In this Book
- Rain Forest Literatures: Amazonian Texts And Latin American Culture
- Book
- 2004
- Published by: University of Minnesota Press
- Series: Cultural Studies of the Americas
summary
Native texts of the Amazonian rain forest have been viewed as myth or ethnographic matter—the raw material of literature—rather than as significant works in their own right. But in this unprecedented study, Lúcia Sá approaches indigenous texts as creative works rather than source material. Disclosing the existence and nature of long-standing, rich, and complex Native American literary and intellectual traditions that have typically been neglected or demeaned by literary criticism, Rain Forest Literatures analyzes four indigenous cultural traditions: the Carib, Tupi-Guarani, Upper Rio Negro, and Western Arawak. In each case, Sá considers principal native texts and, where relevant, their publication history. She offers a historical overview of the impact of these texts on mainstream Spanish-American and Brazilian literatures, detailing comparisons with native sources and making close analyses of major instances, such as Mário de Andrade’s classic Macunaima (1928) and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller (1986). A redrawing of the lineage of Brazilian and Spanish-American literatures, this book advocates an understanding of the relationships between cultures as a process of “transculturation” rather than “acculturation,” emphasizing the often-ignored impact of the peripheral culture on the one that assumes dominance.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Note on Translations
- p. ix
- Acknowledgments
- pp. x-xii
- Introduction
- p. xiii
- 1. Pacaraima Texts
- pp. 3-34
- 2. Macunaíma (1928)
- pp. 35-68
- 3. Penetrating the Dark Interior
- pp. 69-88
- 4. Tupi-Guarani Texts
- pp. 91-114
- 5. Romanticism and After
- pp. 115-152
- 6. Maíra (1976)
- pp. 153-170
- Part III. Confluence in the Rio Negro
- pp. 171-172
- 8. Snake Norato (1931)
- pp. 205-220
- 9. The Green Stage
- pp. 221-238
- Part IV. The Arawak and the Uppermost Amazon
- pp. 239-240
- 10. The Machiguenga and Their Heritage
- pp. 241-250
- 11. The Storyteller (1987)
- pp. 251-274
- Works Cited
- pp. 299-314
Additional Information
ISBN
9780816695812
Related ISBN(s)
9780816643257
MARC Record
OCLC
182530103
Pages
360
Launched on MUSE
2015-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No