Argentinean Literature
This page covers Argentinean literature. McKee Library's collection includes numerous titles by Argentinean authors. The resources below cover the general topic, however, more information is available if you search for individual authors by name in the databases.
Research and Reference
- Argentina Literature: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on Argentina literature.
- Gaucho Literature: BritannicaGaucho literature, Spanish American poetic genre that imitates the payadas (“ballads”) traditionally sung to guitar accompaniment by the wandering gaucho minstrels of Argentina and Uruguay.
- Jorge Luis Borges: Credo Reference(born Aug. 24, 1899, Buenos Aires, Arg.—died June 14, 1986, Geneva, Switz.) Argentine poet, essayist, and short-story writer. Educated in Switzerland, Borges recognized early that he would have a literary career.
Streaming Media
- Spanish Exiles in Argentina and ChileArgentina's right-wing dictatorship was reluctant to receive Republican exiles from Spain, fearing they would spread revolutionary ideas. Immigrants to Chile consisted mainly of lower social classes.
- Julio Cortázar: Pining for ArgentinaDespite living in Paris, Cortázar still writes in Spanish. Argentinian writers and artists admire him and consider him their own. Argentinian film director uses Cortazar short stories and themes.
- The Many Faces of BorgesJorge Luis Borges—“invented” in collaboration with virtually everyone, including himself—defies easy identification. In this birthday tribute, which begins with the master reading his classic Borges and I, the then-80-year-old short story writer, poet, essayist, and philosopher joins TV and radio personality Antonio Carrizo in a Borgesian discussion of the multiplicity of existence; the influence of his family, his friends, and writers from the past; his love of language; and the elusive Nobel Prize. Guests Roy Bartolomeo and María Kodama add insights into Borges as a lecturer and scholar, the universality of his writings, and even his blindness. (Spanish with English subtitles, 82 minutes)
Author's Works & Perspectives
Jorge Luis Borges
The literary genius in his own words--Borges' original English manuscript with a Spanish translation.
Antologia Poetica 1923-1977
La literatura de Borges es, a todas luces, una de las obras más complejas de la literatura americana y una de las más profundas también. Este volumen, sin embargo, reúne una selección de poemas que, excluyendo cualquier enfoque académico, llevó a cabo el propio autor de ellos: "Yo desearía que este volumen fuera leído sub quadam specie aeternitatis, de un modo hedónico, no en función de teorías, que no profeso, o de mis circunstancias biográficas. Lo he compilado hedónicamente; sólo he recogido lo que me agrada o lo que me agradaba en el instante en que lo elegí." Se trata de una obra que comprende más de cincuenta años de creación y, por ellos, es un monumento a la obra del gran escritos argentino.
That Strange Territory
Representation of childhood in texts of three Latin American women writers.
El Beso de la Mujer Araña / the Kiss of the Spider Woman
La obra más conocida de Manuel Puig, "el brillantemente inventivo novelista argentino" (The New York Times), es ahora el tema de una premiada comedia musical. El beso de la mujer araña es una elegante y fascinante novela sobre el amor y la victimización. En una cárcel argentina, dos hombres comparten una celda: Molina, un diseñador de escaparates homosexual que es egoísta, auto-denigrante y al mismo tiempo encantad∨ y Valentín, un revolucionario articulado y ferozmente dogmático obsesionado con la memoria de la mujer que abandonó por la causa. Ambos son gradualmente transformados por su cautelosa pero creciente obsesión de Molina con la fantasía y el romance del cine.
The Silver Candelabra and Other Stories
In a revealing look at the Jewish experience in Argentina, 12 authors present the struggle to create an identity in a new country and maintain it through successive generations in this collection of short stories and memoirs. Beginning with Alberto Gerchunoff and ending with more contemporary authors such as German Rosenmacher and Alicia Steimberg, the stories range in theme from immigration and Zionism to economic hardship and military repression. The book contains biographical information for each author and frames their work within a larger cultural context.
Disruptive Archives: Feminist Memories of Resistance in Latin America's Dirty Wars
The histories of the Dirty Wars in Mexico and Argentina (1960s-1980s) have largely erased how women experienced and remember the gendered violence during this traumatic time. Viviana Beatriz MacManus restores women to the revolutionary struggle at the heart of the era by rejecting both state projects and the leftist accounts focused on men. Using a compelling archival blend of oral histories, interviews, human rights reports, literature, and film, MacManus illuminates complex narratives of loss, violence, and trauma. The accounts upend dominant histories by creating a feminist-centered body of knowledge that challenges the twinned legacies of oblivion for the victims and state-sanctioned immunity for the perpetrators. A new Latin American feminist theory of justice emerges--one that acknowledges women's strength, resistance, and survival during and after a horrific time in their nations' histories. Haunting and methodologically innovative, Disruptive Archives attests to the power of women's storytelling and memory in the struggle to reclaim history.
Gauchos and Foreigners: Glossing Culture and Identity in the Argentine Countryside
In Gauchos and Foreigners: Glossing Culture and Identity in the Argentine Countryside Ariana Huberman discusses the relationship between the gaucho figure and the "foreigner" in Argentine rural literature. The narratives of William Henry Hudson, Benito Lynch and Alberto Gerchunoff present English scientists and travelers, as well as Jewish and Italian immigrants, in direct contact with the gaucho in the Argentine and Uruguayan countryside. The book shows how the intent to define and translate terms from the national glossary the gaucho, his lifestyle and habitat and from "foreign" cultures, ultimately questions these terms' capacity to represent a specific culture. It traces a series of writing practices that challenge the concepts of "native" and "foreign" as stable categories of representation by conveying identity and culture across multiple linguistic, social and cultural registers. The reading of these unique practices of translation hopes to offer a fresh approach to the multicultural scope of Argentine literature.
Strange Forces
Fiction. Translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert. Originally published in 1906, the fantastic tales of STRANGE FORCES make a significant contribution to Gaslight Era science fiction. Considered one of the major Latin American writers of this century, Leopoldo Lugones was an influential cultural and literary figure in Argentina who published more than thirty-five volumes ranging from novels to political commentary. "Lugones, regarded by many critics as a worthy heir to Wells and Poe, shows his mastery of the macabre and grotesque by relating tales of terror in his distinctively florid style...Wonderfully literate and just plain creepy, this collection will make a worthy addition to any library" - Booklist.
Jorge Luis Borges
The ideal aids to all students, Bloom's Major Short Story Writers are definitive guides for independent study and a single source for footnoting essays and research papers. Each volume includes: Editor's notes and an introduction; Author's biography; Plot summary; Extracts and major critical essays; Extensive bibliography; Index of themes and ideas
Possible Worlds: Jorge Luis Borges's (Pseudo-) translations of Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka
This volume reevaluates and overturns the assumed hierarchical relationship between original text and translation with an approach that places source and target texts as equal. Combining the translation strategy of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, the theoretical approaches of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, and the exponents of Possible World Theory, the author examines Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Franz Kafka's short stories in detail. Rather than considering what may be lost in translation, this study focuses on why we insist on maintaining a border between the textual phenomena of "translation" and "original" and argues for a mutually enriching dialogue between two texts.