Product Description

Conceived of as the 'New World', Latin America represented a new beginning for its discoverers, yet, in fact, the colonials were only continuing their search for what they knew all along they wanted to find: fertile land with an abundance of spices, precious metals and labour. This idea of Latin America's invention has long been a preoccupation of intellectuals and historians, leading to the dominant postcolonial interpretation of the native as a marginalized figure often unusually wise or heroic according to his circumstances. "Transatlantic Translations" examines the ways in which the unknown has always been imagined according to what is already known, the new according to the old. Tracing Latin American representations from the early modern to contemporary periods, in Shakespeare, Cervantes, Juan Rulfo, Ricardo Palma, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Juan Maria Gutierrez and many others, Ortega uncovers the rich fabric of literature that has emerged from that culture, arguing that the learning of language, far from being a means for the colonial to indoctrinate and civilize the native, has given the native the means to describe and communicate with the natural world around them, and eventually to re-tell their own history. By travelling beyond the contradictions that make up any comparison between colonizer and native, Ortega negotiates a space for the Latin American narrative beyond ideas of victimization and resistance. "Transatlantic Translations" bridges the divide between abundance and scarcity, enabling the Old World and the New to meet and speak together in a shared language.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3009804 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-21
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .90" h x 6.34" w x 9.48" l, 1.07 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
'This is a cogent and penetrating book, recommended reading for those in the field of Latin American Literature, especially for those who do not read Spanish and work on comparative topics.' --Comparative Literature

'Julio Ortega's immensely readable book is one of the first full length works translated into English from his extensive oeuvre. In it the reader will find a development of some of the themes that have interested Ortega for years, namely, the cultural clash of the conquest and the social, linguistic and artistic consequences of intercultural exchange. The book follows in the best tradition of the Latin American essay . . . an excellent introduction to the critical work of Julio Ortega for a non-Spanish speaking audience . . . an elegant contribution to the field of transatlantic studies from a Latin American perspective.' --Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos

About the Author
Julio Ortega is Professor of Latin American Literature at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and is the author of many books including Poetics of Change, The New Spanish-American Narrative (1986), Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Powers of Fiction (1988), and the editor, with Carlos Fuentes, of The Picador Book of Latin American Short Stories (1998).