader, Latin American studies students, and the academic specialist.
The introduction provides a review of Latin American literature and theater as a whole while separate dictionary entries for each country offer insight into the history of national literatures. Entries for literary terms, movements, and genres serve to complement these commentaries, and an extensive bibliography points the way for further reading. The comprehensive view and detailed information obtained from all these elements will make this book of use to the general-interest reader, Latin American studies students, and the academic specialist.
Number 45 in Scarecrow's Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts series encompasses the Spanish and Portuguese literatures of Mexico, Central America, and South America, from the diaries of Christopher Columbus (preserved by Bartolomé de las Casas) to short stories, plays, novels, and other forms of the present day. The countries of the Caribbean, often treated as a separate entity, are excluded. Author Young is professor emeritus of Spanish and Latin American studies at the University of Alberta, and author Cisneros is an associate professor at the same university. Following a chronology and introduction, the 500-page dictionary section is composed almost entirely of biographical entries ranging from a paragraph to a couple of pages for the best-known authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García Márquez. Each entry includes the author's country (though many long resided elsewhere), dates, brief biographical and literary highlights, and titles of major works (in the original language and in English, with clear indication whether there is an English translation). There is an entry for the literature and theater of each country as well as entries for movements, terms, and genres, such as Ultraísmo, Boom, and Historical novel. Cross-referencing within and following entries is extensive. A bibliography of nearly 200 pages is arranged by country, with bibliographies, encyclopedias, dictionaries, histories, and anthologies (or some subset) followed by works on particular authors; these resources are in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries where the literature of Latin America is important.