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The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature.
Vol. 3: Brazilian Literature, Bibliographies
General
The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Vol. 3: Brazilian Literature, Bibliographies. Edited by Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xx, 864 pp. Cloth, $90.00. Scholars of Brazilian literature are generally wary of works purporting to offer an inclusive panorama of Latin American literature. Too often such works equate Latin America with the Spanish-speaking countries in the New World, thus unfairly ignoring Brazil, or allocate Brazilian letters scant space that is not commensurate with their variety, scope, and influence. The general editors of The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature make a decisive and long-overdue break with that vexing pattern. Boldly propounding that "Brazil's is the most independent, and perhaps most original, national literature in the New World" (p. 1), they assign nearly half of the third and final volume in the series to a comprehensive overview of Brazilian literature from the sixteenth to the late twentieth centuries.
As to be expected in reference works of this kind, the 17 essays by distinguished scholars from the United States, Brazil, and Great Britain included in this volume follow a fairly traditional arrangement, parceling out the history of Brazilian literature according to chronology and literary genre, with emphasis on lyric poetry and fiction. Significantly, five chapters, comprising roughly one-third of the volume, deal with the nineteenth century, a period that over the past decade and a half has become one of the most dynamic in Brazilian literary studies. In particular, the chapter on Brazilian fiction from 1800 to 1855 by Mary Lou Daniel presents invaluable information on a period that until recently had received undeservedly little attention from scholars. Although the majority of the essays focus on the last 150 years, the chapter on colonial literature by David T. Haberly provides a succinct but competent account of the unfolding of Brazilian letters from the sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Four additional chapters deserve special mention, as they offer perceptive insights into topics that, though not standard fare in most literary histories, are nonetheless essential to a fuller historical picture of Brazil's literary production. Benedito Nunes charts the development of Brazilian literary historiography since the nineteenth century and its ties to the continuing debate over the definition of Brazilian literature. Candace Slater traces the roots and growth of cordel literature in northeastern Brazil, as well as the appropriation and transformation of such popular forms by a variety of mainstream twentieth-century writers. Thomas E. Skidmore reflects on the unabating anxiety of the Brazilian intelligentsia over the question of national identity during the past 100 years as exemplified by essayists such as Sílvio Romero, Oliveira Vianna, Gilberto Freyre, Roberto da Matta, and others. And in a fitting conclusion to the interpretive section of the Cambridge [End Page 159] History, José Guilherme Merquior undertakes a contrastive survey of the Brazilian and Spanish American literary traditions, thus not only supplying a link with the two preceding volumes but also making a contribution to the fast growing field of inter-American literary relations.
The remainder of this volume consists of a bibliography of general bibliographies of Spanish American literature, followed by a partially annotated bibliography of both primary and secondary sources for all periods, genres, and countries covered in the three volumes of the Cambridge History, broken up according to the individual chapters' subject matter. Obviously, it would be unrealistic to expect this section to include every title ever published by and about Latin American authors. Nevertheless, the omission of Gonçalves Dias, one of the major Brazilian romantics, from the list of primary sources for Brazilian poetry from the 1830s and 1880s is puzzling, and the selection of criticism, particularly journal articles on Brazilian literature, at times appears somewhat arbitrary, as the work of a variety of important scholars, both from Brazil and from...
The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Vol. 3: Brazilian Literature, Bibliographies (review)
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