World Literatures Reimagined
There are 3 products in World Literatures Reimagined
Brazilian Narrative Traditions in a Comparative Context
In the first volume of the MLA series World Literatures Reimagined, Earl E. Fitz examines the complex relation between Brazil and the United States: the colonial similarities and differences; the shared issues of slavery and racism; the mutual influences; and the political, economic, and cultural interactions, sometimes troubling, between the two nations. He also provides an extensive overview of Brazilian narrative, tracing its roots in both European and indigenous traditions, and of Brazilian literature in English translation.
The reader unfamiliar with Brazilian literature will learn of such authors as
- José de Alencar, who incorporated Tupi oral traditions into his work to celebrate the distinct qualities of Brazilian Portuguese
- José Oswald de Souza Andrade, who synthesized surrealist and nativist aesthetics into a theory of artistic cannibalism
- Clarice Lispector, whose poetic and philosophical style has been an important influence on twentieth-century feminism
- Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, whose work, like that of his American contemporary Henry James, moved the novel form toward a preoccupation with psychological interiority
- Jorge Amado, whose Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon became a best-seller in the United States in the 1960s
- João Guimarães Rosa, whose The Devil to Pay in the Backlands blends elements of the medieval romance and the American Western
Contemporary Galician Cultural Studies
Galicia occupies an ambiguous position, at the crossroads between land and sea, the Atlantic north and the Mediterranean south, Spanish and Portuguese. For two centuries, its nationhood was ignored or disputed and its people migrated in great numbers to the Americas. What it means to be Galician, therefore, is a central question—particularly now, given Galicia’s new autonomy and today’s trends of globalization and pluralism.
In this first English-language collection of analyses of Galician culture and identity, many aspects of galeguidade—Galicianness—are explored. Among them are the nineteenth-century Rexurdimento and Rosalía de Castro’s championing of and conflict with Galician nationalism, the status of Galician as a separate language, the attractions and problems of television series that express a utopian nostalgia, the continuing importance of Galician-language poetry and folk music, and challenges to Galician tradition by the postmodern avant-gardes after 1975.
Tales of Crossed Destinies
Azade Seyhan’s Tales of Crossed Destinies: The Modern Turkish Novel in a Comparative Context, second in the MLA series World Literatures Reimagined, offers a much-needed guide to the vast, underexplored territory of modern Turkish literature.
Seyhan situates the Turkish novel in relation to such influences as the poetic and oral traditions of Ottoman Islamic culture, the early Turkish Republic, and Western Romantic and Enlightenment thought. She demonstrates that the evolution of the Turkish novel is inseparable from that of the Turkish state.
Readers will discover a wealth of Turkish authors, from those with international renown, such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, to others less widely read. Among them are Reşsat Nuri Güntekin, whose Autobiography of a Turkish Girl prompted thousands of young Turkish women to seek teaching posts; Halide Edib Adıvar, who envisioned a harmonious coexistence of Islamic spirituality with Western ideals; Aziz Nesin, Turkey’s master humorist, who instructs the reader in censor-resistant code; and Yaşsar Kemal and Adalet Ağaoğlu and their blendings of myth, memory, and politics.
Appendixes provide a chronology, a pronunciation guide to Turkish, and a list of modern Turkish novels in English translation, preparing readers to embark on further exploration.
