Maarten van Delden's thorough command of his subject, his innovative and sometimes iconoclastic conclusions, and his clear and engaging writing style make this study more than just an interpretation of Fuentes's work. CARLOS FUENTES AND THE DILEMMAS OF A MEXICAN MODERNITY offers nothing less than a comprehensive analysis of Fuentes's intellectual development in the context of modern Mexican political and cultural life.

Carlos Fuentes, Mexico, and Modernity

Literature & Fiction

Van Delden, Maarten

Delden, Maarten Van

History & Criticism

Vanderbilt University Press

Gunshots at the Fiesta: Literature and Politics in Latin America

The product of a unique collaboration between a literary critic (Van Delden) and a political scientist (Grenier), this book looks at the relationship between literature and politics in Latin America, a region where these two domains exist in closer proximity than perhaps anywhere else in the Western world. The apparently seamless blending of literature and politics is reflected in the explicitly political content of much of the continent's writing, as well as in the highly visible political roles played by many Latin American intellectuals.Yet the authors of this book argue that the relationship between the two realms is much more complex and fraught with tension than is nowadays recognized. In examining these tensions, and in revealing the diverse ways in which literature and politics intersect in the Latin American cultural tradition, Gunshots at the Fiesta offers a lively challenge to the current tendency--especially strong in the U.S. academy--to read Latin American literature through a narrowly political prism.The authors argue that one can only understand the nature of the dialogue between literature and politics if one begins by recognizing the different logics that operate in these different domains. Using this idea of the different logics of politics and literature as a guiding thread, Van Delden and Grenier offer bold new readings of major authors such as José Martí, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as compelling interpretations of works by less-frequently-discussed figures such as Claribel Alegría, Marisol Martín del Campo and Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda.

Grenier, Yvon

<p>This study of the work of the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes argues that there is a fundamental paradox at the heart of Fuentes's vision of Mexico and in his role as novelist and critic in putting forth that vision. This paradox hinges on the tension between national identity and modernity. A significant internal conflict, van Delden contends, emerges in Fuentes's work from his attempt to stake out two different positions for himself, as experimental novelist and as politicallly engaged and responsible intellectual.</p>

Carlos Fuentes, Mexico and Modernity.

British & Irish

Liverpool University Press

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