1st Edition

Latin American Gothic in Literature and Culture

Edited By Sandra Casanova-Vizcaíno, Inés Ordiz Copyright 2018
    290 Pages
    by Routledge

    290 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book explores the Gothic mode as it appears in the literature, visual arts, and culture of different areas of Latin America. Focusing on works from authors in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, the Andes, Brazil, and the Southern Cone, the essays in this volume illuminate the existence of native representations of the Gothic, while also exploring the presence of universal archetypes of terror and horror. Through the analysis of global and local Gothic topics and themes, they evaluate the reality of a multifaceted territory marked by a shifting colonial and postcolonial relationship with Europe and the United States. The book asks questions such as: Is there such a thing as "Latin American Gothic" in the same sense that there is an "American Gothic" and "British Gothic"? What are the main elements that particularly characterize Latin American Gothic? How does Latin American Gothic function in the context of globalization? What do these elements represent in relation to specific national literatures? What is the relationship between the Gothic and the Postcolonial? What can Gothic criticism bring to the study of Latin American cultural manifestations and, conversely, what can these offer the Gothic? The analysis performed here reflects a body of criticism that understands the Gothic as a global phenomenon with specific manifestations in particular territories while also acknowledging the effects of "Globalgothic" on a transnational and transcultural level. Thus, the volume seeks to open new spaces and areas of scholarly research and academic discussion both regionally and globally with the presentation of a solid analysis of Latin American texts and other cultural phenomena which are manifestly related to the Gothic world.

    Acknowledgements

    List of Contributors

    Introduction: Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Persistence of the Gothic

    Inés Ordiz and Sandra Casanova-Vizcaíno

    Section I: (Re)Visions of History

    1. Civilization and Barbarism and Zombies: Argentina’s Contemporary Gothic

    Inés Ordiz

    2. Rural Horrors in Chilean Gothic

    Olga Ries

    3. Fragmented Gothic Identities in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo

    Antonio Alcalá González

    Section II: Displacement, Transposition, Tropicalization

    4. Machado de Assis’s Nightmarish World: Displacements of the Gothic in Brazil

    Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos

    5. Duplicitous Vampires Annihilating Tradition and Destroying Beauty in Froylán Turcios’s El vampiro

    Carmen Serrano

    6. Liberation and the Gothic in Carlos Solórzano’s Las manos de Dios

    David Dalton

    7. Gothic in the Tropics: Transformations of the Gothic in the Colombian Hot Lands

    Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez

    Section III: Occupation and Incarceration

    8. "I’ll Be Back": The United States’s Occupation of Puerto Rico and the Gothic

    Sandra Casanova-Vizcaíno

    9. Marie Vieux Chauvet’s World-Gothic: Commodity Frontiers, "Cheap Natures" and the Monstrous-Feminine

    Kerstin Oloff

    10. Casa Por Cárcel: Incarcerating Homes in Costa Rican Life and Fiction

    Ilse Bussing

    Section IV: Science, Technology, and the Uncanny

    11. Shadows of Science in the Río de la Plata Turn-of-the-Century Gothic

    Soledad Quereilhac

    12. Aura, "Constancia," and "Sleeping Beauty": Carlos Fuentes’s Little History on Photography

    Adriana Gordillo

    13. Media, Shadows, and Spiritual Bindings: Tracing Mexican Gothic in Óscar Urrutia Lazo’s Rito terminal

    Enrique Ajuria Ibarra

    Section V: Contemporary Gothic Paradigms

    14. The Vampiric Tradition in Peruvian Literature: A Long Journey from Modernist Conventions to Gothic Postmodernism Ruptures

    Rosa María Díez Cobo

    15. Cultural Cannibalism: Gothic Parody in the Cinema of Ivan Cardoso

    Daniel Serravalle de Sá

    16. Pedro Cabiya’s Caribbean Grotesque

    Persephone Braham

    17. Towards a Darker Reality: The Post-Gothic Simulacrum in Edmundo Paz Soldán’s Los vivos y los muertos

    Sergio Fernández Martínez

    Index

    Biography

    Sandra Casanova-Vizcaíno is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Binghamton University-State University of New York, USA.

    Inés Ordiz is a PhD Student and Teaching Associate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Washington, USA.