EDITORS: MARIO J. VALDÉS and DJELAL KADIR
Beginning from the fact that, in historical terms, "Latin America" is a nominal,
social and cultural construct, this three-volume project seeks to take into account the very
process of that constructing--the framers' plural agendas and investments--in its historical
consideration of the production and reception of "Latin American" literature. The
orientation of its comparative investigation of the literary archive and its contexts will be
toward what the research team has called "problematics": it will explore a group of
contingent, shifting problems which have arisen across national borders, geographic
regions, time periods, linguistic systems, cultural traditions--and which, therefore, must
be treated comparatively. The first of these involves the fact that the Americas designated
"Latin" are plural: the Andean region, Brazil, the Caribbean, México and Central
America, Rio de la Plata. Their diverse "discoveries" by different European imperial
powers provide another site of literary historical research to be carried out. This will be
done through a comparative analysis of the texts written at the time in both European and
Indoamerican languages. Besides studying the texts (written but also oral, ritual, and
performative) of the indigenous cultures, this comparative project will investigate the
relationship between indigenous and European cultures. It will do so through the literary
traces of the processes of cultural rupture and even destruction, as well as superimposition
and hybridization. The various displacements and uprootings--both from Africa and within the
Americas--form part of this investigation. The broader political (colonial), cultural, and
social context in which "literature," such as it is defined in this series, comes into
being is obviously crucial to the understanding of the literary history of this vast area of
the Americas.
Among the other concerns permitted and even provoked by a comparative approach would be
the different relations between nationhood and literary forms (epics, chronicles, utopian
visions, hymns, encomia, philosophical discourses). Also significant is the relation between
the production/reception of literature and literary institutions (indigenous and
European--academic, publishing, media, church, state, etc.). Among the most important of the
"problematics" to be tackled in these volumes is the issue of the meaning given to
colonial cultural forms in a variety of New World settings--and, more recently,
vice-versa--through complex processes of repetition, transgression, syncretism, appropriation,
recuperation. Dialogue--across oceans, national borders, ethnic divisions, cultural and
linguistic context, and between centres (and between centres and margins)--is another of the
comparative models used to structure the vast field of investigation here. These volumes
will deal not only with so-called "high-art" forms, but with popular culture, from
oral literature and folklore to radio serials, telenovels and comics. There will clearly be
no attempt at any illusory comprehensiveness: Latin American literature is too diverse and
multifaceted. Nevertheless, what will inform all the discussions of these various historical
"problematics" will be two important matters: an awareness of the once-elided role
of gender in each, and a reflexive self-questioning about the very terms and methods of
analysis and explanation being used.
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OXFORD COMPARATIVE HISTORY of
