We explain what the Latin American Boom in literature was, its characteristics and recurring themes. In addition, more important authors.
The term Latin American Boom means a literary and editorial phenomenon that took place between the 1960s and 1970s , when the literary works of a group of young Latin American writers was widely distributed and appreciated in Europe and much of the world.
These works changed the paradigms of what until then was expected literarily from the region . Or as Chilean author José Donoso describes it: “… a dozen novels that were at least notable had broken into a space before deserted.”
The Latin American Boom instituted many of the authors that today we consider classics in Latin America, but that at the time were beginning. They presented experimental novel projects, of high social and political content .
Thus, they became an avant-garde gesture , especially in Europe and other latitudes, then dominated by rather conservative considerations. The first step in this internationalization was, in that sense, the triumph of these authors in Spain.
Some Boom names are better known than others, and some of their authors enjoyed greater formal recognition than others. However, there are really no start and closing dates for the Boom, since it was not really an organized literary movement, but rather an editorial phenomenon.
Therefore, there is no formal list of its members, nor of the precursors that served as a school for the appearance of this important generation of Latin American writers.
At the same time, the Latin American Boom opened great doors to Latin American literature . It quickly became a literary reference in the Hispanic world and outside it, through successive translations and editions throughout the globe.
In particular, the American public was impacted by the works of the Boom, in a very challenging world political context such as the Cold War, changing even paradigms of the moment regarding the interpretation and the role of writers in society .
The boom begins in the 1960s . It was a particularly conflictive time in Latin America due to the Cold War and its tensions between revolutionary movements, such as the triumphant Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the American political and diplomatic interference against it, which financed bloody right-wing dictatorships in Latin America.
This panorama was further complicated when the intellectuality of the continent was divided into opinions about the regime of Fidel Castro after the imprisonment in 1967 of the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla and his wife, Belkis Cuza Malé, accused of subversive activities for having publicly read the poem “Provocations.”
In this context the Boom novels emerged , taking advantage of the sudden interest in Latin America that the era had aroused. From the editorial colossus Seix-Barral, Carlos Barral and the literary agent Carmen Balcells, took the initiative to disseminate Latin American works .
Both were installed in Barcelona and defined a particular projection towards the French-speaking markets. It has even been claimed that the massive sales of these Latin American novels practically revived the dying Spanish publishing industry, subject to the censorship of the Franco regime.
The boom was an essentially editorial phenomenon and focused mainly on the genre of the novel. The novelistic projects that tended towards formal experimentation , language innovation and certain social and political dares were highlighted .
A common feature of these novels is his desire for avant-garde: treatments of time in a non-linear way, bet on polyphony or the appearance of multiple voices in the story, abundant use of neologisms and puns. It emphasized a certain internationalism or regional and national identity that did not depart from the historical account, but used it as a backdrop.
His themes and perspectives renewed a noticeable stagnation in the literary realism of the time, and led to the emergence of new names to the Hispanic editorial arena. On the other hand, the boom has been criticized for consisting entirely of male writers
, in whose novels the treatment of the feminine evidences the prevailing machismo in Latin America.In addition, they mostly came from enlightened and university sectors of society, with important access to universal culture. In other words, they were little representative of the Latin American people of the time.
There is no thematic unit in boom novels. This is because their bets always respond to the universe of interests and the personal style of the author.
However, in broad strokes it can be said that the Boom preferred issues related to the national, regional or whatever aspired to a new Latin American identity . Consequently, these works aimed to replace old common places with archetypes that, in turn, would become classics very quickly.
Something important is the breaking of the barriers between the fantastic and the everyday . Thus, aspects such as Magic Realism appeared, on the one hand, using a certain air of Latin American exoticism to narrate wonderful events from a realistic perspective.
On the other hand, historical fiction, strongly anchored in the political tensions of the real , had its place in Boom novels. Many of them explored the theme of the Latin American Dictator, such as Yo, El Supremo (1974) of the Paraguayan Augusto Roa Bastos.
The main authors of the boom (and its main novels) were four, of different nationalities:
The boom, however, also enshrined other authors of other nationalities, which are well worth highlighting, given that their works were of equal significance for the history of Latin American literature, such as:
Cryptocurrency has captivated the world since Bitcoin's mysterious arrival in 2009. It began as a…
Hello, Guys Welcome to our Website. Today we will give you information about a Famous…
Alkenes are chemical elements with double bonds or carbon double bonds. Its general formula is…
Logical semantics is a branch of logic that focuses on studying the meaning of statements…
The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was a popular handheld gaming system developed using the Game…
Soft Puzzle - Drop The Slime APK - Simple and Easy! But that's why this…