The Latin American Boom
By the 1960s, Latin America’s avant-garde movements had matured into a range of literary styles that were firmly entrenched in the cultural landscape. At the same time, there emerged a new and distinctive accent to Latin American literature that w...
Modernismo
It was an aesthetic movement with an ambitious program: linguistic innovation as a means of liberation from Romanticism and Neoclassicism, and as a way to clarify Latin American identity. As this program explains, Modernismo coincided with a burst o...
Pre-Columbian literature
The history and social structures of Latin America’s native peoples were neither simple nor peaceful before the arrival of Europeans. Wars were fought, empires were created and destroyed, and—as this program illustrates—narrative tapestries of...
From Romanticism to Realism
The 19th century brought tumultuous political change to Central and South America. This program shows how the cultural crucible of the region fused and realigned aesthetic movements considered sacrosanct in Europe—specifically, Romanticism, Realis...
The Avant-Garde of the 1920s
After the horrors of World War I, Latin American writing turned away from what many saw as ornamental and frivolous experimentation. This program studies the so-called “criticism of Modernismo within Modernismo” in which language reached back to...
Regionalism and Indigenism
The literature of Latin America has always defied homogeneity—and the first decades of the 20th century were no exception. This program studies artistic responses to Modernismo that accompanied a deepening appreciation of local cultural currents f...
Brazilian Literature: The First 500 Years
Unified by the Portuguese language, the literature of Brazil represents the cultural synthesis of three distinct influences: indigenous peoples, European émigrés, and Africans brought to the New World as slaves. This program reflects on those infl...
After the Boom
As the 1970s progressed, the political climate in Latin America became increasingly dark, with no end in sight to the proliferation of brutal dictatorships. This program analyzes the cultural impact of those developments and the tensions which gave ...
Politicians and Revolutionaries
The Era of Revolution severed political ties between Latin America and the Old World—but cultural independence was another matter. This program explains how the region’s literature began to come into its own, relying on models and themes importe...
Conquest and Colony - (Spanish audio)
To the European imagination, America was a tabula rasa, a virgin territory. As this program describes, narrative art forms were essential to making sense of this exotic Eden and the possibilities it offered. New Spain became a place for re-creating ...