Redefining Latin American Historical Fiction The Impact of Feminism and Postcolonialism

Current scholarship on Latin American historical fiction has failed to adequately take feminism and postcolonialism into account. In this collection of essays, noted scholars use these important contemporary discourses as a starting point for a new definition of the Latin American historical novel that includes four categories: fiction about the search for national identity, magical realism, narrative with historical intertextuality, and symbolic historical fiction. These categories show how the novel evolves through a new emphasis on women and the colonial subject in key texts by Claribel Alegría, Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, Cristina Peri Rossi, Reinaldo Arenas, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Ana Teresa Torres, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Ana María Gonçalves, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Helene Carol Weldt-Basson is Professor of Spanish at Michigan State University, USA. She holds a PhD in Latin American Literature from Columbia University, USA. Her publications include: Augusto Roa Bastos's I The Supreme: A Dialogic Perspective; Subversive Silences: Nonverbal Expression and Implicit Narrative Strategies in the Works of Latin American Women Writers ; Postmodernism's Role in Latin American Literature: The Life and Work of Augusto Roa Bastos; and numerous articles on twentieth-century and contemporary Latin American narrative.

1. Redefining Latin American Historical Fiction: The Impact of Feminism and Postcolonialism; Helene Carol Weldt-Basson
2. Ashes of Izalco: Female Narrative Strategies and the History of a Nation; Patricia Varas
3. In Search of the Absent Revolution: Edgardo Rodríguez Julia's Novels of Invented History; Víctor Figueroa
4. The Galleys of History: Mirages and Madness of a Journey; Fernando Burgos
5. Archaeologies of Identity: Revisions of the City and the Nation in Two Novels by Ana María Torres; Elda Stanco
6. Santa Evita, History, Fiction, and Myth: A Narrative from Another Side; Marcelo Coddou
7. Chaos and Simulations of History in Mujer en traje de batalla; Fátima R. Nogueira
8. The Plural History of Memory: A Polyphonic Novel by Ángela Hernández; Ester Gimbernat González
9. Unsubmissive Imaginaries in the Contemporary Brazilian Historical Novel: A Reading of Um defeito de cor by Ana Maria Gonçalves; Maria Josele Coehlo
10. El sueño del celta: Postcolonial Vargas Llosa; Helene Carol Weldt-Basson