1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910822419603321

Autore

Staniland Emma

Titolo

Gender and the self in Latin American literature / / Emma Staniland

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York  N.Y. ; ; Abingdon, Oxon : , : Routledge, , 2016

ISBN

1-134-61504-3

1-315-88609-X

1-134-61497-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (230 pages)

Collana

Routledge Transnational Perspectives on American Literature ; ; 27

Disciplina

863/.6099287098

Soggetti

Spanish American fiction - Women authors - History and criticism

Spanish American fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Women in literature

Sex role in literature

Self in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- PART I: Construction: Archetype, Fairy Tale, Myth: Chapter  1 Como agua para chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate / by Laura Esquivel (1989) -- Chapter  2 Eva Luna /  by Isabel Allende (1987) -- PART II: Deconstruction: Exile and Gender: Chapter  3 La nave de los locos/The Ship of Fools /  by Cristina Peri Rossi (1984) -- Chapter  4  En breve cárcel/Certificate of Absence  / by Sylvia Molloy (1981) -- PART III: Reconstruction: The Female Body and Agency: Chapter  5 Arráncame la vida/Tear This Heart Out (1985) / by Ángeles Mastretta (1985) -- Chapter  6  La nada cotidiana/Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada  / by Zoé Valdés (1995)

Sommario/riassunto

This book explores six texts from across Spanish America in which the coming-of-age story ('Bildungsroman') offers a critique of gendered selfhood as experienced in the region’s socio-cultural contexts. Looking at a range of novels from the late twentieth century, Staniland explores thematic concerns in terms of their role in elucidating a literary journey towards agency: that is, towards the articulation of a socially and personally viable female gendered identity, mindful of both



the hegemonic discourses that constrain it, and the possibility of their deconstruction and reconfiguration.Myth, exile and the female body are the three central themes for understanding the personal, social and political aims of the Post-Boom women writers whose work is explored in this volume: Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Ángeles Mastretta, Sylvia Molloy, Cristina Peri Rossi and Zoé Valdés. Their adoption, and adaptation, of an originally eighteenth-century and European literary genre is seen here to reshape the global canon as much as it works to reshape our understanding of gendered identities as socially constructed, culturally contingent, and open-ended.