Author Description

"A History of Mexican Literature chronicles a story more than five hundred years in the making, looking at the development of literary culture in Mexico from its indigenous beginnings to the twenty-first century. Featuring a comprehensive introduction that charts the development of a complex canon, this History includes extensive essays that illuminate the cultural and political intricacies of Mexican literature. Organized thematically, these essays survey the multilayered verse and fiction of such diverse writers as Sor Juana Ińes de la Cruz, Mariano Azuela, Xavier Villaurrutia, and Octavio Paz. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History also devotes special attention to the lasting significance of colonialism and multiculturalism in Mexican literature. This book is of pivotal importance to the development of Mexican writing and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike"-- "Over the past fifteen years, the field of Mexican literary and cultural studies has grown and evolved considerably in the English-language academy. While the shared border between Mexico and the United States has always precipitated cultural exchange and academic interest, the study of Mexican literature had for many years been eclipsed by Chicano studies or by the dominant interest in the Southern Cone within Latin American letters. In the last decade and a half, however, a new generation of scholars of Mexican literature and culture has achieved tenure-line positions in universities in the United States and Canada, most tellingly at institutions where the field had not previously been represented. This is also the case in Great Britain, where scholars of Mexican literature are found not only at flagship institutions like Cambridge or Oxford, but also, and increasingly, at universities from Sussex to Ulster"--