Roberto González Echevarría

Lexicon of the Hispanic Baroque. Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation

finally made available in print. None of this should question the importance of van Groesen’s book, however. This is all the more the case since his study about the making of Dutch Brazil represents a perspective that reveals striking parallels between seventeenth-century opinion-making based on rumors, dreams, complot theories, divine signs, stereotypes and ‘fake news’ and the way contemporary election campaigns have been impacted by social media. While reading Amsterdam’s Atlantic in 2017, it almost feels as if the Dutch debate on Brazil initiated a process of ‘Amsterdamnification’ that, in today’s globalized world, went viral.

Sor Juana y la cosmología barroca: "Primero sueño"

El texto que sigue aprovecha el trabajo que he publicado sobre el barroco y, en especial, mi ensayo “Lirica colonial,” que aparece en la Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana, que Gredos publico en el 2006, y que habia aparecido en su version original inglesa en la Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, de 1996. Tambien retomo algunas de las ideas de Celestina´s Brood: Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish and Latin American Literature, que se publico en Espana como La prole de Celestina. Pero aqui aspiro a ir mas lejos al concentrarme en un solo poema de Sor Juana, “Primero sueno”, y utilizar ideas que he ido desarrollando en los ultimos diez o quince anos. Las mas recientes forman parte de un libro en marcha sobre el infinito y la improvisacion del que ya han aparecido algunos adelantos sobre Cervantes y Calderon. Hay otro sobre Lope en camino.

Colonial Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction

The publication of a synthetic overview of colonial Latin American literature by Oxford University Press is the culmination but one hopes not the peak of a trend that began in the 1960s. Colonial Latin American literature has become since then a recognized field of study with professorships both junior and senior in Spanish Departments throughout the United States, and some in Europe and Latin America. Before then, colonialists devoted to literature were few and far between. That the book should be authored by Rolena Adorno is fitting, for she has been a leading colonialist whose achievements at the highest levels of the US academy are matched by few in Latin American studies, especially in literature: a Sterling Professorship at Yale, multiple book awards, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a book with Yale University Press, articles in The Yale Review and Daedalus, and a presidential appointment to the Council of the Humanities. I say this not to boast of my colleague’s accomplishments, which they do well on their own, but to indicate the heights attained by the discipline she represents and to underline the importance of the short book under review here. Short but not little. Colonial Latin American Literature may be brief but it is a major contribution to the field of study that it summarizes. In condensing her views Adorno puts forth important ideas about the subject as well as overarching formulations that all will have to take into account from now on. To synthesize is not a static but a dynamic process. The first and most important conception to emerge from Colonial Latin American Literature is the existence of its subject matter; this is the first book to conceive of the topic as a coherent field of study and lay out its outlines and nature of its contents. Adorno covers from Columbus to Bello, focusing on histories, polemics, the epic, satire, Baroque poetry and prose, and the transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism. All major figures are given their due, often with original analyses and even lapidary assessments which should become influential in the study of their works. Colonial Latin American Review, 2014 Vol. 23, No. 1, 102–116, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10609164.2013.877254

Contemporary Cuban Literature: A Way Out

Roberto González Echevarrı́a is Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale University, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is author of The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (1999), as well as major studies of Cervantes, Carpentier, Garcı́a Márquez, and Sarduy. His most recent book is Cuban Fiestas (2010). González Echevarrı́a was awarded the 2010 National Humanities Medal by President Barak Obama on March 3, 2011, at the White House.

Alejo Carpentier; The Pilgrim at Home

* Preface * Preface to the Paperback Edition *1. Preamble: A Post-Carpenterian Reflection *2. Lord, Praised Be Thou *3. Fugitive Island *4. The Parting of the Waters *5. Memories of the Future *6. The Pilgrims Last Journeys * Bibliography * Select Bibliography of Carpentiers Works * Works Cited * Bibliographical Supplement to the Paperback Edition * Carpentiers Works * Works Cited * Index