The Latin American Novel

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Tutor: Professor John Kraniauskas
• Assessment: two essays and a final examination

In this module you will be introduced to a wide variety of modern Latin American literature, beginning with key writers such as Borges and Carpentier - usually considered to be at the origins of Latin American modernism and so-called 'magical realism' - to such contemporary writers as Piglia, Saer and Eltit (and including 'Latino' writers such as Junot Diaz).

Central to the course will be a discussion of novelists associated with what became known as the 'boom' in Latin American literature that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa and Puig.

Critically and theoretically, the module will engage with such issues as the idea of 'peripheral world literature', the relation between the novel and other media (from oral traditions to the internet via cinema and comics), as well as interrogate such widely disseminated notions as 'magical realism', 'hybridity' and 'transculturation'.